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Most people in the United States associate bedbugs with nursery rhymes and Depression-era flophouses, and rightly so: originally brought to America by early European colonists, they’re believed to have been more or less eradicated fifty years ago. But increasingly adventurous international travel by Americans and changes in pest control policies are now contributing to a resurgence in the bedbug population across developed nations — so for the first time since the 1950s, it’s more than just a saying: don’t let the bedbugs bite, people.
Measuring only 2.5mm in width and able to flatten themselves into the tiniest of cracks and crevices, bedbugs can live in cracks in the wall and breaks in your mattress seam you didn’t even know were there. They emerge at night, often just before dawn when sleepers are immersed in deepest REM. They’re clever little buggers, too: attracted by the carbon dioxide you exhale and the heat that emanates from the fleshiest and easiest-to-slurp-blood-from parts of your body, they can attack in singles or in clusters — some people have reported being bitten more than 500 times in a single night. (One sign of a serious bedbug problem? Anemia.) When they start feeding, they inject a tiny bit of anesthetic so you can’t feel what they’re doing and you don’t wake up, and while they’re at it they throw a little anti-coagulant in there too just to make sure all that yummy plasma flows freely. They can drink up to three times their own body weight in a single go.
Not only is it nasty — it really happens. Two different couples I know each had to throw away all their mattresses, sheets and pillows when they found out they had bedbugs, get an expensive fumigation, and cross their fingers that the bedbugs didn’t come back again — something of a gamble, since the little suckers are increasingly developing inconvenient immunities to some forms of bug poison.
If you’re really bug-phobic, you might want to skip this video from National Geographic — but it’s fascinating to actually see the bedbugs at work; they’re usually so small and stealthy, most of us never actually see our many-legged adversaries in action:
Comments (16)
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Bedbugs suck.
I loved that video. We just never know what goes on under the cover of darkness.
Then there’s the bugs… :)
Cheers,
Mitch
posted by Mitchell Allen on 4-15-2009 at 12:08 pm
Oh my gosh who sat there so a bedbug could drink their blood??
Do they leave itchy marks like mosquitos do? I wake up a lot with bites on me but my husband doesn’t.
posted by Tricia on 4-15-2009 at 12:10 pm
Tricia – some people have allergies to bed bugs and others don’t. The only reason I know this is that my best friend found out she had an allergy because she had tons of bites that itched and eventually (some) scarred, and her doctor said it’s because she’s allergic. Other people don’t react because they don’t have the allergy. Lucky!
posted by Jennifer on 4-15-2009 at 12:33 pm
You’re right they are lucky. I seem to just blow up whenever I’m bitten. They also seem particularly attracted to me. I stayed out on a hammock for an unfortunately timed 10 minutes: sunset. I came away with over 40 bites on my legs and arms.
Next thought about bedbugs: how do you know they are there if you never know they are biting you?
posted by Tricia on 4-15-2009 at 12:45 pm
Who would sit there so they could get bitten by a bedbug?
They’re called “interns.” :)
posted by Pithecanthropus on 4-15-2009 at 12:53 pm
I worked for a transitional housing project for a few months, and we had an issue with bedbugs. According to the eco-friendly pest control company, the most effective way to get rid of them was by using a special steam machine that essentially boiled the little buggers and their eggs. But it’s one of those “You really can’t try this at home, leave it to a professional” situations.
posted by Mary Sue on 4-15-2009 at 1:12 pm
My fiance and I stayed at a hotel last year and my right ankle got ravaged by bed bugs. He didn’t get harmed at all, and it was just on my ankle. They left scars that took almost a year to fade away. It was horrible.
posted by Laura on 4-15-2009 at 1:33 pm
So…this is sort of a crazy question, but this feels like the right place for it. How do you *know* if you have bed bugs. I see one bug every couple of months or so that looks like a bed bug, but I’ve been told is not. I’ve never been bitten, I’ve never seen more than one at a time and I only see them weeks or months apart. Bed bug or not? This has been driving me nuts for about a year now. Any insight?
posted by sera on 4-15-2009 at 7:09 pm
They hate eucalyptus. I got bedbugs when I was younger so my mom grabbed a small branch of eucalyptus leaves that had fallen and put it under my mattress. Cleared them right out!
posted by Leah on 4-15-2009 at 7:28 pm
Bedbugs is my Enemy Number One.
