Area couple rids home of imaginary fleas

VANCOUVER, BC. An east Vancouver couple has spent a full day and part of an evening ridding their home of imaginary fleas. "We've Boraxed all the floors, and the carpets, dry cleaned the furniture slipcovers, and sprayed all the shoes with flea killer," said the husband, who calls himself Shoe. "There isn't a place for imaginary fleas to hide that we didn't clean," he added, wiping a white-gloved finger across the top of a baseboard.
The imaginary fleas infested the house almost a month ago, after Shoe brought them in after working in the yard. "Imaginary fleas live in the dirt, and we were landscaping so there were piles of dirt -- perfect for fleas," said Shoe, making a sweeping motion with his hand across the back yard. "I must have tracked them inside somehow and the got into everything." Shoe was referring to the way imaginary fleas jump from safe places of refuge to spread across hard wooden floors, up into beds, onto curtains, even into empty plastic tubs.
"We haven't actually seen the imaginary fleas yet," said Shoe's wife Claudia. "But we've both been bitten," she said, scratching herself all over just at the thought of it. "I'm more attractive to imaginary fleas than Shoe is," she added, while wiping benadryl on her leg.
"I did get some bites when I worked out in the yard," said Shoe. "But for the past two weeks I haven't had a single bite, even though all our shoes, furniture, and clothes are infested with imaginary fleas AND their thousands of eggs." Shoe was referring to the well known habit of imaginary fleas to lay eggs in every shoe on the shoe rack and then abandon the shoes without so much as one bite to the wearer.
Recently, after watering and weeding in the yard, Claudia got some bites, which itched "painfully and endlessly", and prompted the full household cleaning to rid the house of imaginary fleas once and for all. "We racked up a $150 dry cleaning bill getting the curtains, decorative pillow cases, and slipcovers cleaned," said Shoe, frowning. "But it's worth it... you know how bad imaginary fleas can be"
"At first I didn't agree with the plan to purge the house of imaginary fleas," said Shoe. "I asked Claudia 'how come I have been living in the same house as you, sitting in the same chairs, wearing shoes from the same rack, sleeping in the same bed, and I haven't gotten a single bite in two weeks?' But in the end I saw how great it would be to get rid of the imaginary fleas."
A drawing of an imaginary flea (siphonaptera imago), at 100,000X magnification, is shown (RIGHT). The Vancouver mental health bureau has advised residents to use caution around imaginary fleas, as their bites have been known to cause neuroses in lab mice.

P.F.