FLEAS! The Apocalypse Begins

Two days ago, in a moment that will forever live in infamy, Scruffles was petting Tachyon, the noisy Siamese, while I was compelled to hold him for the petting thereof. Scruffles then said "Uh-oh." She began going through the fur around Tachyon's neck. "Oh, crap," she said. "That's a flea."

The world stopped.

Did she say... a FLEA?

It is a good thing I am not a panicky alarmist about fleas, which did after all enrich human civilization with many entertaining and noteworthy historical events, such as the Black Death. Now, maybe it wasn't necessary for me to throw the cat at Scruffles and scream OHMYGOD OHMYGOD OHMYGOD before running out of the house and down the street to a discount store two miles away, where I sprayed myself with every can of Lysol on the shelves. (I am only kidding about throwing Tachyon at Scruffles. I have no idea what happened to the cat after I started screaming.) Nonetheless, as the Great Bard would say, there was a certain method in the madness, in that I knew that the flea is possibly the only carbon-based life form more terrifying than the cat.

You may laugh, but the evidence is quite clear. Fleas are so destructive that Satan himself regularly bug-bombs every level of Hell to get rid of them. This is the same Satan that sent cats to earth instead of demons, because the cats were worse. I think you see my point. In the historical record, aside from nearly wiping us out with 2,857 kinds of plague, fleas are also responsible for the spread of typhus and cat-scratch fever, zombies, the collapse of Lehman Brothers that brought on the Great Recession, and Congress. (The First Continental Congress was held in 1774, which was the year that plague struck Morocco. Look it up.)

Actual hypothetical scientific drawing of the giant space flea
that destroyed the Tunguska region of Siberia in June 1908
(Courtesy of the Russian Academy of Sciences)

Fleas make cats itch and then make people itch and then make the relatives and friends of those people go mad because now they and their cats have fleas, and we all end up looting shopping centers and driving cross-country like maniacs with bazookas welded to the tops of our cars while whole cities burn. And this is before the bad stuff happens.

To prevent fleas from infesting our cats and then ourselves, and it is making me itch to even think about this, many technologically advanced means are employed to remove the little rascals from our domiciles. The most popular and effective anti-flea treatments used today are shown below.

1. Set fire to your home.

2. Spray your property with nerve gas.

3. Blow everything up.

We will explore these options and more in future posts. Meanwhile, there has been a new development.