Flea Treatment

Back at the start of the year I found a bunch of fleas whilst sieving a grass tussock. Technically they were in the mouse/vole run beneath the tussock, but that's not the point. I collected seven fleas and it was clear to see there were two species present. The five small ones were all Ctenophthalmus nobilis but the two larger ones had lost their front legs, rendering them un-keyable beyond family level. I know they are Ceratophyllidae, but I really do need some features on those front legs to narrow down the options. I put them to one side, not really knowing what to do with them.

Happily, Simon Horsnall has offered to have a go with them anyway. He's pretty clued up on his flea identification and he does proper genitalia slides of them too. All I have to do is pop them in the post and wait to see whether he can ID them or not. 

My fleas are in a very small glass tube filled with alcohol. Just the sort of thing that's likely to get smashed to pieces between here and Simon's house down in Derbyshire. Luckily I have a homemade container for precisely this sort of occasion. There was a thread on Facebook a few weeks back about how best to send inverts in alcohol through the post, so I'll just quickly run through the process of how I go about it.

First up, I use a lot of nu-poly strips when pinning flies. Once the plastic box is empty I put it to use elsewhere. This is how Watkins & Doncaster package their nu-poly strips

 

Once I have an empty nu-poly box, I cut a piece of plastazote to size and place it in the bottom of the box, like so

Then I add walls along the sides

And here's the tube of alcohol with the two mystery fleas enclosed

Obviously the proper data (locality, site name, grid ref, date, my name) is on the other side of the label. Then I pop it into the box

Next I wedge in a piece of plastazote to stop the tube from rolling around inside the box

If there were several tubes, I would bind them together with something like masking tape or even sellotape, just to keep them bound together. Bubblewrap or tissue would work well too. But I'd still pack them out with a bit of plastazote to stop them from moving around. Final stage is to add a layer of plastazote on top and put the lid in place.

This then goes into a jiffy bag and is posted off, hopefully to arrive with everything intact. I've used this nu-poly box to send pinned flies too. I add partitions between the four outer walls, just to keep the flies separate from each other, pin the stages into the side walls and close it all up again. I sent four pipunculids to the scheme recorder earlier this year, a family of flies well-known for having their exceptionally large heads drop off for no good reason. Amazingly all four specimens made it from here to Bristol (and back again!) with all heads and legs still intact, so it's a proven design. I think it's only fair to enclose a stamp for return postage. 

Well there you go, not a very exciting post, but possibly useful to somebody out there. In other news, the Big Freeze ended a few days back - though we've just been bombarded with the most ludicrously large hailstones accompanied by a bit of thunder and lightning too, resulting in what looked like two inches of snow within the space of less than ten minutes. I happened to be outside when it hit, and boy it really did sting. I don't usually scurry indoors to hide from the weather, but I certainly did this time! Even the two bulls across the road took shelter behind the tower and those beasts are absolutely hard as nails.

I was about to link to Flea exhibiting some pretty hot slap bass technique, but then this caught my eye just quietly sitting there as an alternative suggestion - cue rapid change of plan! I have to say, this is the best cover of this track that I've ever heard. Hope you enjoy! PS it's the full version, so if you're of a delicate disposition probably best to just skip it...