Photo: Pondering by Nick Verron

There is no rush to get out of here and join the mad race towards the town. It is early yet and I am, at best, a reluctant visitor to the rat race of Saturday morning shoppers. I glance in the rear view mirror as I wait for the traffic to pass the end on the lane. There is a tickle on my forehead and I catch a glimpse of something small and brown…

Handbrake… !

No… not a flea… it crawls lazily across my hand. A thankful sigh. I eject the tiny beetle from the car in relief. If there is one thing I get quite obsessed with as spring moves towards warmth it is fleas. I have reason.

The small dog does not have fleas. She wouldn’t dare. Not with the amount of precautions we take. But, like a virus, sometimes they are unavoidable. To be fair to Ani, she has never, to my knowledge, had fleas. At the first sign of the slightest whisper of suspicion I descend upon her with whatever it takes to make damned sure of that. And I have reason. There are periods in my history that make my skin crawl even to think about them. Nightmare days that remain forever attached to panic in memory… leaving me a gibbering, psychosomatically itching wreck.

Some years ago we lived next door to a lovely old couple who had a beautiful garden, a conservatory full of plants that were their pride and joy and an overfed cat. Going on holiday they gave me their key and asked me to water the plants and feed the cat. No problem… my pleasure!

The weather turned and a heatwave set in. I took to checking twice a day and leaving the conservatory door open to cool it when I could. Midway through the first week we got stuck at the hospital. Normally the visit to radiotherapy took just a couple of hours. This time, as temperatures soared to unaccustomed heights, we were there all day. As soon as we got back I went round to water and feed my charges respectively. Every plant had wilted appallingly… the situation was dire.

Given that the weather forecast predicted another week of this heat I began to carry all the plants.. and there were a lot… back into the relative cool and shade of the house. I could put them back before the couple came home. It took a while to revive and transport them so I was in the house for a while. I fed the cat and, satisfied I had done all I could, came home.

I blamed the mozzies for the bites and thought no more. Next day I spent time taking off the leaves too scorched to save and grooming the plants. Something bit me again… and this time I saw the tell-tale chestnut flash of the culprit as it jumped. (Pauses from typing to scratch imaginary itch….)

The next few days were a nightmare.

The weather had caused an explosion of fleas in the beautifully kept home. I looked at the smug culprit twitching its tail and glaring back at me. It was a hateful, spiteful, spitting virago with more legs than an octopus. I de-flea-ed the cat at the cost of half the skin on my forearms. But the result was inevitable. I may have won, but it sat, tail twitching and glaring at me still while I doused my arms in antiseptic. I then set about de-flea-ing the house. Nothing I did seemed to help and the infestation got worse by the day. I couldn’t possibly allow the old couple to come home to this! They had entrusted me with their plants which had burned and their cat which was crawling…

Tubs of flea-powder were distributed across every surface. Next day I braved the battlefield. Every surface, every nook and cranny was covered in powder… and the carpet still moving almost visibly.

The cat, duly de-flea-ed at the cost of yet more skin, was removed and flea bombs set off. The following day it looked like Pompeii after the eruption…

I set about cleaning. You have no idea how that stuff gets everywhere… it took days. But, by the time the old couple came home order was restored and they never knew the true extent of the horror. I, meanwhile, went off cats, determined never to cat-sit again. Or at least, not in a heatwave.

A few years later an old lady was taken into hospital. She was there for a long time and guess who ended up cat-sitting? Winter turned to spring and I was back to the flea bombs and flea powder. A fortnight of panicked hell. I carry the scars to this day of attempting to catch and treat the demonic article that was the cause of the problem.

I get a tad paranoid these days when I see small, brown beetles where they should not be.

Can you blame me?