Ad infinitum

Today I bought my dog some flea-killing medicine (rather spendy, by the way). The poor thing has been scratching and biting himself excessively lately. We had a mild winter and are now in the hot days of summer, so it's a flea-palooza extravaganza.

When I asked at the vet's office for a flea treatment, I was expecting the oily stuff in a little tube that you put between the dog's shoulder blades (so he can't lick it), making sure it gets in contact with the skin and doesn't just sit on top of the hair. But this time they sold me pills -- one per month, and they sell six months at a time.

In the past, when my dog was supposed to take antibiotics, I never could get a pill down him. I'd put it in his dish with his food, and he'd eat the food but leave the pill. I'd try to jam it down his gullet with my fingers and, after considerable struggle, just when I thought I'd succeeded, I'd find the pill, half-melted and covered with slobber, on the floor somewhere.

So I was a little dubious about the flea pill; however, the young women staffing the vet's office said it was not a pill but a chewable tablet, and they recommended putting it in with his food, perhaps even breaking it up in the food. They said he did need to take it with a meal.

This evening I put half his food in his dish, then crushed the pill between two spoons and added it to the food, then put the other half of his food in the dish and fed him. He gobbled it down and licked the bowl, as is his usual practice, so this time I think it worked.

I'm so cute, even vermin love me.

Supposedly within half an hour of his taking the pill his fleas should start dying. He's poison now to fleas -- for a month.

Since I had fleas on the brain, I hunted up the famous couplet:

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.