November 26, 2005
The Bite of the Bedbug
Oh if only we could go back to the days when "don't let the bedbugs bite" was just something you said. But, as the Times really tries to hammer home today, that just doesn't seem to be possible anymore.
In the past two years, and especially in the past six months, New York has become a bedbug mecca (Seriously, "Last year the city logged 377 bedbug violations, up from just 2 in 2002 and 16 in 2003. Since July, there have been 449."). And this has left many many people feeling humiliated, embarrassed and drained (both emotionally and well, of blood).
So what can you do to deal with a bedbug infestation other than call an exterminator? Not much:
The modern bedbug is immune to hardware store-variety insecticides, and setting off a cockroach bomb in the bedroom will only scatter them farther afield. And because they are active only at night, many people don't discover them until their population has grown into the hundreds, or even thousands.
Other options, however, do include going a little nutso and setting up a "bedbug jail in a Tupperware container that" you can "put on the windowsill to torture them with daylight." But that kind of a maneuver should really only come when it's gotten to the point of "all-out war."
And anyway, you never know. Bedbugs can always turn out to be cupids in disguise:
Still, for Ms. Scanlan, there has been a silver lining. The night after she discovered the bugs, she went out drinking, intent on avoiding her own bed. That evening she met a man at a bar, and, contrary to her usual instincts, accompanied him to his apartment. An encounter partly born of desperation soon blossomed into something more, she said.
"We've been together ever since," Ms. Scanlan said with a smile. "Thanks to the bedbugs, I've fallen in love."
So what about you? Do you have any bedbug horror/love stories (or extermination tricks) that you'd care to share?
Photograph by Robert Stolarik for the New York Times.
|
My g/f stayed at the Ottawa Jail Hostel on the tail end of our travels through Quebec and Ontario. On the second morning, I woke up to an Irish guy asking if I'd "been bitten." Not sure what he was talking about, he pointed out the small reddish-brown bugs in various corners of the room. His Basque travel-mate awoke covered in bed bug bites (apparently, if you've been bitten before, the bumps come right away, but if not, they can take a week or two to show up). We got our money back from the hostel, did our laundry thoroughly, and high tailed it to an unplanned stop over in Toronto, hoping to put the experience behind us.
Weeks later back at home, my g/f woke up with more bumps from the bed bug bites, and an examination of our mattress showed a few resident bugs. We managed to rid ourselves of them without pesticides by:
* Thoroughly cleaning our room and identify areas the bugs had spread to
* Meticulously hunting down the bugs in the matress and corners of the dresser they had taken up residence with tweezers
* moving the bed away from the wall (the bugs can't climb metal or glass; if you have wooden bed legs, you can put them in drinking glasses, I've heard)
* Covering our matress and box spring with a plastic, zippered matress bag
* when it got cold, putting the mattress outside for a few days (bed bugs are temperature sensitive; extreme heat (IIRC 90 degrees +) or cold (IIRC less than 40 degrees) kills them
I'm pretty sure we caught them relatively early on in their breeding. We read up on the pesiticide treatments - they're expensive and a hassle.
We won't be staying at the Ottawa jail hostel any time soon, and we'll be thoroughly inspecting hostel and hotel rooms for bugs from now on, for sure.
Instead of a plastic mattress cover, you can use an Aerobed instead. Bedbugs obviously can't get inside the airtight mattress and they're light and easy to move when you want to clean underneath. Regularly moving the mattress and vacuuming everything including cracks and crevices thoroughly will help control the problem.
As for chemicals, avoid pesticides and use insect growth regulator (IGR) based products. They won't kill the bugs, but they will keep them from reproducing. Just don't use other pesticides at the same time or you'll risk promoting cross-resistance to IGRs.
beware of the youth hostels in Paris as well.
We got bedbugs from a "deal" of a couch from a neighbor in the E. Village. We discovered them about a week after having the couch when my roommate (who slept on the couch a few nights) and I had strange spots on our arms and legs. We tossed the couch, but the bugs remain 3 months later. We've had Terminix out 3 times and we still have a problem. Those little guys get EVERYWHERE, and although the older ones are visible, the younger/smaller ones are almost impossible to detect.
My advice, pay the extra cash for an expert, Temninix doesn't seem to know what they're doing. For that matter, pay the extra cash to get new-not used-furniture. Also, see if your landlord will help out with costs, it will be their problem afterall if you can't contain the problem in your apt.
How I wish bedbugs were the mythical creatures I once thought they were.
Ick...ours came from (we figured out later) from a fantastic book we found out on the street. Not so fantastic after all. It took three visits from the exterminators to get rid of them all.
We realized that they must have been in the apartment for a while - but our dog suffered before we did. It was late summer, and we thought his Frontline (flea treatment) had stopped working, but nothing we did for what we thought were flea bites were working.
