| The boys are back in town |
[Apr. 15th, 2003|10:57 am] |
| [ | Feeling |
| | annoyed | ] |
| [ | Reading |
| | Night of Morningstar, Peter O'Donnell | ] |
There was a thunderstorm early last September and we let a neighbour's cat in to shelter from it. She bolted under the bed and didn't come out for hours. When she left, she made us a present of some of her fleas.
We've never owned a pet, so when I started getting bitten in the night we didn't know what had hit us. We thought maybe mosquitos of some sort from stagnant water in a blocked drain. By October, when we went away for a fortnight, my lower legs looked like I'd been struck by a plague of boils. Over the next two weeks they calmed down, but of course when we got home things just got worse.
I tried sleeping in a sleeping bag but they got in. I tried sleeping fully dressed but they got my wrists and the back of my neck. I tried sleeping on the sofa but they'd spread all over the flat by then, and we still hadn't caught on to what they were.
Eventually I saw a black speck on my ankle, picked it off, and felt the kick as it jumped away from between my fingers. The next time I caught one I filled a sink with water and let go of it below the surface. It floated, kicking powerfully but futilely, and after that there was no doubt what they were.
We went to war.
I bought every damn flea product I could find. I sprayed the flat, powdered it, Hoovered up more dust in a day than I had down in the last five years, and for an encore treated the two worse-affected rooms to flea bombs. These are scary aerosols where you press the top of the can and run like f**k as they fill the room with a mushroom cloud of flea-killer that also finishes off goldfish, houseplants, anything with more than four legs, and (apparently) any electrical equipment left running in the room at the time. I did this twice in each room. I tell you, if George W had known what I was doing he'd have had a new target and Iraq would have been off the hook.
It worked. Until now.
I got bitten a couple of weeks ago, drowned the bastard, sprayed the room, and all was well. But I woke up this morning with a fresh bite on my calf and another on my ankle. It's time to bring out the bombs again.
And this time, I'm not taking any prisoners... |
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