Bedbugs, Bedbugs, Bedbugs, oh my!

[JCMach1]

Double yuck!... Found an infestation in our villa a day back and have spent the last 48hrs focusing on eradication. I pulled pack the bed from the headboard and there was a huge disgusting colony hanging out there complete with the macabre dried blood stains!

So far, we are giving the massive chemical warfare approach. No, we have to wait to see if we got all the eggs too... :(

Fortunately, no carpeting to worry about, so hopefully will be pretty simple to keep them out.

Damn, travel can be a pain. We live in the UAE and have traveled many places over the past year. There is no telling where the buggers came from... :(

Anyone else have experience with this new PLAGUE!

If you think you are immune, read on:



Sleep tight: Mobile bedbugs reemerge in U.S. with bite
The 'hitchhiking' bugs may have developed resistance to chemicals, experts say.

By Justin Thompson

Staff Writer

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Those nasty creatures mothers spent years warning against have returned, and it'll take more than just a nightly reminder to keep them away.

Bedbugs, also known as cimex lectularius, have resurfaced in the United States over the last decade, said Susan Jones, a professor of entomology at Ohio State University who also works with the Ohio Department of Health.


"Unfortunately, bedbugs pay no attention to wealth or sanitation," said Bob McGee, with A1 Pest Doctors, a Springfield extermination company.

Jones credits the revival of the creepy-crawlies to a highly mobilized society, saying bedbugs are "very good hitchhikers" that have taken advantage of increased international travel and shared living spaces.

"We've seen about a 500 percent increase in bedbug calls," said Cindy Mannes, the vice president for public affairs for the National Pest Management Association. Tests have found the bugs in all corners of the U.S., leading "some in our industry to call it the pest of the 21st century," Mannes said.

The nocturnal bugs were nearly eradicated in the 1930s thanks mostly to the use of now-illegal chemicals like DDT and stricter regulations on the bedding industry, Jones said. With a change in chemicals and less aggressive exterminating techniques — what Mannes calls "targeted pest control treatments" — bedbugs are again causing sleepless nights nationwide.

"I think that this is just the tip of the iceberg," Jones said. She said she believes insects have developed a resistance to chemicals and will become a larger problem, for all residences... http://news.google.com/nwshp?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&q=bedbugs&tab=in

[BarenakedLady]

1. Ewwwww

I used to HATE when my mom would say that when she tucked me in. I would lay there are start feeling little bugs crawling up my legs. :scared:

I don't think I've actually seen a bedbug before.

[JCMach1]

2. Trust me you don't, they are the vampires of the insect world

Once they feed, they can go without for a whole year if necessary. Hiding, lurking...

It thought I was just having an allergic rash on my neck just above my jugular. In fact, it was a rash, caused by these D$%$ insects.

[Avalux]

3. I stayed at a very nice hotel in Chicago once -

when I woke up in the morning, I had over a dozen red welts on my torso, on the side I sleep. Alerted the hotel and made them change my room. Disgusting.

[Patiod]

4. Got bit at a VERY expensive chain hotel in the DC area

complained the next morning, and they didn't believe me.

They denied that it was possible, and claimed they had just put in all new beds and bedding.

I said "Look, I saw the damned thing attached to my leg! My client paid for the room, so I'm not angling for a discount or free night -- this isn't to try to get anything from you -- I just want you to get rid of them for the next guest!"

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

5. That's the problem right there:

claimed they had just put in all new beds and bedding.

One of the most popular ways to get bed bugs is to buy a new bed. See, companies remove peoples' old beds when they bring the new ones. Unfortunately, they're on the same truck together, so they just migrate among ALL the beds, new and old.

[JCMach1]

6. This is a real plague coming, watch out...

Cleanliness matters not when they move in. We regularly strip bedding every week and mattress pads once a month. This big infestation happened over a 2 week period.

[graywarrior]

7. An Open Letter to My Bedbugs/from Best of Craigslist

Listen up, you heinous little motherfuckers. I am not playing. Before I deliver the grim news of your collective fates, let me give you a brief synopsis of how you have driven me to the brink of insanity over the last three months. Here it is.

Unfortunately, because I am paying over $400 a month in student loans and am therefore very cheap, I made the mistake of accepting a used mattress from a coworker to put on top of my new bed frame and box springs. So. You and I have, by my calculations, been residing together since May. MAY. That's when I unwittingly brought you and your home into my bedroom. That's when I became your new food source. Your "host."

