All love summer. Aah! Summer, the anticipated stretch rife with possibility, with harmony in the air and luster in the sky.
The month of April has brought summer to CAR and Regions 1, beckoning all and sundry to a season of rest,recreation and frolic and, op kors naman, a battle of ill or will, if you may, against a minute pest that can cause an irritating embarrassment.
Much as we like summer, so do fleas, (timel in Ilokano and pulgas in Tagalog) that have infuriated animals and humans for millennia and continue to do so at will and there is nothing much we can do to eradicate them even as we spray them to kingdom come with all the pesticide we have at our disposal.
Fleas love summer. Humidity and warmer temperatures, which is exactly summer, create the perfect setting for fleas to complete their breeding cycle and trigger an outbreak in homes and surroundings.
Adult fleas on pets and other animals represent a mere 5 per cent of total flea population in a given area. The remaining 95 per cent comes in the form of eggs, larvae and pupae, lurking in hidden places.
A single adult flea can lay up to fifty eggs a day. On average, a flea can live up to three months, (90 days) capable of laying 50 eggs daily, immediately after having its meal of blood.
Compute 50 eggs x 90 days and you have a fair knowledge how many fleas will one adult flea lays to become our blood-thirsty friends in a summer stretch.
At the right moment – that is the onset of summer – they develop into grown fleas, leap from their lairs and start wreaking havoc.
They invade homes, thirsting for blood and will latch on to any person, hiding underneath clothing and happily sucking our blood.
Fleas are bizarre creatures, so bizarre that they have captured the imagination of many athletes in CAR and Region 1.
For example, a flea can pull 160,000 times its own weight, can jump 30,000 times without stopping and can accelerate its jump 60 times faster than a jet plane.
These athletes wish they possess these incredible characteristics so they can beat anybody in Olympic completions and bring in lots of gold medals to CAR and Region 1.
How do we know when a flea has bitten us? We start from scratch. We scratch here, there,everywhere and nowhere.
Then the biting itch moves to other parts of our bodies as the wily flea evades the scratches and resumes its delighted biting to our consternation.
We may be at home, in the garden, in the parks or just anywhere and we start scratching. At an inappropriate moment, a biting itch hits us at the back where it’s difficult to reach and we ask a friend nearby, ” Kudkudam man diay likud ko, adda sa timel.” (Please scratch my back. I think there’s a flea there).
Now, Ah, who observed these scenes countless times, cheerfully concludes that every summer, may a thousand fleas infest our persons and our arms too short to scratch our backs.
But here’s a hitch that can put us in a problematic situation. Fleas are intelligent and why God created them to be so is something we need to take up with the Creator and happily discuss about it.
Fleas often retreat to places in our bodies where scratching them out will make us look foolish, or at best, embarrassed.
Say, we are with friends, both male and female, and in public while chatting gaily with each other. The fleas, to their delightful wisdom and strategic thinking, head straight to our crotches. Mind you, our crotches!
Then with a flair of biting that can can cause infuriating itch that only the fleas can do, they clamp onto our crotches with a frenzy of trying to cut
open our skins.
Now, we’re are in full public view, trying to contain our demeanor while wanting so much to scratch the pests causing us extreme trouble in a sensitive area of our bodies.
Will you scratch your crotch? Eh? C’mon guys, answer my question, will you scratch?
That’s how troublesome a flea is. Not only will it cause us embarrassment, it can trouble us more than one person can trouble the flea. It will do all the harm it can to us.
Samboy Kuyapos, a farmer friend who started from scratch by diligently plowing a patch of land and then went on to become a prosperous vegetable raiser in CAR has a piece of idea about fleas.He thinks fleas are faithful. They will stick to humans and pets for better or for worse, happily blood-sucking and not all the gold in the world will convince them them to divorce you.
That’s how faithful is a flea. Unlike Ah and other males in CAR and Region 1 who need to learn the art of being faithful.
Why so? When the wives start angrily yelling like hell,instead of sitting down and listening faithfully, we all flee.
Another, Constancia Acuna, who also started from scratch by buy and sell and now owner of her own business, thinks fleas have point of view about humans.
She opines that While we, the humans, think we are a big deal, fleas have this point of view that humans are merely something to eat.
Still, can we beat the fleas? According to my friends, if we don’t take a bath for a long time, even the fleas will leave us alone.
Sometimes a reasonable amount of fleas are good for some of us because it keeps us from brooding over committing or saying something distasteful, like, ” napis-it nga kasla timel,” (squished like a flea).