Why are fleas so hard to get rid of? There are several reasons. For one, it is hard to kill a flea by pinching it or trying to squash it, because it has a very hard outer shell. Another reason is that they reproduce very quickly. As many as 20,000 fleas can hatch in only two months from one pair of fleas.
Fleas can come inside your home on your pet or on your clothes. After a feast of blood, a pair can reproduce. The dog flea female lays her eggs in your dog’s fur. These eggs can get scattered around your home. The tiny eggs, only about the size of a grain of sand, hatch into larvae in two to five days, if the conditions are not too hot or cold, dry or wet. The larvae that hatch look like tiny white threads. They don’t like light and immediately look for a dark place in which to grow. Down in a carpet, cracks in the floor or a piece of furniture, they survive on “flea dirt,” which is dried blood the adults pass in their feces.
Within the first two weeks, the larva gets about five times bigger. It pupates two times before becoming an adult. The second time, six legs, antennae and mandibles (jaws) develop. It comes from the cocoon this second time only when the conditions are perfect for it to continue life as an adult. It can wait for weeks or even up to a year to hatch, until some slight change in the environment, like a tiny increase of heat or a vibration, signals that a host, like your dog, is near enough for it to jump onto.
Incredibly strong back legs allow a flea to jump up to 19 inches onto a passing animal where its thin body helps it works its way through the fur to the animal’s skin. Its sharp mandibles pierce the animal’s skin, searching for a blood vessel. A flea’s mouth has three parts — two to puncture the host’s skin and the third to suck up blood. It sucks up much more blood than it needs. This produces the flea dirt its offspring need to eat. This dirt looks like black pepper, and it is one way to discover if your dog has fleas.
The darkness the flea larvae need to develop in reminds me of how sin is something we like to keep hidden. But just as fleas develop and soon make their presence known, hidden sin eventually comes out in our lives. For this reason, we need to take even wrong thoughts captive, as our opening verse says. This means that we shouldn’t let wrong thoughts stay in our minds, because they soon grow into sinful actions. The Lord will help us with this battle. Fleas are a good picture of sin, as there isn’t one good thing about them. And there isn’t one good thing about sins ... so we need to catch them while they are still just thoughts!
Did You Know?
Fleas can jump about 200 times their own body length.
Messages of God’s Love 8/4/2024