You guys are pretty tricky, I have to tell you. I mean, when I started seeing little purple dots on my toes in the morning, I did what you wanted me to do, which was to blame them on anything and everything under the sun except you. This is because I was wholly unaware that such hideous creatures as yourselves existed. I figured it was a spider, so I vacuumed profusely. Then I thought it was mosquitos, so I busted out the Off. Nothing seemed to be working. But you know this already, don't you? Yes, you snacked on me all through the month of June, getting your fill of my blood while I snored on, retreating back to the crevices of my mattress just before dawn, leaving no sign or trail.
Ahhh, June. What a peaceful, sane month. Ignorance, in this case, was truly bliss.

But then came July and with July came some strange occurances. You multiplied, didn't you? Got a little more hungry, huh? You must have because that's when my body started to revolt against whatever it is you injected me with when you were gnawing on my flesh. See, I started having these weird allergic reactions. Getting hives for no reason at all. So I changed my laundry detergent to something dye-free, fragrance-free. That didn't work. Then I changed my soap to something hypoallergenic. No, that didn't work either. And the hives kept getting worse, until one morning, I woke up with not only hives all over my chest and back, but about twenty purple dots on my feet, which I (ignorance, remember) attributed to the allergies. Remember that morning, my little roommates? Do you? That's the morning my throat swelled shut and I had to be rushed to the emergency room.

You had us all stumped, from the ER doc to the allergist. They ran tests, researched, poked, prodded, scraped... All to no avail. The diagnosis? I was allergic to myself, because they could find nothing that I was allergic to otherwise. I was ALLERGIC TO MYSELF?? Yes, that was the diagnosis. But they were so very wrong, weren't they? You guys are so slick as to leave bites that disappear pretty quickly and could be ANYTHING, right? So I took my Allegra and went to sleep every night and you fed on, didn't you?

Then came August. I was dealing with being hivey all the time and rashy some of the time and generally very uncomfortable, but I was dealing, you know? And then you showed your faces. Literally. See, I have it figured out now. The grandaddy of all bedbugs came to play, didn't he? He must have been starving because he gave me three bites I just couldn't ignore. I mean, these were nasty, bright red and the size of a penny and really fucking itchy. That's when the lightbulb went on, bitches. There was something FUNKY going on in my bedroom and I was on to you, I just didn't have a clue that you were so stealthy. Really, you are. But I looked you up. God bless the internet. Yep, I Googled your asses and when I typed in "bites while sleeping," there you were. You are some ugly motherfuckers, too. I'm not just saying that because you've been stealing my blood without my knowledge or consent, either. You are really ugly.

This is where the insanity begins, because in order to prove that you really were cohabitating with me, I had to willingly and knowingly be your food and catch you eating me. This, as you know, meant sleeping (and I use the word "sleeping" very loosely at this point) with a flashlight beside me and waking up intermittently throughout the night for five nights straight to examine my body and catch you in the middle of snacktime. Thing is, you instinctively knew I wasn't sleeping, didn't you? So you held out for as long as you could. But one of you was weaker than the rest. He couldn't last, he couldn't hang and he gave you up, huh?

So there I was, reading my book, completely not expecting you guys for several more hours when he ran out from under my sheet, straight past my nose, towards the edge of the bed. Now I told you before and I'll tell you again: I am not playing. I smashed that motherfucker so fast he had no clue what hit him. And what came flying out of his crushed body? Come on, you know. YES! MY BLOOD!!

Alright, bitches. I have you now. I saved his corpse. I bought a magnifying glass. I called Terminix and I slept on the living room floor for two nights. And when Drew, the friendly Terminix employee, showed up at my door last night, I told him straight out what I have already told you twice: I am not playing. Drew and I threw out the evil devil spawn mattress. We threw out the box springs. We threw out the fan, the bookcase, the books, everything in the back closet. All of it, gone. GONE, I tell you. And then Drew, my new best friend, sprayed the FUCK out of the entire house. I was not playing. He said it probably would be okay to just get the bedroom. Fuck that. You bitches have been giving me hives for three fucking months now. You're dead, it's over. We left no crack unsprayed, no piece of funiture unbombed. That's right, assholes, I BOMBED YOUR ASSES. TWICE. And tomorrow, I'm coming for the couch and chairs. They're history. As I said, you're pretty slick, so I can see you thinking you can make a new home in my living room. Go fuck yourselves. And if any of you survived the initial attacks, be warned. Drew and I have a little deal and it's called HE'S COMING BACK in two weeks to bomb you again. And then he will come back once every 90 days for the next YEAR. So be prepared. YOU WILL DIE. I am not playing.

[grasswire]

8. that was hilarious

thanks

[Kali]

9. great rant.

[JCMach1]

10. Too funny

sums up my feelings pretty well