“What are we going to do? Strip everyone down and make them take a shower before we let them in the shelter?” asks Diane Keay of the Salt Lake County Health Department. “I don’t think we’re going to go there. So I don’t know how to prevent re-infestation.”

What might help? Well, look at the video: they’re using wooden bunk beds, and the video shows uncovered mattresses. Metal beds encased in strong bedbug-proof casings would be a start. But let’s be honest, there’s no way to keep bed bugs out of shelters without sealing up the posessions of overnight guests, requiring showers, and washing and drying their clothes on hot. Those requirements are likely to drive lots of homeless people away.

Note to people who don’t get the “media hype”:

• the firefighters closed down their station for months
• they had what was described as “dozens” of bed bugs in the station, and
• one firefighter woke up with “over forty bites” and was “freaking out about it”; his captain sent him for medical treatment.

Hmm, if men and women who are among our bravest (and often strongest) civilians can be terrorized by these little insects, perhaps they are distressing.

Note to people who ignore the poor who live in substandard housing or homeless shelters: you can’t allow some members of our society to live with bed bugs, unless you want to live with bed bugs. We really are living in a matrix; we are all connected. This is our problem, whether it’s entered our baseboards and mattresses, or not.

This article, from the Salt Lake City Tribune, ups the ante, blaming not only the homeless shelter but also immigrants (in general) for the rise of bed bugs. Yes, we’ve heard that before. But immigrants were flocking to our shores from countries with bed bugs during the three decades when bed bugs were all but completely eradicated in North America. Why did immigrants suddenly begin bringing in bed bugs around 1999? There’s more to the story than that– changes in pesticide use are also a factor, I am sure. But it is still mysterious, and I am still perplexed.

• Bed bugs in homeless shelters, casinos, hotels, apartments: Waynesboro, Atlantic City, Greenpoint, Toronto
• Salt Lake City Tribune on bed bugs: they don’t quite get it yet
• More on bed bugs at the Montana Rescue Mission in Billings
• Bed bugs from Saskatoon to Salt Lake City

ShareThis

**Warning: This is probably extremely flammable. We have not used this method and we strongly recommend you do not either.**

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

24 January 1730

A physician communicates this well-experienced receipt for the destroying of buggs, with which he entirely clear’d his own beds, &c. five years ago, and has told it to scores of families since, who have all found the same effects by it, and never saw a bugg afterwards.

 

Take of the highest rectified spirit of wine, (viz. lamp spirits) that will burn all away dry, and leave not the least moisture behind, half a pint’s newly distilled oil, or spirit of turpentine, half a pint; mix them together, and break into it, in small bits, half an ounce of camphire, which will dissolve in it in a few minutes; shake them well together, and with a piece of spunge, or a brush dipt in some of it, wet very well the bed or furniture wherein those vermine harbour and breed, and it will infallibly kill and destroy both them and their nitts, altho’ they swarm ever so much: But then the bed or furniture must be well and thoroughly wet with it, (the dust upon them being first brushed and shook off) by which means it will neither stain, soil, or in the least hurt the finest silk or damask bed that is. The quantity here offered of this curious neat white mixture, (which costs but about a shilling) will rid any one bed whatsoever, tho’ it swarms with buggs: Do but touch a live bugg with a drop of it, and you will find it to die instantly. If any bugg or buggs should happen to appear after once using it, it will only be for want of well wetting the lacing, &c. of the bed, or the foldings of the linings or curtains near the rings, or the joints or holes in and about the bed, head-board, &c. wherein the buggs and nitts nestle and breed, and then their being well wet all again with more of the same mixture, which dries in as fast as you use it, pouring some of it into the joints and holes where the spunge or brush cannot reach, will never fail absolutely to destroy them all. Some beds that have much wood-work, can hardly be thoroughly cleared, without being first taken down; but others that can be drawn out, or that you can get well behind, to be done as it should be, may.

 

A few definitions:

Camphire: henna flowers

Rectified spirit of wine: a form of brandy

Lamp spirits: I’m guessing kerosene

• Park Slope bed bug tour
• bed bug harborage inside a recessed screw hole
• Educating the public about bed bugs: Toronto to host bed bug forum for residents April 2nd
• Bonnie Friedman’s NYTimes Op Ed on Bed Bugs

ShareThis