The bed bugs are still biting Pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. We last posted about bed bugs on the popular Spanish pilgrimage route exactly a year ago.  There was so much bed bug trouble in various lodgings on the road to Santiago that the government was planning to close its own hostels for pilgrims for 15 days last winter to try and get rid of bed bugs on the route.

Of course, when pilgrims come from around the world, it is inevitable that bed bugs will be continually reintroduced.  And since summer is the most popular time for people to travel the Camino, it’s no surprise there is a lot of chatter about bed bugs among Camino bloggers and discussion board participants.

Yesterday, pilgrim and blogger Lisa Fullam offered a humorous perspective on being bitten in a hotel she and a companion stayed at in Burgos:

I lay in bed not sleeping. Was it the very tasty chocolate we’d had after dinner? Or was it the itching? I itched idly, thinking I’d perhaps encountered a hungry mosquito on the road. Then I noticed that I was itching in new places, which seemed unlikely if mosquitoes were the culprit. Then I heard…was it the sound of tiny drums? Then…a kind of festive chant, very soft and high-pitched, almost nasal. The drums increased in rhythm and urgency. It was eerie in the dark. I scratched again, and finally decided to turn on a light.

They were everywhere. Hundreds of them. Bedbugs, celebrating something very much like a luau, and the occasion of the feast was me. Some were dancing in little circles wearing ceremonial masks, doubtless thanking whoever their gods are for this more than generous feast. Others carried little torches as they scurried around accompanying the elderly or the lame to the party. (At least some looked elderly, being gray-haired and slightly hunched, if bedbugs can be described as hunched. The crutches identified the lame–even with 6 legs, sometimes life leaves one down a few legs, needing some help.) Others carried tiny bowls of…coleslaw? Potato salad? Jello? What are the side dishes of a bedbug luau?

[Emphasis mine.]

Sometimes humor is the only way to get through such an experience.  Fullam notes that they will be washing all their belongings, and we hope they manage to enjoy the rest of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela without bed bug bites, and — most importantly — that they do not take them to subsequent destinations.

I know you’ll want to read the rest of this amusing entry on the Process of Pilgrimage blog.

Another recent report from the Camino: Tony, a hospitalero — or volunteer warden of one of the Camino’s refugios or albergues (simple hostels for pilgrims walking or cycling the pilgrimage routes) — blogs in a post entitled “Bed Bugs and Broomsticks” about the arrival of a pilgrim who had been exposed to bed bugs on the previous night in another refugio:

A lad from the Czech Republic arrived yesterday afternoon. He was covered in bedbug bites: all down his legs and over his back. He thought he got them in León. What a mess!

Well, being the sort of hospitaleros we are, we agreed to let him stay. Since Anne is a trained nurse, she took charge, with Peter’s help. All of his clothes went in the washer at a high temperature and everything else was sprayed within an inch of its life.

Initially, we said he could sleep in the garden, but relented and let him sleep on the floor of the library. I gave his some antihistamine because it looked as if he was having an allergic reaction. That ensured he had a good night’s sleep!

He was a really nice lad and extremely grateful; many places would have told him to go away, or, what’s worse, let him stay and propagate the pest even further. Hopefully, he’s all clear now.

It is wonderful that the volunteers who staff these accommodations are becoming educated about bed bugs and how to prevent their spread.

Education is, of course, our most important weapon against bed bugs.Similar Posts:

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You’re going to love this one: The Spoof reports that PETA is extending compassion to bed bugs in its new campaign.

Their new “Compassion Tour” involves beautiful, naked women in raised platforms and lying in bed in a very public setting. The catch? The women are breast feeding large broods of “guest” bed bugs in order to advocate “compassion for the smaller creatures of the world.”

“I just think people tend to be irrational and overreactive,” explained PETA president, Ingrid Newkirk. “Ever since President Obama brutally murdered that innocent fly on national television, we’ve felt a pressing need to raise America’s consciousness concerning some of our smaller, often overlooked and underappreciated, friends of the earth.”

via The Spoof : PETA Women to Breast Feed Bed Bugs in New “Compassion Tour” funny satire story.

