bed bugs: not fun anymore!

When, oh, when are people going to remember that bed bugs are not fun! Bed bugs are not cute.

Then we’ll no longer find adorable pictures of cute toddlers and infants and dachshunds and chihuahuas and other adorable creatures cuddled up in blankets on flickr.com, captioned or with the title, “bed bugs.” (Go search on flickr for “bed bug” and you’ll see what I mean: few are bed bugs or bedbug-related photos–and at least 1/3 are cute people and pets.) Not so charming once you’ve encountered a real live one.

Then we’ll stop seeing things like this Playskool Bed Bugs Pinball game:

DDT mostly eradicated bed bugs and meant we could get a few generations away from the nightmare, and so bed bugs became cute.

It’s wonderful that, for so long, our society stopped associating bed bugs with long itchy nights, children crying, and Pa having to burn the cabin and all its contents, in order to free the family from their bed bug nightmare (for awhile).

On the other hand, other parasites we’ve more or less beat do not get re-packaged as furry toys, cartoon characters, or board games. You don’t see parents ponying up for games called Pinworm-o-rama, or Tapeworm Town.

This children’s book featuring bed bugs is part of a series also including Giggle Bugs, Peekaboo Bugs and Birthday Bugs. The Bedbuggers can ask their friend entomologist Lou Sorkin if these other bugs exist, but we a hunch they don’t. I am sure David A. Carter would not have written 1998’s Bed Bugs: a Pop-up Bedtime Book in 2006. Bedbugs, at the start of the 21st Century in North America, were such a far-off idea as to have more or less become mythical creatures. Sadly, that’s no longer the case here.

Now let’s try to make them one again. And this time, maybe we can help all the countries of the earth do so as well. If nothing else, bed bugs are a reminder we’re all connected, rich and poor, North and South, locally, globally; as with environmental problems, the rich can’t simply hole up with their money and feel secure.