The Bedbugs Thing is Real

[marmar]

from the Maximum Strength Mick column in the SF Chronicle:



The Bedbugs Thing is Real


When I was in New York to interview Isabelle Huppert, I set the clock for 7:30, but I woke at around 5:45 and planned to go back to sleep, when I noticed a little red bug walking on the top of comforter. I was half asleep and didn't think much about it . . . and then I thought, wait.

Fortunately, the hotel had wifi, and so I looked up bedbugs on the Internet and lo and behold, I realized I was in the presence of a celebrity. His picture was RIGHT THERE.

I called downstairs and told them they were buying me new luggage and dry cleaning my clothes. Fortunately, the clothes I was going to wear were hanging up separately. Also fortunately, I had no marks on me.

Still, what ensued was one nuisance of a day. It was cold in New York. I had brought a heavy jacket with me, but I'd kept it in the suitcase on the floor, so now it was being dry cleaned. After the Isabelle interview, I was walking around New York in the cold and rain with just a sports jacket on. I walked to a screening of 127 HOURS and then went out to buy luggage. Freezing.

I was on the phone with my wife about this, who was understandably horrified -- no, HORRIFIED -- no, HORRIFIED -- about this. She became an expert on the subject overnight and told me, when I got to a new hotel, to check inside the laptop computer, which I'd had sitting on the bed (of the bedbugs hotel) for several hours the previous evening. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/mlasalle/detail?entry_id=77249#ixzz15bUAN0GI

[gateley]

1. Great story - and God, I hope never to have to deal with it. nt

[Sonoman]

2. And then he got on the subway.

Or whatever.

Bugs are there, all the time, everywhere.

And I have a hummingbird, feeds in my house 4-5 times a day.

Doesn't bother me at all.

Sonoman

[Reader Rabbit]

3. Reading this made me start itching all over.

Do you think I have bedbugs?

[marmar]

4. You have mental bedbugs.

:) I itch whenever I read a bedbugs story.

[Poll_Blind]

5. Wow, for the first time in my life (that I can recall) I looked up what bedbugs were and what they..

...did to people.

Holy CRAP!

PB

[blue neen]

6. Oh, it's very real.

Even some of the exterminators are refusing work on these cases, because they're so afraid they'll get the bedbugs themselves.

If you do bring the bugs home, it apparently costs $400 for every room you have treated.

I also heard that a bad place for them is movie theaters...the little s-o-b-s love the dark!

Yikes!

[Systematic Chaos]

7. Yeah, they're just effing awesome.

Got them by the pound here and can't do a damn thing about it, which reflects the view of management in this fucking dump.

I'm thrilled to know that only our most expensive electronic items and thoroughly washed -- then sealed in multiple fresh plastic bags -- clothes will be coming with us when we can finally afford to move.

My forearms make me look like a heroin addict. At least if I were I would get some sort of twisted pleasure out of this nightmare.

:shrug:

[JVS]

8. "told them they were buying me new luggage and dry cleaning my clothes"

Would anyone actually get this from a hotel?

[marmar]

9. Probably not. Only someone who could write something really nasty in a newspaper.

nt

[nilram]

12. not really

from the article, "If you find bedbugs in your room, make demands. I got everything I asked for, and this is without letting them know that I was their worst nightmare -- a guy who writes for a NEWSPAPER."

[LostInAnomie]

10. Work makes us stay in a hotel with them.

Nothing I take to work with me ever gets within 20 feet of my place.

[tblue37]

11. It makes me think of the horror stories I hear from people who have to deal with their kids bringing

lice home from school or daycare--though the bedbug problem seems even worse!

[K8-EEE]

13. Oh hello my husband brought them home from Santa Cruz CA

Important thing: If you stay somewhere with 2 beds don't keep your bags or clothes on the other bed --wash everything when you get home, keep your bag outside or in the garage for a bit when you get home. THIS WOULD HAVE SAVED US SO MUCH GRIEF but it happened before all the bedbug stories so we were not careful. WE WILL BE FROM NOW ON. WHAT A NIGHTMARE!!!