FAQ: I am not in the US. Can you tell me where to buy XL ziplocs, or what mattress covers are called in my country?

nobugsonme — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 19:38:17 +0000

Sometimes I get messages commenting on the Nortamericano-bias, USA-bias, or even NYC-bias of the site.
Others assume Bedbugger.com was made for NYC Bedbuggers (not so!)

Although people often think this to be the case, this site was never intended to be for residents of the US, but rather, for everyone with bed bugs, everywhere. Although I (Nobugsonme) lived for many years abroad, I am in NYC, I am best able to provide information on fighting bed bugs here, and news on what’s going on.

However, I’d love to make the site more helpful for Bedbuggers everywhere, as I know you would too. This is where you come in. Tell us everything you can to make this site relevant to your country-people. Use the comment function and point us to useful information and useful stuff.

I get google alerts for all bed bug-related stories on the ‘net. But these are weighted towards US stories in particular. If you see bed bug news covered on a website (especially a newspaper or television website in your country), please drop me an email and let me know (nobugsonme at yahoo dot com).

If you see suggestions on the FAQs for treatment methods which you feel do not apply in your country, or suggestions of products not available to you, or if the product has a different name or is sold by a particular company, please post a comment directly on the relevant FAQ telling us. We’d be happy to give people information specific to the UK, Canada, Australia, or anywhere else, but first we need the information.

(This request comes with the usual disclaimer that people who are themselves selling things should advertise on the site rather than posting phony ads in the form of “happy customer testimonials”: you know who you are.)

A few of the FAQs may be closed to comments, usually because people were using them to post comments about other issues besides the information in the FAQs. If you find this to be the case, you can email me at nobugsonme at yahoo dot com, and I will re-open them. It’s best to post your corrections to the FAQs, rather than emailing them to me, since I get a lot of email every day and don’t have time to copy and paste lots of addenda to the FAQs. For the same reasons, it’s also best not to post information in the comments on this FAQ (below) which would be better placed on the FAQ about protecting your bed, travel, etc.

Thank you for making the site a better resource for Bedbuggers everywhere!

Snapshot: a few hours of Bedbugger.com visitors tells us something about the spread

nobugsonme — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 03:25:05 +0000

You can click here to see a map of the last 90 or so visitors to the site. It will look different from what I describe below, because I am writing about what I saw there about 4-5 hours ago. Now it’s almost midnight in New York, and the Aussies are starting to surf in.

For those of you who don’t know, webpages can tell where you’re coming from (though not very specifically). They know the location of your ISP. For most people, this comes up as somewhere near where they live, though it’s not always precise and sometimes it’s just the country. It also tells the webmaster what internet browser you use (Go Firefox!) and whether you like Macs or Windows machines. No, I do not know your name, or where you live, don’t worry!

This may all seem very “meta,” so far, but we know that our readership consists of four kinds of people:

a) People who have, or think they have, or recently had, bed bugs.
b) People whose work makes them concerned about bed bugs (pest control professionals, entomologists, politicians, landlords, hotel managers, social service agencies, government officials, are just some sectors that I have heard from).
c) People who have heard about bed bugs and are concerned, and want to know more.

I think that group (a) is in the majority, and although most people don’t comment, most commenters fit in group a. In any case, the Bedbugger.com readership is a map of bed bug concern, and you’d be pretty safe betting its a map of where bed bugs are popping up–with the caveat, of course, that our site pops up more in US search engines than those abroad, and also that our readers are overwhelmingly English-speakers, though we have dreams of breaking down those linguistic barriers!

This is where the last 89 readers were reading the blog (circa 6:30 this evening):

