NonToxic Miracle Flea Killer

I have spent my entire life around animals. Cat, dog, or otherwise, I have just always had a soft spot for them. Truth be told, there are times that I would much rather be around my fur babies than some people. One thing that you have to deal with when it comes living with animals, is fleas. They are an unfortunate fact of life. 

Through the years I have learned that if you bathe your pet in Dawn, it will kill the fleas - without having to use any harsh chemicals. (I have heard that any dish soap will work, but I have just always used Dawn.) It works wonderfully! Just lather up your pet, allow it to sit for 5 minutes, then rinse away. (Take care not to get it in your pet's eyes.) It works like a charm! 

But there is more to this story... As you know we live in South Mississippi. It gets H. O. T. down here in the summer! This past summer was also very dry. I took pity on our outside dogs, and let them come in and out of the garage as they wanted, in order to cool off. Well those two lazy bones spent just about all summer just laid up on the concrete, and hardly ever went outside. Now that the cooler weather has arrived, I have since reclaimed my garage. 

After a few days of the dogs being back outside, I realized something was very wrong. The lack of a consistent food source had turned the fleas into ravaging attack ninjas! I say ninjas because I didn't even realize there were any fleas in the garage, until this happened! Oh my goodness, they were awful!! So I bought a couple of cans of my old trusty Bengal flea spray. We've used it for years inside the house & it works great... on carpet and upholstery. Apparently it does not work on hard surfaces (i.e. the concrete floor of my garage). It didn't even touch the angry mob of fleas in there. :o(

I had to do something! Remembering the Dawn trick, I thought I would give it a try. What did I have to lose? Since it was concrete, I could always just mop it up if it made a soapy mess. Well, it worked wonderfully!! And you know what? No soapy mess. Yea, you could see where I was spraying it.  But after a few minutes, once it had dried, nothing visible remained. And IMMEDIATELY after spraying, even before it had dried, I could walk around in my garage and there were NO fleas jumping on me! ZERO!  {Happy Dance!}  :o)

Now I do need to mention, that Dawn will not kill the eggs. You'll need to respray the area as they hatch out, before the new fleas are old enough to lay eggs, thus breaking their life cycle. (Depending on how bad the infestation is, it may take several treatments.) Also, you need to make sure that you can spray the entire floor surface of the area in question. If you're treating a garage for instance, remove any clutter that the fleas can hide in. 

Simply mix 1/2 cup of Dawn into 1 Gallon of water, and spray throughout the area, until damp. (Fill sprayer with the water first, then add the Dawn, to keep the bubbles at a minimum.) This makes enough to cover approximately 500 square feet.

Well there you go, a safe, nontoxic, and in my book... Miracle flea killer. 

Who knew that dish soap could be so useful?!

On a side note: Diatomaceous Earth is also a good nontoxic flea (and mite) killer. I use it all of the time in our chicken coop. The only thing with it is that you are basically spreading dirt around, and that's not something that I wanted to do inside my house.