Then I got an unexplained rash on my arm (the one that hangs off the side of the bed when I sleep) Only later when my partner saw a bug on my face in the middle of the night did we figure it out.
They were in the (wooden) bedframe, behind the baseboards, in the bookshelves near the bed, inside the picture frame above the bed - everywhere. This was about a year ago, and we've not seen any since then, nor had the bites, but everytime either of us has any kind of itch at all at night, we end up tearing up the mattress and checking again.
Good luck to you all.
Ick...ours came from (we figured out later) from a fantastic book we found out on the street. Not so fantastic after all. It took three visits from the exterminators to get rid of them all.
We realized that they must have been in the apartment for a while - but our dog suffered before we did. It was late summer, and we thought his Frontline (flea treatment) had stopped working, but nothing we did for what we thought were flea bites were working.
Then I got an unexplained rash on my arm (the one that hangs off the side of the bed when I sleep) Only later when my partner saw a bug on my face in the middle of the night did we figure it out.
They were in the (wooden) bedframe, behind the baseboards, in the bookshelves near the bed, inside the picture frame above the bed - everywhere. This was about a year ago, and we've not seen any since then, nor had the bites, but everytime either of us has any kind of itch at all at night, we end up tearing up the mattress and checking again.
Good luck to you all.
No No NO!!1 I dont want bed bugs!!... I just came back from a thrift store in Philly.. I am terrified! I have heard so many stories lately about them, i feel like it is a omen.
please no...
I heard williamsburg thrift stores have them really bad.
ick
Maybe this explains why a friend of mine claims that he got crabs (twice!) from trying on pants at Beacon's Closet. I thought he was just covering up some clandestine sexual encounter, but I guess it might have been bedbudgs...
We got them from a hotel in Jersey. Best to assume that if you are staying at a hotel, it has bed bugs. Where pajama pants and a shirt to bed, as well as socks. But the big problem is when you transport them home from the hotel, like we did. I don't have any suggestions for getting rid of them other than what has already been mentioned (although one of the electronic plug in bug repellent things may have helped in our case), but you really should do everything you can to make sure you don't get them as it is an absolutely horrific experience. Don't stay in cheap hotels, don't buy old used furniture, and if staying someplace you are not familar with take every precaution you can think of. Life with bed bugs is absolute hell.
i have heard of people getting bed begs from very fancy hotels. do not assume that just because a hotel is expensive, they don't have bed bugs. the times ran a story awhile ago about bed bugs and cited someone who was suing the waldorf astoria or the plaza or somewhere really "nice." like someone has mentioned, bed bugs travel with you in your luggage. they don't discriminate.
so, here's a tip: bring a flashlight with you to any hotel you stay at. after you get into bed and turn out the lights, wait 5 to 10 minutes. then, get out of bed and shine our flashlights on the side of the mattress (under the sheet). if you don't see bedbugs, you should be fine.
you can also look - during the day - on the sides of the mattresses. if bed bugs have been there, they will likely leave small brown spots on the side of the mattress ... from the blood they have sucked out of former guests!
Bedbugs have wreaked havoc on my girlfriend's life. We think she got them from neighbors in her building. I don't know how many times I've had to try to talk her down off the ledge (figuratively speaking, of course).
"Silent Spring" be damned: I pray they bring back DDT to deal with these little f***ers.
Apparently the problem is plaguing the military, as well. (My girl is e-mail pen-pals with a military wife, where she hears this.) The G.I.s are getting them from their frequent travel and close quarters in the barracks.
San Francisco uses a "heat machine" to eradicate them, but it sounds costly and rather involved. Since heat is the only thing that will kill them (besides good ol' DDT), a "heat truck" pulls up at your place, all your stuff is loaded into it and it bakes at a temperature that's high enough to kill the bugs. At the same time, your home is sealed and heat machines are brought in to heat it up high enough to kill them inside. (Word is the military bought some of these heat machines to treat its cases.)
I too am suffering the effects of an infestation - who knows where they might have come from. I also have a waterbed that is not easy to clean under not move.
I have sealed the top of the bed with plastic and the edgeds of the topsheet are taped to the edges of the frame. I then run a strip of packing tape all around the edge of the bottom of the frame - like a sticky moat - that the bugs cannot crawl across. Nothing hangs over the edge of the bed, I sleep fully drressed (oh for the blissful days of sleeping naked!) and every night, before i climb into bed, all my bedding goes in the dryer on HIGH for at least an hour.
It's been 5 weeks since I've last been bitten - the dust mite/flea spray that interupts the reproduction cycle seems to be working, too, but I am going to get one of those steam guns as well and steam everything in my rooms.
