ACK! FLEAS!!! -- Nonfiction

Kočka

Isn't it enough that I live in my beautiful United States while the White House is infested? Now my beautiful Colorado is infested. FLEAS!!!!

It'll be six years this Christmas that I've lived here. Never until today have I seen a tick or a flea. We've had dogs here. We've had cats. We've had fish and a snake. So, okay. Fish and snakes don't get fleas. But none of our other animals have either. Until today.

The dogs didn't have fleas last night. I'm sure. I held them. I brushed them. I did not see fleas.

This evening as we watched BBC America with its sort-of-good-news that North Korea isn't going to bomb Guam today. And its really bad news that *rump has had oral diarrhea yet again telling us that there were "fine" people carrying those Nazi swastika flags and those Army of Northern Virginia battle flags in Charlottesville, Virginia. Let me think. The former was disbanded forcibly May 8, 1945, and the latter disbanded equally forcibly April 9, 1865. I have to remind myself that this is August 15, 2017.

And my dogs have fleas. I discovered them first on Lily. Scott checked. Yes, they were fleas. He checked Cooper. Cooper had fleas, too. Then he snatched up Kočka. Kočka, who does not like to be held or petted or touched by humans, did NOT have fleas. Kočka immediately fled the area. We found him in the office taking refuge behind my chair. (See photo above.)

Where did they get fleas? From the little pocket mice who live in the roots of the pine tree at the edge of the patio? Bubonic Plague is endemic to Colorado. Yes, that Bubonic Plague that killed millions of humans during the Middle Ages. It's carried by rodent fleas. Scott does not believe our dogs have rodent fleas. He thinks the dogs have the most common kind of flea -- the cat flea. Which our cat does not have. Trust a veterinarian to recognize the subtle differences in fleas.

The Good Doctor thinks it likely that neighborhood dogs are to blame. Who knows where those other dogs have been? Kočka's never been outside. But he'll get those fleas from our dogs. 

This is not to make light of the world's problems or my country's problems. It's just the straw....

This is, however, a straw I can do something about. I jumped in the car and headed to Pet Smart. Yes, my beautiful Colorado has fleas and rush hour traffic. Those other drivers are crazy. I wasn't even on any freeways. It was like a NASCAR race -- cars dodging in and out, hurrying through yellow/red lights. Heaven forfend that anyone should get ahead of anyone else.

Then and then and then, it was home finally, with the preferred flea treatment.

Cooper, normally the more docile of the two dogs, struggled mightily, but I held on tight as Scott applied the premeasured dose for dogs five to twenty-two pounds. Thank goodness, he doesn't weigh the full twenty-two pounds yet.

Lily was a good deal easier. And Kočka? 

Kočka was at the back of the top shelf of the tall book shelves in the office. I could barely reach him. Kočka bites. It was only yesterday that he brought the blood on me because I wouldn't let him play with the tie on my robe, I told the Doc to have the little vial open and ready to apply when I got the cat down.

Kočka was a perfect gentleman. He did not fight me. He did not bite me. He didn't call me ugly cat-names.

Now, if the rest of the world would behave so well as Kočka did on this one occasion, perhaps we'd have fewer infestations of unwanted pests.