Fun Facts About Fleas:

1.   An adult flea can live 3 months without "feeding" (on your blood).

2.  NOTHING can kill a baby flea egg.

3.  Baby fleas eat what is called "flea diet", which is adult fleas' poop.

3.  The number of fleas you observe crawling on your dog represents about 5% of the total flea population currently residing in your home.

4.  A diaper pail full of stinky diapers is like a little flea Disney World.

So I took the dog to the vet a few weeks ago.  Several days later I was brushing him and I noticed bugs crawling around in the brushed-off fur.  I had a little freak-out on my front porch.  I still have vivid memories of contracting head lice on a trip to Egypt when I was five.  My mom tried various methods to get rid of them and the only thing that worked was a dip in the Atlantic ocean.  And we can't afford a trip to the beach right now, much as I would love to take one.  I can still see the red handkerchiefed head of the maid who infected us.  I don't think my mom has forgiven her yet- I bet she still remembers her name.  Anyway, because my past trauma centered around lice, and because I had never seen a flea before, I assumed that the bugs were lice.  

An internet search reassured me that canine lice can't be passed to other species, and that all I had to do was bath Mustang with a lice shampoo and that should take care of the problem.  So that's what I did.  Except they came back.  So I bathed him again and they came back again and I bathed him again and they came back AGAIN.  I remembered a story that my grandmother used to tell about when she got head lice in college and they wouldn't go away and someone told her the only thing to do was to shave her head.  I contemplated shaving the dog.  My grandmother told me not to do it because he would be "terribly embarrassed".  That I would have liked to have seen.  But I decided to call the vet first, just to make sure that there wasn't some other, less drastic solution.  The vet said I needed to burn the dog's bedding.  Our bedroom carpet is the dog's bedding.  I am not setting fire to my carpet.

So two nights ago Eric and I were getting into bed and I saw a black speck on the sheet and it hopped.  And I knew then that Mustang did not have canine lice, he had fleas.  About this time I also figured out that the little bug bites all over my legs and tummy were actually flea bites.  

It took the entire afternoon and evening to vacuum every inch of carpet, every baseboard, every piece of upholstered furniture.  Then we sprayed the house and the yard and washed every curtain, towel, sheet and article of clothing not in drawers.  Today I mopped the floors twice and they are still sticky with extract-of-chrysanthamum residue.  It does smell kind of good though.  There are still several loads of laundry to wash, curtains and bedskirts to iron, more vacuuming and possibly another round of spraying ahead.  I'm thinking of buying a special kind of dirt that's made of either crushed up seashells or microscopic freeze-dried plants (depending on which online source you trust) that will kill any more fleas who venture into our yard.  The crushed up seashells/plants make tiny cuts on the fleas' bodies which causes them to leak fluids, get dehydrated, get constipated and die by fecal poisoning (all completely true).  I almost feel bad for them.  No I don't.