Is there any way to safely and effectively get fleas out of a vehicle within 16 hours?
See this question for background. The car is a minivan, and it has cloth seats and the usual carpet on the floor. All the online advice I’m looking up, and the vets whose offices I’m calling, say that you need at least 24 hours to completely eradicate them. Does anyone have experience doing this? Can we get it done faster? Cost is no issue.
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8 Answers
Gasoline and matches. From what I’ve heard, fleas are flammable.
Oh, did you want the car to function afterwards?
Get one of those foggers, an aerosol can to spray insecticide into a room.
Set it off in your car, wait a couple of hours, air out the car. Fleas dead.
Drive down the freeway with the windows down for like an hour to get the smell out of the car.
Try giving your dog Comfortis and then you will have a full month to get the fleas out of the car.
If you are able to drive the van to a high altitude you will kill the fleas. Fleas are very susceptible to low atmospheric pressure and can’t survive altitudes much higher than 5000 feet.
@syz But I heard that the bombs can damage electronics, and that we’d have to add in the time for the car to air out. Have you tried a flea bomb yourself? Is what I’ve heard really the case? I would love to use a bomb if that stuff is untrue…
Rather than a flea bomb I would tend to use a pyrethrum-based spray, preferably one that also contains a maturity inhibitor. You could also use a separate maturity inhibitor such as this one.
Pyrethrum kills fleas on contact but has low toxicity for vertebrates. Boric acid also kills other life stages.
They are probably really hungry. Lock a couple cats in there for a few hours. The fleas will get on them then toss the cats out and hopefully they moved out of the van and onto a feline.
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