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Something we noticed right away after moving to the North Beach was the astonishing number of fleas living here. Now, mind you, we had fleas in Oregon. In fact, they were kind of a constant annoying presence, as in you could rid them from your house but they lay in wait outside for the next warm body to hop on. We had to give our dogs treatments, and that seemed to take care of them—when they hopped on they didn’t last long enough to lay their eggs and lead to a full infestation.

We pretty much expected to continue our regimen here on the North Beach. Boy were we in for a shock. It turns out Grays Harbor fleas make the Portland fleas look like complete amateurs. In hindsight, I should have been better prepared because in my study of Columbia River and coastal indigenous people, I learned that one issue that prompted the Chinook to move their villages was to get away from the fleas when they got out of hand.

A large colony of North Beach fleas had apparently assembled at our address when they heard we were moving here with our two small white dogs. I bet they were licking their chops, anticipating many meals of untapped lucious virgin Willamette Valley blood. And did they ever pounce!! I mean it was an onslaught. Our poor little puppies were helpless as newborns. 

We tried the same treatment we had used in Portland, but they just scoffed at our feeble attempt. It had no effect on them whatsoever, and in fact it felt like it just added an additional savory spice to the blood meals were enjoying.

And now that I think of it, when you flip the map of Grays Harbor on its side, it’s in the shape of a flea. Kind of. Imagine the flea above superimposed on the map. Keep looking.

We asked around, and a groomer laughed and said, “Yeah, those things don’t work on our fleas here. You have to use something a lot stronger.” She suggested a treated plastic collar that she conveniently sold.

My husband got one for his dog, but I held out, because I figured anything strong enough to kill these greedy monsters might harm my adorable special one-of-a-kind pup I love so much and who I’ve promised will never be subjected to the slightest discomfort or pain or anything bad. Well, not counting the fleas that were torturing him. 

So I turned to the Internet to look for solutions. I didn’t want to flea bomb the house because to me that seems like overkill, because it kills everything and is dangerous to people even. So I looked for natural remedies that would be effective but not poison. 

Falling down the Rabbit Hole

Okay, I need to take a detour here because you know what happens when you turn to the World Wide Web. It takes you to many places, ones you could never imagine, and some that are downright horrifying. And that’s what happened with my flea search. 

I was bombarded with links to headlines like this one from The Sun:

FLEA WILLY: Mutant ‘porn star’ fleas with giant penises invading homes after bonkers weather creates bumper breeding season

OMG and here I thought we had problems!!!

It turns out Britain had experienced a combination of warm winter followed by a mild and rainy summer, the perfect conditions for fleas to thrive. And you know what thriving fleas do? Well, the males take their giant penises that are at least 2-1/2 times as long as their bodies and hop from female to female to mate and make more fleas. Many more fleas. Up to 50 in one go. Do the math!

These dire warnings appeared in many publications, prompting “The Conversation”—that describes itself as having “Academic rigor, journalistic flair” —to set things straight. It agreed that fleas are endowed with extraordinarily long penises for their body size. If a human male’s member was relatively sized, it would be four meters long!! Yikes, Katy bar the door!! Literally.

The Conversation revealed that the animal that has the longest penis is the barnacle, whose genitalia is eight times it’s body length (14 meters on a human in case you are wondering). The Conversation chastised the tabloids for making much ado over nothing because fleas had these large penises all along, but acknowledged that “they have been described as ‘the most elaborate genital organ in the animal kingdom.’”

You should check the article out for yourself if you’re curious about exactly how the male flea maneuvers the whole apparatus into place for mating.

And then I saw an article about how John Lydon, frontman of the former Sex Pistols, reported that he had been bitten by a flea on his penis!?!

Time to log off the internet, for sure. Let’s return to fleas on dogs.

Adventures on Planet Diatomaceous Earth

So I went back to looking for natural flea eradication remedies. Of course I had already tried baths with various fleas-b-gone shampoos, which basically resulted in very clean fleas as far as I could tell. I had also changed bedding daily, vacuumed surfaces where they might be hiding, to no avail. At some point, it seemed that my pup had developed some kind of skin allergy from the creatures and he itched and scratched everywhere. Our veterinarian listed several options, but I still wasn’t ready to use anything that was basically poison that had Facebook groups discussing its dangers.  

After looking over a butt ton of articles, it seemed that diatomaceous earth was the safest alternative. So I ordered a big bag from the internet, and after it arrived, my husband readied himself to apply it. He usually insists on doing the big important jobs around the house on his own, without my supervision or suggestions.

I told him to sprinkle some all across the carpet upstairs and after letting it sit for a while, long enough to desiccate the fleas and eggs, we would vacuum the remains up and dump the contents of the vacuum in the garbage can, tightly bagged of course.

And here’s what I learned that day. Ladies, take heed. When a woman uses the word “sprinkle” as a verb, she means to very very lightly drift a very very thin layer of dust on top of the carpet. When a man hears the word sprinkle, he pictures throwing handfuls up to an inch thick down to the surface, and never less that half an inch. So I was downstairs while he was “sprinkling” upstairs where the carpet is. We waited a while for it to work it’s magic, then he went back upstairs to start vacuuming. Well, I’m betting you can foresee what happened next. 

First, my prior experience with diatomaceous earth consisted of sprinkling a bit of very fine grade powder around plants to keep the slugs from devouring them. Yeah, that didn’t work either. When I ordered the big bag from the internet, either I didn’t notice or it didn’t reveal that this was industrial grade diatomaceous earth. Rather than a white powder, this was more like sand and gravel, with some ground up into fairly small grain, and a lot of it more like chunks. A very mixed bag, if you will. 

Now we all know that a standard household vacuum is in no way capable of sucking up a thick layer of very dry old siliceous sedimentary rocks consisting of the fossilized remains of diatoms, a protist. Protists are neither animal, nor plant or fungus. Your basic none-of-the-above. So already we are in uncharted waters. I didn’t know this category of organisms even existed!

He called out for me to come upstairs where I could not believe my eyes. He had gone a few inches across the carpet and already the vacuum was utterly clogged. This was not remotely going to work. My intrepid and relentless husband worked his heart out for several hours, trying every appliance, device and product we had on hand. He made it better, but we had to call in a professional with commercial grade machines to finish the job, including washing all the carpet after he vacuumed. I can’t imagine what he told his peers when he got back to the office after our job. 

That did get rid of the fleas for a while, but they eventually returned. But we were not about to repeat the diatomaceous disaster. So I gave in and moved up to a somewhat stronger flea deterrent for my dog. And it’s actually working. No fleas for a very long time. Knock on wood.

I do, however, discover a little cache of white grainy powder under the bed from time to time. It might be that diatomaceous earth is harder to get fully rid of than fleas! Oh the irony. But at least it doesn’t go vampire on my canine companion.