Note:  we scooped this from The Spoof.  If you’re unfamiliar, it’s satire.  Fake, funny, not real, etc.Similar Posts:

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There’s nothing worse than bed bugs during the holidays. But we still have to celebrate life, family, and love. Toss in a litte gallows humor (so beloved of Bedbuggers) and you have Bed Bug Holiday Songs:

NotSoSnug has started us off, messaging me with his Christmas carol to the tune of “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire”:

Clothing drying in a hot dryer,

Bedbugs nipping at your toes,

Woe-filled tales being sung by newbites,

And folks bagging up their winter clothes.

Everybody knows some DE and pyrethrin,

Help to stop the bed bugs bite,

Paranoid folks with their eyes all a bug

Will find it hard to sleep at night.

They know that BedBugz are on their way,

They’ve got some yummy human blood to taste today,

And every mothers child is going to say,

How did the situation get this way?

And so I’m offering the simple phrase,

To Bedbuggers from everywhere,

Although its been said many times many ways,

Merry Christmas to you.

Thanks, NotSoSnug!

If anyone else has a holiday-themed ditty, the comments below are the place to share.

I’ll start you off with a few ideas:

“Hanukkah, Oh Hannukah”:

Hanukkah, oh Hanukkah, come load up the dryer

Bake all our papers, empty the drawers

“Good King Wenceslas”:

Pyrethroid resistance came, on the Feast of Stephen

So my bed bugs bounced right back, and said “Now we are even!”

“Silent Night”:

Itchy night, scratchy night

Bed bugs came, supped all right

Welts and pustules appeared in sight

Called a PCO out

He sprayed pesticides about

“Grandpa Got Run Over by A Reindeer”

Grandma got bitten by a bed bug

Staying at the casino New Year’s Eve

I am quite sure you can do as well or better at finishing these, or starting a new one, as I can. Hannukah and Kwanzaa songs are a bit thin on the ground, so especially welcome.

Let it rip, Bedbuggers!Similar Posts:

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Somehow I got behind on Nicholas Brown’s bed bug saga; two more installments have appeared.

He posted volume 3 last week, which chronicles the “laundry and first treatment” phase. Somewhat unconventionally, Brown as his roommates Katherine and Jihad had not done much prep before their PCO showed up. He was kind enough to come back a few hours later, and so the team flew into motion. Brown’s style is engaging and the laundromat saga, in which the pushy ladies of the laundromat are put in their places, is fairly fun reading:

Our neighborhood has relatively few Laundromats and almost no one has a washer and dryer in-building, resulting in an atmosphere of intense and sometimes uncomfortably physical competition for the few available dryers. The already charged atmosphere is made particularly dangerous at our local Laundromat by a series of heavyset neighborhood Grand dames who are willing to throw their weight around. When I walked into the Laundromat, Katherine was facing down one such woman who had taken her clothes out of a washer and thrown them on the floor.

“What, you want to use all the dryers here at once!” the woman said

“Actually, yes.”

“Your clothes are dry.”

“They have bugs,” Katherine said.

Apparently she hadn’t mentioned this earlier. The effect was satisfying. Most people took at least a small step back and the grand dame who had been facing us down retreated completely. One woman, who had been rummaging through our clothes in an attempt to clear a dryer for herself, jerked her hands back so rapidly and with so much revulsion that it looked like the beginnings of an epileptic fit.

Volume 3 concludes with the “wait and be bait” period following the first treatment.

Volume 4 details various “crackpot” ideas for fighting bed bugs. My only critique would be that he nixes the idea of freezing books (when, in fact, freezing is a legit method for killing bed bugs), and freezes his VCR instead (note: I would not do this with electronics).

What Brown describes well is the experimental nature of so many solutions bed bug victims concoct. The last time people in New York City commonly had to deal with bed bugs was before World War II. Some of the folk remedies of that time worked and were dangerous, others probably did not work. In 2007, we are luckier than our ancestors; we have resealable bags, washing and drying machines, zipped encasements. Information travels faster now, but so does misinformation. Caveat bedbugger.

