i am new to this site as well as internet an computers. would like to say that most of the solutions for fleas is great and effective however more information an suggestions should be included. leas from previous owners, other people bring in, regardless if you have pets or not is a process an dedication to eliminate the problem. if you have pets i suggest you kennel them a week, vacuum entire home beds furniture. immediately take vacuum outside empty into plastic bag tie securely. all floors should be sprinkled with a mixture of borax, crushed dried lavender,basil,cedar an citronella. let stand 24 hours. vacuum everything up an again empty vacuum outside in plastic bag tied. make a spray to apply to beds, couches, pet beds made with 1/2 of your spray bottle of witch hazel, 5 drops each of lavender, lemongrass, peppermint, tea tree and eucalyptus fill rest of bottle with water. spray everything. mop all floors an floor boards with same mixture. bath your pets with an oatmeal shampoo and add few drops of lavender and tea tree prior to bringing pets back into home.. use the sray mixture weekly pet beds or where pet spends alot of time, if you dont want to use advantage or products of that nature should bath pet every 2nd or 3rd week in shampoo mixture. hope this is of help an relief to others out there. i also put cedar bow clippings under pet bed an around the yard

Ruthe I love it when people say they have too many rows to use row covers-we usually have around 50 beds covered at any point in time, more in spring and winter than other times a year. We go through about 5K feet of the stuff annually. And we used to have a lot of flea beetles until the combo of sticky traps and row covers pretty much stopped most problems. They hardly bother the uncovered stuff any more as their numbers are manageable. I think also because we don't use any insecticides either so have a lot of beneficial critters to do most of the work controlling the pests, that we have rather low FB numbers/damage and like I said you get 100% control of these pests and perfect arugula, mizuna, mustards, eggplant, etc.. It was due to losing most eggplant seedlings to FB's I learned to do this and later found it could save an arugula crop when I found ma bed of arugula shot full of holes, placed sticky traps and a week later was harvesting perfect blemish free leaves. Fill a water bottle with water, cap it, spread a thin layer if tangle foot (which can be removed with vegetable oil) over the bottle and place in planted bed covered with row cover. When it gets covered with bugs either clean it off or replace it with a new bottle sticky trap (if needed). You can also use in fruit trees by covering croquet balls with tanglefoot. and hanging in the trees after flowering.

I'm having the same problem. Our neighbors house is a dump. We just bought our house almost a year ago. We are first time home buyers so we din't really investigate the neighbors house too much before we decided. Big mistak on our part. We are in no position to sell.. His house towers over our fence & the door that he uses to in and out is right there. we only have one way to get to the backyard and thats on his side. It's horrible. He has a crawl space under his house and you can see all the garbage under there. I can only imaging the rats. He has a dog that he keeps outside. I see a flea color on the dog (and those don't work- trust me I have 3 pets) We recently had to spend a bunch on money to have our house sprayed. I think the fleas are coming from his house because he also doesnt not cut his grass and everything is way over grown. Trash litters his yard and he doesnt not have the garbage man pick up his cans. So what it looks like is that he throws his garbage in the yard. sometimes I smell something burning- I think he burns the garbage that he does not throw in his yard. He has holes in his house. I saw birds going into it. Also, I always feel like he is staring at me. He put up black curtains on the side that we see. I hardly go out back anymore. Once he found out that we are sick of it and we told him that his property is bringing down everybody's value's of their homes in the neighborhood. He started to try and clean up a little bit. But his house is ruined and too old. It needs to be demolished. The sad thing is he has a 10 yr old boy that is forced to live like that. He has a hose going in his back windows. He refuses to sell his property and move. I looked up and found that he bought his house from someone (I'm thinking maybe his Mom) but he bought it for $10.00. So he probably refuses to move because he doesn't owe anything on it. I think were stuck. So I started to build lattice things that I attach to the top of our 6 ft wooden fence. We don't have much money to do all the work at once. So I'm doing slow.... I have big plans to block the view but it cost so much for building materials. This whole thing has me very stressed. And my anxiety levels are through the roof. I'm scared of him, I think he's a weirdo. He works during the day but he comes home at the same time everyday and does not leave his house till the next morning and on the weekends he never leaves. He comes outside when it gets dark. He put a dog house right next to our fence. I hate fleas, rats and I know they are over there. I have photos placed on a blog. Check it out.

I got the book from the library. It was actually written in 1961. When one thinks of plague, ebola comes to mind. Thanks for the recommendation, Wantoretire...