1. San Diego, California, United States
2. Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom
3. Walden, New York, United States
4. Long Island City, New York, United States
5. New York, New York, United States
6. Plattekill, New York, United States
7. Hull, Quebec, Canada
8. Durant, Iowa, United States
9. Miamiville, Ohio, United States
10. Gibraltar
11. Calgary, Alberta, Canada
12. Boston, Massachusetts, United States
13. Humble, Texas, United States
14. Germantown, Maryland, United States
15. Rowland Heights, California, United States
16. New York, New York, United States
17. New York, New York, United States
18. Hadley, Kentucky, United States
19. Buffalo, New York, United States
20. HveragerÃƒÂ°i, Arnessysla, Iceland
21. Pine Falls, Manitoba, Canada
22. Livonia, Michigan, United States
23. Bayside, New York, United States
24. Woodhaven, New York, United States
25. Denver, Colorado, United States
26. New York, New York, United States
27. United States
28. Waterloo, Quebec, Canada
29. Los Angeles, California, United States
30. Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
31. Santa Maria, California, United States
32. Beamsville, Ontario, Canada
33. Kansas City, Missouri, United States
34. Corona, New York, United States
35. Barker, Texas, United States
36. Readville, Massachusetts, United States
37. Palo Alto, California, United States
38. Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
39. Mill Valley, California, United States
40. Ridgewood, New York, United States
41. Mehama, Oregon, United States
42. San Francisco, California, United States
43. Feeding Hills, Massachusetts, United States
44. Swedesburg, Iowa, United States
45. Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
46. West New York, New Jersey, United States
47. Lancaster, Blackpool, United Kingdom
48. New York, New York, United States
49. Miami, Florida, United States
50. Anaheim, California, United States
51. Harrow, Harrow, United Kingdom
52. Wilsonville, Oregon, United States
53. Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
54. Forest Hill, Ontario, Canada
55. Wayne, New Jersey, United States
56. KecskemÃƒÂ©t, Bacs-Kiskun, Hungary
57. Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada
58. Short Hills, New Jersey, United States
59. Seattle, Washington, United States
60. Jackson, Mississippi, United States
61. Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States
62. Secaucus, New Jersey, United States
63. Long Island City, New York, United States
64. United States
65. Tranbjerg, Arhus, Denmark
66. Naples, Florida, United States
67. San Francisco, California, United States
68. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
69. Gainesville, Florida, United States
70. Edmond, Oklahoma, United States
71. Hempstead, New York, United States
72. Everett, Massachusetts, United States
73. United States
74. United States
75. SÃƒÂ£o Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
76. Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
77. Bismarck, North Dakota, United States
78. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
79. Downers Grove, Illinois, United States
80. United States
81. Bend, Oregon, United States
82. Henderson, Nevada, United States
83. MontrÃƒÂ©al, Quebec, Canada
84. Sunnyvale, California, United States
85. Arlington, Texas, United States
86. United States
87. New York, New York, United States
88. Fairfax, Virginia, United States
89. Rochester, New York, United States

You might expect that most of these people came from the bed bug hot spots. We get lots of readers from Chicago, Boston, NYC, San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto. So it’s surprising that 89 people came from such a wide variety of places:

68 from at least 33 states (only 12 of these from NYC, San Francisco or Boston);
11 from 5 provinces in Canada;
4 from 4 cities in the UK (none of them London);
1 person each from: Hungary, Ireland, Denmark, Brazil, Iceland, and Gilbraltar.

In New York state, 10 of the 17 visitors were from NYC. And of the 10 in NYC, 60% were in Queens, where, unlike Staten Island, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan, each neighborhood has its own name used for the purposes of the postal service: Ridgewood, Corona, Long Island City, Woodhaven, Bayside, New York, are all in Queens, and part of NYC. Remember the Queens Gazette speculating that Queens was the “ground zero for NYC’s bed bugs? Well, I am still not sure it’s true, but it seems plausible: we certainly have a lot of Bedbuggers in Queens.

I peeked at the traffic report for the site because I have a geeky side and I find it interesting to know where you’re coming from. However, looking at it can tell us something about the bed bug problem. This is not a scientific study, but just a snapshot of our site’s traffic does tell you who’s worried about bed bugs (and, we can assume, many are worried because they have bed bugs).

Most of those cities were not capitals or the biggest cities in their regions or countries. A small percentage are from those places you think are hot spots. It should serve as a warning sign that bed bugs, like Bedbuggers, are everywhere, and way more spread out than you thought.

Got bed bugs? Bedbugger.com » iceland

FAQ: I am not in the US. Can you tell me where to buy XL ziplocs, or what mattress covers are called in my country?

Snapshot: a few hours of Bedbugger.com visitors tells us something about the spread