Visitors in the Apartment

This is quite a story...so prep for it.

Christian and I were more than excited to move into our apartment in Knoxville. It was the same complex that my older brother and his wife lived in when they lived in K-ville, the management was super nice, and the layout of the apartment sounded great! So we moved in and, thankfully, had help from some people in our new ward. Everything was in the apartment within an hour. Everything seemed to be working out great.

Fast forward 5 days later.... Christian was complaining about how he kept having these tiny little red bug bites all over his legs and how they itched like crazy. I didn't have any...so we didn't worry about it. Later that night we counted about 10 bites on his legs. So we sat down and called parents to ask what it could be. I ruled bed bugs out, since I didn't have any bites and I checked the mattress and sheets. We ruled out mosquitos, because the bites were too small. I looked down at Christian's bites and saw a TINY black bug. I stared at it, pointed at it, and it JUMPED away.

FLEAS.

I freaked. Naturally. I don't like bugs. We both stood up fast and counted 3 fleas on both of our legs. I screamed and ran out of the room. I was too scared to touch anything. I didn't want them on me and I didn't want to get them on anything. I looked around and thought of all the things the fleas could be living in. Our couches, our mattress, MY CLOTHES, the carpet, our blankets. So Christian called our parents again and told them we know for a fact that it is fleas...we have no idea where they came from...but what should we do?  Luckily, we were going to leave the next morning for Indiana for Christian's family reunion. So we ran to Wal-Mart at 10:00pm to buy a flea bomb. We packed an overnight bag for both of us and a pillow and a blanket that I knew didn't have fleas, set off the flea-bomb, and left for Indiana at 11:30pm. Thankfully, it's only a 5.5 hour drive, so it wasn't too bad.

We called management the next morning and told them what happened. They were so disgusted and felt so bad. The people that run this complex are so great, and we're so grateful for their kindness. They said they had no idea where they came from since the last owners didn't have a dog. But we assumed it was just because no one had lived in that apartment for a few months, so they somehow just got in there on their own. But the management said they would take care of everything while we were gone. So we kind of stopped worrying about it while we were on vacation.

Fast forward 2 weeks. We return to our apartment...very timidly. But the management said they cleaned it and got a professional to spray stuff in there. Within 5 minutes of being home, Christian had a couple fleas on him. Turns out the eggs of the already dead fleas had hatched and new fleas were everywhere. So we turned right around and left the apartment. We stayed at a hotel in Knoxville for two days while the management sprayed the apartment again. We told management that we wanted to move out of that apartment and get a new one because of the fleas and because it smelled like smoke (thanks to our upstairs neighbors). Luckily, they had an apartment available in a different building. So we took out all our stuff (I made Christian spray everything with bug spray before we took it into our new apartment) and put it in our new, clean, flea-free, smoke-free apartment. We are so lucky they had this nicer apartment available. I have been taking precautions in the new apartment, and have kind of been paranoid about it. We bought our own flea spray for the carpet, and I have made Christian spray the whole front room twice, just to make sure those stupid fleas were gone!

It's been one week since then, and (knock on wood) we haven't seen ANY fleas!! We're going to try to keep it that way. :)