Advice from private pest control experts, freely offered on the radio and in the national press, has included avoiding sitting down on public transport, and a suggestion that you strip naked in your entrance hall on return from work, before washing all your clothes at very high temperatures. The consequences of not calling in the experts are, of course, dire. “I’m often called out to people with more than 150 bites,” claimed one pest controller.

In your service we carried out a thorough investigation and have become suspicious. Have you been bitten? Do you know anyone who has? And isn’t it rather a coincidence that North America has just recently been enduring a similar epidemic? In New York, newspapers report the story of 21-year-old Michelle Hopkins, who says she was nearly eaten alive by bedbugs in her college dorm. And a popular children’s TV show, My Bedbugs, has gone nationwide across the US. Too uncanny for words.

My map says yes, they have them over there too. This confirms the experiences of our readers from across the pond.

I realize that David Cain’s and Rentokil’s Savvas Othon’s warnings in the recent British press sound alarmist. I realize also that News Of the World is may not be the source of the most balanced scientific journalism.

However, bed bugs really are back, and they really are bad. Not always that bad, and not yet everywhere, but you really do not want them spreading further.

So, my British friends, please do drop a comment over at the New Statesman, and let them know what’s up with bed bugs in the UK. The “My Bedbugs” reference in the article (read on) says they’re joking.

But let’s play along, shall we?

• Welcome Bedbuggers!
• Tampa Bay and Southwest Florida residents: do not use the DE from your pool
• Time for action: support the Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act 2008 currently in the U.S. House of Representatives
• News round-up: UK’s Daily Telegraph on bed bugs; Cincinnati’s finest are working to avoid bed bugs

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