Brown also captures well the stress of life during bed bug wartime. By day 24 he says,

Our nerves are on edge. While it’s true that bedbugs generally fall into the category of ‘pests,’ it is underreported that they are also life-changing experiences. It is said that the three most stressful times in life surround divorces, moves, and new children. Bedbugs are surely a close fourth.

If I forget to take out the garbage one morning, I come home to find an angry Katherine. If I Jihad or Katherine move my things, I become irrationally angry. We lurk about the apartment during the day waiting to explode at one another. We are all angry at the creatures, but it is very hard to take out fury on an insect so we target snide remarks and well-timed sighs at one another instead. The emotionally traumatizing effects of these creatures are probably foreign to anyone who has not had them, but bystanders beware: bedbug victims are emotional landmines. Do not misstep near us.

Wise words. I hope Brown and Company have gotten a follow-up treatment 10-14 days after their first treatment. Judging from his description of the bed frame, they had a lot of bed bugs. From what we hear, one treatment is rarely enough, even in lighter cases.

Like the saga of Amanda’s bed bugs over at Apartment Therapy, Brown’s story is compelling reading. Like Amanda, he also introduces an unsuspecting new audience to the horrors of dealing with bed bugs, that we here at Bedbugger.com are all too familiar with. Some of the comments on the earlier installments are a healthy reminder that the vast majority of folks still are blissfully ignorant about bed bugs (a double-edged sword if ever there was one).

I don’t think we ever got the final update on Amanda, unless I missed it? Last entry I saw was #8, in which after two treatments, her bed bugs were “back.” (By back, I mean, they “never entirely left.”)Similar Posts:

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A Mark Wilson (MARQUIL) cartoon from empirewire.com (September 28, 2006):

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fom the website “Overheard in New York”:

30-ish lady #1: Did you talk to your therapist about bedbugs?

30-ish lady #2: I only talk to my therapist about bedbugs.

–34th & Madison

Overheard by: KSimilar Posts:

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We’re very proud of our Jess and her “An Open Letter to my Bedbugs” which was posted anonymously on Craigslist. The author’s identity is known only to Bedbuggers, as far as I can tell. And that’s in no small part due to Jess’s modesty, which is as prevalent as her writing talent.
Now Jess’s piece has been cited in US Magazine, which at the closing of an article on SNL star Maya Rudolph’s bed bug lawsuit says:

(Meanwhile, check out this “Open Letter to My Bedbugs” on Craigslist which is funnier than anything Lorne Michaels’ laugh factory has produced in years.)

Congratulations, Jess!Similar Posts:

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Here’s a new way to make a buck. Changethatsrightnow devoted to curing many kinds of phobias offers to take care of your mental Cimex problem.

Our board-certified team specializes in helping individuals overcome fears, phobias & anxiety of all kinds, and is particularly focused on problems such as Bed Bugs Phobia. With a success rate close to 100% we offer a lifetime guarantee to our clients.

And when you’re mentally okay, and at peace, you won’t mind thousands of them crawling all over you, because you’ve learned how to cope. Right?Similar Posts:

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A post on our friend Brent Herbert’s site. Brent has some good ideas about constructing a tent-like barrier to afford sleep safety. But his philosophy about kick-starting a new bed bug evolution… Well, I predict by the year 3,000,000 A.D., he might be right.

I also feel a moral responsibility to the bed bug species, and my strategy here would be to force those bed bugs to adapt not by faking their own extinction but rather by not being bed bugs anymore but rather by adapting by becoming a different type of bug. The choice they face is either extinction or further adaptation, and since being a bed bug is not going to work out for them, and since bed bugs are amazing creatures who refuse to go extinct and are constantly adapting I am confident that when put under enough pressure bed bugs can adapt by not being bed bugs anymore. For example, they could become ‘garbage bugs’ and make their living by sneaking into everyone’s garbage can in the dead of net. I would even leave the lid open on the garbage can for them, or better yet, I would leave a small dent in the lid so the bed bug can be real sneaky and slip through that dent and eat my garbage, and feel like it pulled off a sneak attack. Bed bugs can even be really stubborn about that new strategy by being garbage bugs that no one can get rid of no matter how many times they spray the place, thus being worse than cockroaches, which can still be exterminated, and that will be fine. Or better yet, bed bugs can eat garbage or perhaps flakes of skin, while still retaining their ability to suck blood, so that if someone tries to get rid of them by buying a tightly sealed garbage can the bed bug can then start sucking their blood instead.

