Fleas

Fleas. They’re the bane of existence for our pets, but somehow, I have a soft spot in my heart for them.

I never saw a flea circus, though there are still some in existence today. The first recorded one was in London in 1820, and the novelty spread to the United States. Fleas were harnessed by thin wires around their necks and made to pull tiny carts or rotate Ferris wheels. Of course, their movements were challenging to see because of their size. That’s when a microscope or magnifying glass came in handy.

A microscope is what I used when I visited the West Virginia State Museum as a small child. At that time, the museum was in the basement of the state capitol building and nothing delighted me more than seeing dressed fleas through a microscope. Emmiline and Alexander. They even had names. Though they were no longer alive, I could imagine the antics they once engaged in.

But the mystery was their clothing. Who made garments that small and how did they get them on a flea? I understand now that the clothes were painted on, but I didn’t fully grasp that at the time Regardless of how they got dressed, they were fun to see and my parents had trouble pulling me from that exhibit to view the rest of the museum.

Now, nearly seventy years later, I live in West Virginia. The state museum has been moved to a separate building, and guess what? They still have those fleas. They’re in a little kiosk, one of the first exhibits encountered. You can see them through a built-in magnifying glass which doesn’t give as clear a view as the microscope did, but you can still vaguely see the tiny creatures.

I was thrilled to get reacquainted.

But that doesn’t end the flea story. My daughter’s family moved here a year ago, at which time they decided their two cats would be indoor animals so as to avoid gathering fleas and ticks. Smart idea…until George and I moved into our house a couple months ago. The former owners left several pieces of furniture and carpets. They even had carpets in the garage since they used that space as a workshop rather than parking space. Jenni admired one of those garage carpets and took it to her house where it looked lovely on her living room floor. Thus entered the fleas.

The sellers of our house had no pets, so we didn’t find fleas in our house, but they must have had infected rodents in their garage. Ever since installing the carpet in her house, Jenni noticed her cats scratching more than usual. She finally captured one of the culprits and examined it under a microscope. It was a flea. Dang.

So now, they’ve used flea spray on the carpet and vacuumed it over and over. They’ve forced pills down the throats of the cats to make their flesh unpalatable to the insects and then finally put the carpet out with the garbage. But these fleas aren’t giving up the fight.

I’m thankful for the longevity of Emmiline and Alexander. Not so much for the fleas in my daughter’s home.