The little black menace persists

Try as we might, we cannot seem to entirely shake the fleas from our homestead.  Or, perhaps, we have. I haven't actually seen one in several days, though I did see two in successive days up here in the splendid isolation of my elevated man-cave, though no cat has graced it for weeks.

And we've been putting out soap-laced water under a reading lamp, as instructed by friends and the mighty, all-knowing internet, and collecting seemingly no fleas but a sweet little collection of gnats and other winged things.

But the perception of flea risk lingers on longer than the little things themselves, or is it that they are so crafty, as if trained by the equally skitterish squirrels. Every time I feel a little itch on my arm or leg, I look. And, probably, I imagine itches that might not even rise to the attention of my brain, had it not been for the initial fleas. Oh when will they disappear from our minds?