It's unnerving and since bedbugs are not a vector for spreading disease (so I've read) they are not considered a health hazard unless you have an allergic reaction to their bites. I've found their dead bodies as far away as the bowl of the ceiling light, so perhaps I will freeze them out of my clothing (if they are hiding in there) when the weather turns colder. Luckily, I live in a house where I could put my things on the deck without fear of them being stolen.
In the meantime, I am going to have to save up to hire an exterminator that specializes in these little beasts.
Being An owner and Manager of one of the Best Western Chain Hotels in Canada for over 20 year since 1982, it was the first time that one of the bed rooms of our hotel was infested with these blood suckers a year and a half ago.It took me almost a year to tackle the problem by spraying modern DDT, opening window and letting Canada cold winter air to freeze those tough nuts to death and throwing away both box spring and matrix(there were disgusting and hopeless anyway and you never know how many thousand of eggs are being laid that are potentially might spring back to next role of infestation)
Of course it was a substaintial lost of room revenue for us because that haunted room was shut down for rent for some time, not to mention the time, effort and $$ the management had spent to bring this under controlled. Well I gained a very good experience and being a hotel operator
It has nothing to do with rooms being dirty or poor house keeping reasons as many people always believe.It can be happened also in a upscale high class hotel. After all we are Best Western Chain Hotel,persistently sujecting to one of the most stringent house keepings and quality control in the hotel industries. These bugs ride on humans and their clothing and luaggages when they travel from place to place.I know this problem will be yet to occur again. So I am monitoring any suituation ever now and then.
Hotel Manager
This has been two of the worst months of my life. The exterminator is finaly coming tomorrow, i have to pack up my cats and leave. Before that though, I have to take every piece of fabric that can be washed and drop it off at the laundrymat. The I have to take apart all furniture that can be taken apart. I have to put anything breakable away and get ready for the apartment to be totaly undone.
but my hopes are not high. I have heard that even special exterminators (at 300 dollars a room) are not always effective, especialy in apartment building where the bugs can escape to another apartment and come back when the poison is gone.
i am crossing my fingers. anyone have any suggestions about how to keep them away after the exterminator is gone?
Is there any way to find out which neighborhoods or buildings are infested? I'm moving from the East Village (where we are amazingly bedbug free for now), possibly to Astoria, and want to know if an apartment or building will be at risk of having bedbugs.
I experienced bedbugs in Austin, TX when I was a student there. My ex-boyfriend had a filthy apartment, and the only time I stayed there was when I was between apts for a week. I noticed the bites and itchiness, but it wasn't until the second day or so that I turned on the lights in the middle of the night. To my horror, there were bloodstains everywhere on the sheets and I could see the bugs crawing around. I felt so disgusted and went out to sleep in my car. The main problem was that he was using my bed while I was waiting for my new apartment, so it was my bed that was infested. I had a new futon mattress, so we sprayed it with insectiside and examined every inch of it before taking it to my new place. The bed frame seemed to be where they were living, so I had to leave it and get a new one. I didn't have any more problems, but his problems continued for a while.
Now, years later, I am horrified that bedbugs are taking over NYC. My fiance and I are moving and I'm so worried about finding a new apartment and discovering its infested after we have moved in and signed the lease.
waterbed companies are saying bedbugs will not infest a waterbed,,, they say bug perfer regular mattress,,, has anyone else heard this
If anyone knows of any dorms or hotels that are currently infested, please let me know (kari.johnson@nbcuni.com). I'm trying to compile a little list for a story I'm working on. It's especially important to show that expensive and inexpensive buildings all get the bugs. Thanks for you help!
God Help Us All! I have been being bitten for the past 2 months. At first I thought it was an allergic reaction, until 3 weeks later my mother started to get the bites as well. Then one night I was woken up by incessant itching, I jumped out of my bed, and found who we now call Billy the Bed Bug. I trapped him in a ziploc bag for proof. Terminix is coming tomorrow, but from what Ive been reading these things are apt to take over the world! I dont know what to throw out, what to keep, where to look or what to seal in plastic.I dont see any bloodstains or brown spots on my mattress and cant find their hiding place, but I know they are there.I can not afford buying a new mattress, so I guess Im going to buy some plastic mattress covers, and wash every thing that is washable. If anybody has any suggestions what might help please let me know. I cant sleep at night!!!
I have a waterbed and I can tell you that these little suckers can and DO infest a waterbed.We have had terminix out twice to kill them.The first time the guy came out he didnt know what he was doing.So the second guy that came out did a pretty good job.We had to dismantle our bed and had to have them spray the heck out of all the cracks and crevices.We also vacuumed our room out and re stained the wood on our bed.We have been sleeping on the floor in our living room for weeks now.If anyone has any helpful hint to this problem let me know!!!!