Biting things in my house!!! Help

[loopylopey]

hi, we've just moved house and the people who lived here before had cats, and guinea pig things running around. They left their sofas here which we thought was great, but they were covered in animal fur so we've chucked them in a skip.

Now, we've got bites all over us, not just our ankles, but so far, my 19wk DD1 hasn't been bitten.

I'm vaccumming manically every day (5 days so far) and washing all our linen again now that they are with us.

The problem is I don't know what they are, or how to get rid. Does anyone have any thoughts?! Don't want to do anything toxic cos of DD but am getting really paranoid about it now and driving DH mad.
Thanks!!!

\Fleas. You need to go to the vet and get a massive tub of powder and treaty your whole house and all your furniture. You need to arrange for your dd to be out for the day.

sorry, it's the obnly way.

Sounds like fleas in which case you need to get some spray for the carpets and soft-furnishings where they'll be living. I think vets sell it and probably pet superstores?

Fleas don't bite everyone -maybe your DD is just lucky that they "don't like" her.

Flea treatment for house from vets is best as they have ones that are less likely to cause reaction (checked when we had to do ours as we are all asthmatic).

You'll probably need to keep you dd out for the day though.

Thanks, that's great advice, will sort tomorrow.

get flea spray

spray everywhere. will take a couple of weeks but it does work,

THANKS - that's great.
the only downside is that i'm being sent to the mother-in-law's down in coventry (we have recently moved to manchester from london) while we fumigate the house...

When I first moved in to the house I`m in now, we had a problem with fleas. XP2 got some foggy fea thingys. We watched the one we had in our lounge through window. It was like a smoke bomb thing. Had to leave for about an hour I think and then open all windows and doors and leave for another hour to let the air in, then it was ok to go in after that. We set 4 of them off in the whole of the house.(well xp2 did) We never had any problems with fleas after we did that.

If I remember right we got the bomb thingys from tesco or morrisons. £10+ for 2, worth the money though as they worked for us

We had this, only my poor dd reacted to the bites though otherwise we wouldn't have noticed!
Buy expensive fleaspray from the vet or the pet shop, buy a couple of fleabombs too and empty your hoover bag after each hoover. Took me a couple of months to sort ours out becasue I bought crappy Bob Martin spray from the supermarket and I just don't hoover enough.

Are you sure they are flea bites? You normally (ime) get flea bites on the ankles etc, not higher up. And if you don't have any animals, the fleas will die out (afaik) because they can't breed without cats or whatever to feed on.

The other worry, would be that they might be bed bugs. I think bed bug bites are bigger and itchier than flea bites.

Just so you know the link i showed had the acclaim flea spray which is what i got from the vets last month when we had fleas. It is about £5 cheaper online than at vets.

You need to hoover every day I'm afraid for a few weeks while the spray works. The egs get into the carpets and everywhere. the spray can take about 3 weeks to work as the eggs are immune to the spray and the fleas die when they hatch.

My DH got bitten on his legs up to his knees and had quite a bad reaction. I got bitten a couple of times on my arms but didnt get a bad reaction.

It was awful. After about 6 weeks we havent seen a flea in a fortnight (fingers crossed) so I am very happy. I felt paranoid about the house being dirty and even resented my poor kitty.

Good luck

thanks for this - we've mostly got the bites on our ankles, but i've managed to get them on my breasts (nice) and back. suppose they must be in bed with me as well (even nicer). have just changed hoover bag over so its clean and empty for now, have been hoovering every day, but will do like you say for weeks!!! thanks for the link for acclaim - we need it fast so will pay the extra £ just to get it sorted quickly.
we've been here for 2 weeks, and this has only happened in the last 3 days or so - so i guess its the eggs hatching from the ones that must have died whilst the house was empty. what a disgusting thought! thanks again.

just so fed up with fleas and biting things... want to hunt down the previous owners of this house and shout at them!!!! we've treated the house and we're still getting bitten, so fed up with it, and i'm driving my DH mad complaining about it. sorry, had to get that off my chest. feel better already.

it took a month for ours to go

oh really - a whole month!... my DD has a bite on her face, i feel like the worst mum on earth. am going to book into a hotel for a night while we re-fumigate..... they should hand out flea bombs when you exchange contracts.

OK I am resurrecting this thread as DS1 is covered in bites! They are mainly on his back and legs and none of the rest of us have any so I think they might be bed bugs!!

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!

So, what do I do? Where do I get the stuff from?

His bites are red and biggish and itchy.

get a new mattress?

or try this?

I read yesterday that a spoonful of salt in your vacuum cleaner bag will kill fleas and flea eggs that you hoover up.

Oops sorry, missed your last message!