Croatia was heaven in a week.  I had a fantastic time, with great food and company and I felt recharged and ready to come home and resume mommy duties.

But the minute I got home, poop hit the fan.

Fatty had brought the kids to Penang while I was away so we all arrived home on Saturday.

To our surprise, we received a warm welcome!  From guess who?

That’s right. Fleas.  Waving their teeny little legs at us and baring their bloodsucking fangs. >:((((((

Right before I left for my trip, we’d noticed sounds in the ceiling above the nursery – scrabbling and running footsteps, and what sounded like chirping.

Well, it sounded like chirping to me so I thought it was birds wtf.  But when my mom came over, she told me it sounded like rats and the chirping was the baby rats WTF.

When I called our condo maintenance, the maintenance guy confidently told us it was ‘musang’ or ferrets/civets WTF.

How did it get from birds to weasels in our attic!?

So I got a little agitated, knowing that there were creatures in our attic, directly living above the kids.  And they were loud!  What if they ran around until the plaster ceiling gave way and they fell through on top of the kids. O_O

The condo maintenance helpfully set up a trap for the musang but none were caught FOL.

So Fatty suddenly realized he had a friend who owns a company called Ridpest that specializes in pest control. We called them in and they set up musang traps.  However, nothing came out of those as well, and Fatty departed for Penang.

So on Saturday when we returned, it was evening and we hustled the  kids up to the room to wash up.  And that was when I saw tiny dots on the surface of our white wooden changing table. Curious, I reached out to tap one with my finger.  It jumped.

I freaked out! I knew exactly what they were and where they had come from.  The room had round ceiling lights which were embedded into the plaster ceiling.  The musang made the most noise from right above the light shining on the changing table so we presumed their nest was right there.  And the fleas had slipped through the hole, around the sides of the light to drop into the room. T__________T

Said light. So first thing I had to do was containment! I knew the fleas were dropping from the light so I filled a basin with water and added detergent. The detergent would kill them cos they don’t die in water those bastards wtf. They just swim around for a while and then climb the sides.

THIS IS HOW MANY OF THOSE BLOOD SUCKERS WE CAUGHT.

Every night it was literally hundreds of them.  The basin is huge and still others managed to escape.  They bounced off the changing table, and swarmed the room.

I went berserk wtf.  I couldn’t stand the thought of living side by side these wretched bugs wtf.  Fatty saw my slow spiral into insanity wtf and quickly made another appointment with Ridsect.

In the meantime, I obsessively checked my homemade traps.

Fleas are nocturnal and attracted to lights so I set up a desk lamp on the floor and placed a dish of detergent water in the spotlight.  The fleas jump towards the spotlight, fall into the soapy water and drown. *grim*

This was the second night  I set the trap.

Every time I went in to check, I’d see dozens of tiny dots jumping on the floor – it was so disgusting omg.  Couldn’t stand it so I went on my hands and knees, slowly plucked fleas off the floor and dropped them into my soapy dish. :X

And this is how I ended up with….I think a conservative estimate would be 60-80 flea bites on my body. :X

The only place they didn’t get is my face thank Buddha wtf.  They got my legs…

My torso… (sorry ah stretch marks hahahaha)

Feet had it the worst.  I counted 20 on my right foot, 18 on my left.  My toenail polish also chipped off in sad solidarity wtf.

Arms.

Back. Means they were jumping into my shirt WTF HOW GROSS IS THAT

Fighter and Penny were not exempt. 🙁  Fighter got bitten on his legs…

Penny got bitten all over her face. T______T

I even sprinkled salt all over the room in hopes that it would dry up the flea eggs.

Didn’t work. I continued to get bitten.

For a week I had trouble sleeping cos I was so itchy all over I’d just wake up to scratch.  Out of the whole household I got attacked the most FML.  Fatty said they probably knew I’m queen bee hahahaha but the truth is it was cos everyone else mostly avoided the areas but I was the one who kept going in to check (and kill fleas).  Until I’d see fleas swarming my feet and the bottoms of my pajama pants FML.

This worked though. Since the fleas were coming from the lights, I asked our helpers to fill plastic bags with more soap water and tape the bags around the lights.

Removing the bags and looking at all the drowned fleas inside was the highlight of my week wtf.

Finally Stephen from Ridpest came as scheduled!  He checked out the situation…. then turned to me and said gravely,

Wow, this is quite bad.