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Well, we already talked about people who don’t know bed bugs are (a) real, and (b) horrific. See this, and this, for example.

In the normal world, bed bugs pass as “fun”: Parakeets can’t post right now, but she emailed to tell me she saw this great suggestion on familyfun.com posted by reader “carrie f” for a children’s “Bed Bug Party”, with gummi worms, bug juice (i.e. green kool aid), and english muffin pizzas. (Apparently so much buggy fun is prevailing here that the english muffin pizzas do not need to have any buggy or otherwise gross connection a la gummi worms).

The party is just about the opposite of what life is like with bed bugs:

Games & Activities
Everyone came dressed up as their favorite bed bug and remained in character during the party. Later everyone acted out their bed bug and guessed what each other was.

Rather than blood-sucking horror, there was music, dancing, and snacks; and then,

We had a scavenger hunt around the neighborhood collecting items bed bugs might need or like.

You know, carbon dioxide, live humans full of blood, a wooden bed to live in, some clothes to hang out in and lay eggs: the usual.

The kids then changed into their pajamas and slippers and lay down with sleeping bags, blankets, and pillows and watched a movie while waiting for their parents to pick them up. My 4-year-old daughter really wanted a sleepover party but her friends were too young for that, so we did this bed bug party as a compromise. The kids stayed until bedtime, dressed for bed, and tucked into sleeping bags — then went home and woke up in their own beds. but they all felt like they had had a sleepover.

See– this is actually like having bed bugs in that the kids got in bed but did not actually sleep. I do that every night!

The goodie bag was filled with different bug candies, a bug jar with a magnifying glass on top, a variety of plastic insects, and a fun book about insects.

This is actually cool. And will be very educational. When I was a kid, a teacher had us collect bugs and impale them with pins on cardboard. Little did I know I’d need my bug identification skills in adulthood.

Now, despite not getting enough sleep and spending too much time on this blog, I am not totally out of touch. I realize “their favorite bed bugs” is a reference to the children’s television show “My Bedbugs.”

However, although most bedbugs-for-children are funny and cute and not even remotely similar to cimex lectularius, the “My Bedbugs” bed bugs are making me suspicious that they may actually be close to the real thing.

Sure, they’re yellow and green and blue and have human-ish features along with antennae.

But their good friend J. Egdar Hoover is a vacuum. (Since I got bed bugs, my best friend is a vacuum too!) What children’s show has a vacuum for a character?!? This tells me the producers know something about bed bugs, since Bedbuggers spend all our time vacuuming.

Their other friend Snoozy is a pillow, who is sleepy all day (just like me!) You know bed bugs love pillows.
You can even play a fun game called “Match a Bug” (which we real life Bedbuggers like to play, comparing the insects we find with those in pictures our friend entomologist Lou Sorkin provides!)

I don’t mean to sound bitter. I am glad the kids love the show and I think they’d love the party too. It amazes me that we’re just leaving behind an era where nobody remembered bed bugs or was worried about them. Maybe people who’d volunteered for the Peace Corps, or Doctors without Borders, or been youth hostelling, but it was a far-off, adventure-related problem, like malaria-tablet hallucinations, or Montezuma’s revenge, and not something that you’d have to deal with back home.

Wait till bed bugs start spreading from kid to kid at school, as they’re currently doing in some places, and the folks who make “My Bedbugs” are going to discontinue that series so fast, your head will spin. Who’s going to want to watch this with the real vacuum running, with crabby kids who don’t get enough sleep, and with actual bed bug carcasses and sealed bags of clothing on the floor?Similar Posts:

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