Is it safe to eat at a picnic?
Considering the prevalence of fleas and their causal relationship with the tapeworm parasite, is it safe to have a picnic at a park near where squirrels are known to frequent who are often riddled with these vermin at times when the seasonal weather is most opportune for picnicking?
Fleas could jump in your potato salad. They’d presumably look like pepper, a common enough ingredient in potato salad, and you may easily catch the infection.
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Hundreds of millions of people, possibly billlions, eat in parks every day of the year with all sorts of mammals carrying vermin. Relatively few suffer the consequences you are worried about.
Given the flea that transmits tapeworms is also found on dogs and cats and given the vast number of people who keep dogs and and cats that don’t have tapeworms I’d consider the risk to be approaching zero.
I mean, you could also be hit by a falling meteorite, or attacked by rabid raccoons, or suffer food poisoning from the potato salad.
Better to just never go outside.
Fleas are what brought me to Fluther. I had fleas in the house when my daughter was a little newborn, almost 10 years ago. At that time, I did a lot of research online, all about the flea life cycle, what really kills them, what they like, what they don’t like, etc. Fleas that are on a host (animal) are not likely to jump off. If a flea does jump onto a person, they bite and jump right off because human blood is not what they’re after. They don’t like it and they won’t stay.
I’d be more concerned with things like egg salad, macaroni salad and the like not being kept cold enough and getting food poisoning.
Dude, you’re paranoid. I love picnics and have also lived with damn near every animal known to man and have never become sick form being around any animal. Short of a plague infested campground you’re fine. I kiss my cats, horses, goose and various other creatures on the face and have have for years. I’m much more concerned with human effluvia than animals. As long as you aren’t picking fleas of an animal and eating them of licking their ass you’re fine, really, you’re fine.
@Coloma I thought it was a funny question, not serious. ;) hehe
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