I know hahaha T________T But for a pest expert to say this, it’s really jialat!  He estimated there were thousands of fleas, larva and eggs in our house already and the source most likely was whatever animal was in our attic. Our house was so completely infested we had no choice but to do a complete extermination. This is what we did to prepare for it.

1. Called our contractor to come and make a manhole into the attic since we actually didn’t have one
2. Bag all the kids stuffed animals into trash bags and send to the laundry
3. Remove all bedding to wash at the highest temperature
4. Air mattresses

The next day the Fleabusters arrived hahaha.   Nobody is supposed to stay in the house while they do their job so I packed up the kids and helpers and drove to my parents’ house for the day.  Fatty stayed behind to handle the Ridpest team before leaving later too.

First they went up to through the ceiling but they couldn’t find the animals anymore.  They sprayed the whole attic anyway and then threw in mothballs to keep animals away.   A few days later, our contractor would go up and seal a gap between the roof and the wall with wire fencing, which was how animals were getting into our ceiling.

Spraying the ceiling and the light holes.

After that they misted the whole house too – a complete extermination!

We thank you for your service. ^^

We had to evacuate the house for six hours after the spraying and misting was done, in order for the poison to really set in and kill all those buggers wtf. Misting was done at 1 pm so at 7 pm we returned home.  Stephen gave us explicit instructions how to handle the situation:

1. Cover your mouth with a wet cloth and open the front door wide.  Wait for ten minutes outside
2. Go in and open all windows and doors, and turn on all the fans.  Then go back out and wait for another ten minutes.

 Only after that is it safe(r) to enter the house.  We had to start by mopping all the floors, and wiping surfaces like tables, chairs, cabinet tops etc.   To be safe, we also took out all the children’s clothes and threw them into the washer.  And we changed all the bedding in the house.

Stephen told us to wait another hour before bringing the kids in so the helpers had to go do the airing and cleaning while we waited downstairs with the kids. :X

I told them to open the door then come out to the stairwell and wave at me or else I’d think they died WTF hahahahaha #badjokes

And while the helpers were cleaning doggedly, we were just stuck downstairs. Our condo doesn’t really have any nice places to sit and wait so we just walked around and let the kids play.  And when they got sleepy, we took them to the swimming pool bathroom and washed them up, brushed their teeth and changed them into pajamas.

And camped out in our van like hobos hahahaha.

When an hour was up, we all trooped in… and saw tons of cockroaches and other bugs on the floor. :X The misting worked not just for fleas but other household pests!  Super shiok seeing all the dead bugs hahahaha cos it means our house is CLEAN yo.

Stephen told us to keep our homemade traps to see how many more we would be able to catch.

The first night after, we caught 25.  But when I entered the room, I saw fleas still dropping down from the hole in the ceiling, which meant the fuckers were still around!

We reported it to Ridsect who obligingly came the next day and sprayed the ceiling again.

And this was the trap result the following day. 🙂

Fleas are a notoriously difficult pest to rid of, and even if you kill the adults, the eggs and larva cannot be totally eradicated the first time, and a house may need a few cycles before they’re truly gone.  

After a few days of no more flea bites, we concluded we’ve won the war. 😀 And here’s the contractor patching up the hole.  We moved back in to our rooms (from downstairs) the next day. :))))

This whole flea saga has been immense.  I’d just come back from a great trip and the fleas were a horrible welcome home.  I was bitten all over, worried about my family, and due to the exertion of trying to catch them, my knee started hurting again when in Croatia, it was fine.

I couldn’t even sleep due to the stress and itching, and I remember thinking if this continued, I really might go mad wtf.

Calling Ridpest is something I’m so thankful to Fatty for.  Can’t say enough about Stephen and his team!  The team were friendly, helpful and professional.  Service was excellent — like they came back to make sure their job was done satisfactorily!

And best of all, we won World War Flea.

Thank you Stephen and Ridpest so much!

Ridpest not only does fleas, but other household pests like rodents, ants, termites and bugs as well.  I already signed up for a monthly extermination package with them; and cos we have kids, they have a special eco-friendly formula that’s gentler for children.

This is not an ad but we told Stephen we wanted to blog about our experience.  And Stephen said he’d give our readers a discount.  Just go to this page to get a quote and submit the code “Tim-10%” for a discount 🙂

I hope this blog post gives anyone who’s looking at extermination services a clearer idea of what goes on! And if you have a bug problem, get it fixed ASAP before it gets too bad to handle. 🙂

And we lived happily ever after wtf.