Bombs and such

As if I needed more material...this happened last night and all Jay could say was, well, now you have another story for your blog.  I suppose so.

It is flea season unfortunately, and if you have animals and pets like we do, it can be a battle during this time of year.  We buy the good stuff from the vet and apply it regularly throughout the warm months to our pets.  This summer I only had to buy two doses, one for Meepie, the sole-survivor cat, and one for Abby, the longest-living-lab we've ever had.  Hank the Tank II came in August and I think he brought along some friends...unfortunately, and so the battle began.

As you may know, you can't just coat a six-week old puppy with chemicals, and considering our luck with animals and their early demise, we weren't willing to take too many chances with going overboard on that.  We bathed him repeatedly with this puppy-friendly flea and tick soap and I bombed the house and we thought we had it under control.  Apparently not.

So we take him to the vet for his first checkup and he gets a pill that should kill all the fleas on him and he gets his wormer, etc.  He then goes to his Grandma's house and barfs all over her floor (although not entirely his fault, he had not eaten all day and was given those meds on an empty stomach, poor little guy).  I went back a few days later and got him another dose of wormer, but I forgot all about the little magic flea pill that he probably threw up as well.

He went back to the vet for his second puppy visit on Monday and got another magic flea pill and a dose of the good flea stuff for puppies.  Both took.  I applied the flea stuff to Meepie and Abby and decided to bomb the house again last night just to make sure that we got everything covered.  I also decided I would double-dose the bombs for full effectiveness.  Good idea.

Except that I didn't think about the double-dose of fumes it would create...which in turn would trigger the fire alarms...that are connected to our security system (a whole separate story I'll write on later) which immediately calls the fire department.  The ear-piercing alarm is blaring, my kids are screaming, half of the bombs have been activated, and I'm trying to get the kids out of the house and into the car so we can leave for four hours but now I'm searching around for the phone to call the security company.

I find the phone and the number and I get a hold of the lady.  I tell her that there is not really a fire at my house, I, um, well, I am bombing my house for fleas and apparently the fumes blew directly towards the fire alarm sensor.  "Okay, another representative is on the line right now with your dispatch so I'll let them know it is a false alarm."  Oh, man, does this mean the entire city of Martinsville will know we have fleas?  If not, I suppose they do now...ha.  (Our local 911 dispatch has to think we are crazy for sure...and that is another story as well.)

I set the rest of the bombs off and fled to the garage and waited to make sure the remaining bombs didn't activate the fire alarms again.  We evacuated the house for four hours and returned to a flea-free home.  Given our history that I haven't told you about yet, I am soooo sure our name is flagged just about everywhere by now with a little smiley face...More to come...