My dog has fleas. So do I.

We returned from France late last night, jetlagged and tired. The pets were not there. They were being taken care of somewhere else while we were away. My wife, Gaywynn, sat down on the couch, weary, only to jump up a minute later and cry out,

“Fleas! We’ve got fleas!”

She drew my attention to her ankle. Little dots were moving about on her skin.

Fleas? But our dog and cat hadn’t been here for two weeks.

“That doesn’t matter!” she said, extricating flea and after flea and then peering at the couch from which she sprang. “When they bite the dog or the cat, they die because of the medicine we give them. They’ve been waiting for something to bite into.”

“I guess that’s us,” I said with a smile, relieved I hadn’t been invaded, like my wife.

Then I felt something moving on my leg.

“Hey,” said, looking down at my ankle area, “are those fleas?”

Gaywynn came over, looked closely at my ankle.

“Yes.”

“What? I’ve got fleas?!?”

“On the other leg, too.”

Just back from Paris, that most elegant city, and we both had fleas.

Welcome home.

Gaywynn immediately went into action. Fatigue or no fatigue. After she had divested herself of all the fleas she could find—we’re not talking hundreds here but maybe six—out came the vacuum cleaner.

“They’re so small!” I said, trying to pick one off.

“About the size of a breadcrumb.”

I kept finding them. No wonder they’ve been so successful, evolutionarily speaking. They’re tiny, hard to kill and can jump like Olympians. You have to give them credit—as if they cared. Just read this, from Wiki,

“Flea, the common name for the order Siphonaptera, includes 2,500 species of small flightless insects that live as external parasites of mammals and birds. Fleas live by ingesting the blood of their hosts. Adult fleas grow to about one-eighth inch long. They lack wings; their hind legs are extremely well adapted for jumping. They can leap 50 times their body length.”

That’s quite a CV. If I were an employer, I’d hire them.

Exhausted, we finally went to bed, somewhat fearful that fleas lingered, perhaps in the bed somewhere, but unable to care because we were so tired.

The next morning, fleas were still about here and there. Gaywynn went into full Shaker mode, stripping the bed, putting sheets and towels in the washing machine, vacuuming—again—mopping and researching online for the best possible sprays and smoke bombs to rid us of these pests forever.

I found a few fleas on myself now and then throughout the day.

It struck me at one point that before I met my wife, finding fleas on my body would have been a personal disaster. I would have been shocked, disgusted, angry and petulant about the whole experience. That’s me. That’s what I’m like. About a lot of things. Not very admirable, but by this time, age 78, I know who I am.

Now, though, with my wife, fleas, though not guests I’d invite home every day, are a slight nuisance, no more. In fact, they are the basis for an improvised farce we write as it happens. It’s a kind of slapstick, and our home is a theater where this one-act has its debut. The dialogue is crisp and the action brisk. It’s actually quite entertaining.

“Fleas!” a comedy in one act, starring Gaywynn and that guy who you might have seen in the long-running melodrama, “The Whiner.”

Someday, Samuel French might publish our farce about fleas.

This flea invasion is something we experienced together, jointly dealing with it, in that communal way one deals with small inconveniences like leaks, broken dishwashers, clogged gutters and such when married.

In short, this flea I dislodge from my ankle reminds me that I am, thankfully, no longer starring in a sometimes trying one-man show.