Fleas Identification Greenwich: What Signs Should You Look For?

The Life Stage Nobody Accounts For

Before the signs, the fact that explains all of them. Adult fleas feed on the pet, but eggs, larvae and pupae do not live on the animal - they live in the property. At any given moment the adults you can see are the smallest part of what is present.

That is why the identification work is mostly done on the floor rather than on the pet, and why treating the animal alone never resolves it.

The Adult Flea

What to look for: small, dark reddish-brown, and flattened side to side rather than top to bottom - which is what lets it move through fur. Wingless. Powerful back legs, and it jumps rather than crawls or flies.

Where: on the pet, in its bedding, and jumping onto passing ankles. Easiest to see against white socks or pale flooring.

What it rules out: anything that flies. Anything flat top to bottom and about the size of an apple pip is a bed bug. Anything hairy and banded is a carpet beetle larva.

Flea Dirt

What to look for: small dark specks, like coarse pepper, in the pet's coat, in its bedding, and in the carpet where it sleeps. Found reliably by combing the animal over a sheet of white paper.

The confirming test: put the specks on damp white tissue. Flea dirt is digested blood and dissolves into a reddish-brown halo. Ordinary grit does not.

What it tells you: more than seeing an adult, because it stays put and it shows you where the animal actually spends its time - which is where the treatment needs to go.

Eggs

What to look for: tiny, oval and pearly white. Very small and easily mistaken for dandruff or grit, particularly in bedding.

Where: not on the animal for long. Eggs are laid on the pet and fall off wherever it goes - carpet, sofa, bed, car, shed. That distribution is exactly why the property rather than the animal is what gets treated.

Larvae

What to look for: small, pale, worm-like and legless, sometimes with a faint darker line visible through the body. Rarely seen because they actively avoid light.

Where: down in the carpet pile, in the gaps between floorboards, along the edges of rooms and under furniture. They move away from light and downward, which is precisely why treatment concentrates on the perimeter and beneath furniture rather than the open floor.

Pupae and Cocoons

What to look for: honestly, you will not. The cocoon is small, sticky and picks up carpet debris until it is effectively camouflaged. Finding one is unusual.

Why it matters anyway: this is the stage that governs everything about the aftercare. The pupa inside is physically protected and far less affected by treatment than an adult or a larva. It emerges in response to warmth, carbon dioxide and, above all, vibration - the footfall of something walking past.

So the invisible stage is the one that decides whether the treatment works, and it explains an instruction that otherwise makes no sense: keep walking on the treated floors.

Bites, and What They Are Worth

What to look for: small, intensely itchy marks concentrated around the ankles and lower legs, often several close together.

What it tells you: the location is the useful part, because fleas reach you from the floor. Bites on skin that was uncovered in bed point elsewhere.

What it rules out: very little on its own. Reactions vary enormously between people and plenty of other things produce similar marks.

Where to Look, in Order

1. The pet's bed and the surrounding floor.
2. Wherever the animal sleeps that is not its bed - the sofa, the foot of your bed.
3. The edges of those rooms and under the furniture, not the middle of the floor.
4. Gaps between floorboards under the carpet, if there are any.
5. The car, if the animal travels.
6. A shed, garage or utility room the animal uses.

Four Things Mistaken for Fleas

• Bed bugs. Larger, flat top to bottom, cannot jump, and found in mattress seams rather than in carpet.
• Carpet beetle larvae. Bristly and banded, and they damage wool and natural fibres. They do not bite, though some people react to the hairs.
• Springtails. Tiny, and they do jump, which causes real confusion. Associated with damp rather than with animals, and they do not bite.
• Dandruff or grit in the coat, mistaken for flea dirt. The damp tissue test separates them in seconds.

A Note on the Animal's Own Treatment

Identification of fleas on a pet almost always leads straight to this question, so it is worth being clear about the boundary.

The animal's treatment is a veterinary matter and the vet is the right person to advise on it - what product, what dose, how often, and what suits that particular animal. We do not treat animals and we do not recommend specific veterinary products.

What we can be definite about is the division of labour. The vet's treatment deals with the adults on the animal. Ours deals with the eggs, larvae and pupae in the property, which at any given moment are the great majority of what is present. Neither substitutes for the other, and doing one without the other is why people conclude that whichever one they paid for did not work.

Wash the pet's bedding on the hottest wash the fabric allows as part of the same exercise. That part is free and it removes a reservoir.