Not that I’ve ever had them, but what I’ve read online makes me think that if we ever did get them, I’d just plumb burn the darn house down.
I hate staying in hotel rooms for this very reason.
NOBODY…CAN BE…TRUSTED.
posted by Kung Pow HausFrau on 4-16-2009 at 2:29 am
A friend and I stayed at a hotel in NYC – directly across the street from Madison Square Garden. We were there for 4 days. On the morning that we were leaving, she awoke to find a tiny bug on her chest. Luckily she captured it in a plastic cup. When we complained, the manager insisted that they weren’t bedbugs, but comped our stay anyway. I wanted to leave all of our belongings there since they could have been replaced at a cheaper cost than having my house exterminated had the little critters hitched a ride with us. We just washed everything over and over and over in hot water and tossed our overnight bags.
After a little research I’ve noticed many people mention finding tiny specks of blood on their sheets. I always keep an eye out for that now.
posted by Fran on 4-16-2009 at 8:15 am
My wife and I stayed at a fairly nice hotel in Fort Lauderdale (I won’t mention it by name, but the founder’s great grandaughter is a attention seeking slut)
We were forced to take a room with two beds and I guess she got the bad one. The next morning she was covered in bites. My wife reacts badly sometimes to insect bites and we ended up in the emergency room. The hotel manager and the lawyer called around that time and when they asked how my wife was feeling (they did not know that I had taken her to the ER) and I told them, well the doctors are hooking up an IV and covering her with icepacks, the response was utter silence. Same weasel lawyer tried to trick us into signing a liability waiver by offering me a check for 500 dollars for “immediate expenses”. When I asked if that would constitute a waiver, more silence. Check never arrived.
A few months later, we settled the matter for 10 thousand. My wife calls it her bed bug money.
posted by Jeff on 4-16-2009 at 8:49 am
I recently dealt with them. Scared the bejesus out of me! I am one of the unlucky allergic people, but in a way it was good because I knew I had them and was able to get the apartment treated right away. The worst part was having to wash EVERYTHING in hot water and put it all in plastic bags and containers and keep them in there for two months. As much as you might hate toxic chemicals and killing our friends in nature, this is the one time you’ve got to let that go and bring out the full chemical arsenal!
posted by LC on 4-16-2009 at 8:59 am
that video gave me the creepy-crawlies.
posted by the creature on 4-16-2009 at 1:21 pm
Once upon a time I lived in a trashy, run down motel in the worst part of my hometown. Besides the roaches, there were bedbugs as well.
I began to wake up with DOZENS of little red dots that developed into lesions within a short period of time. There were everywhere, mostly my legs, but on my arms and hands too. They scarred. I conferred with a neighbor, and she showed me gross, scarred and pock-marked polka-dot skin due to the bugs. She had been living in the motel for years. I moved the hell out, and haven’t had a bite since.
posted by Justine on 9-24-2009 at 6:14 pm
I have them. The extirminator will come tomorrow. I pray it works. If not, I will walk out of my home with nothing but the clothes on mine and my daughter’s back. I seriously cannot take this anymore. Had to throw out bed, sofa, alot of things. I dont wish this on my worst enemy. I work all day and spend every minute at home washing and bug hunting. Words cannot express how bad this sucks. I have become an obsessive compulsive bedbug hater….pretty sure we caught them from a playmate of my daughters, she slept over, her mother is dirty and in denial, said she gets bites on her legs and its fleas, said she found dead fleas in her daughters bed, how can a mother let her child sleep in filth, and be in denial, I regret the day I ever laid eyes on these dirty people.
posted by Lisa on 10-28-2009 at 12:06 pm