Here’s a snippet:

Day 2

Jihad walked up the stairs today and our neighbor, Isabella, began — without provocation — to discuss the serious issue of bedbugs and how they are affecting New York. Jihad told her that we have bedbugs and her eyes lit up like a child’s on Christmas.

“You have bedbugs!” she said aghast, but somehow also terribly excited. “Well they are impossible to get rid of!”

Jihad thanked her for this tidbit but she insisted on coming upstairs and called me out into the hallway. “Yes?” I said.

“I hear you have bedbugs,” Isabella said.

Undisguised examples of Schadenfreude are rare in society. Usually, people will tuck it away under a façade of sympathy. When you see one, it’s a really special moment.

“They are impossible to get rid of,” Isabella said, smiling.

Interestingly, Brown’s neighbor’s first instinct is not to wonder if she has them or might catch them. It’s wonder and excitement at someone else’s misfortune.

Bed bugs aren’t impossible to get rid of, but it’s not easy either. You need dedication, help, tools, and for everyone to cooperate (whether it’s your roommates or family or your neighbors and landlord).

The tone of this piece, as well as the neighbor’s reaction, suggest that word is really getting around about bed bugs. That in New York, at least, we’re getting past the point where people haven’t heard of bed bugs, or don’t believe they really exist. That is good news in the sense, in terms of awareness being raised, but bad news in that it came at the price of many people having to deal with this problem.

I look forward to reading the next installment and hopefully finding out that the only pest they have to deal with now is the nosy neighbor.

• The Huffington Post: Nicholas Brown’s bed bugs, volumes 3 and 4
• Marty Markowitz’s building has bed bugs
• New Discovery Channel series follows pest control operators at work
• Dayton and Middletown, Ohio: avoiding bed bugs is difficult

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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
• News round-up: UK’s Daily Telegraph on bed bugs; Cincinnati’s finest are working to avoid bed bugs
• Men’s Health on bed bugs: “The Dirt on Hotel Rooms”

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(Photo by News of the World)

It is entitled, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers!”

NOTW journalist Sophy Ridge quotes David Cain (who has participated in our Forums) as saying that his calls for bed bugs are up 500% compared with last year’s calls.

Similarly,

Rentokil boss Savvas Othon said: “Outbreaks are on the rise. The number of people travelling and the current warm UK temperatures are helping the bugs to spread and thrive.

“You can easily pick them up on buses, in airport lounges and from other people’s dry cleaning. Even car boot sales make it worse as people buy furniture which may already be infested.”

Experts advise vacuuming mattresses and cleaning regularly to keep the bugs at bay. But if you’ve got them, there’s only one thing for it.

Who you gonna call? …pest busters.

(Car boot sales are “flea markets” in the US.)

This article is bound to reach even more people who have not heard of bed bugs. Unfortunately, NOTW is, as those not familiar with it can see, a fairly sensationalist tabloid. I hope that people in the UK will nevertheless seriously consider the facts contained in this story, and will consider being more cautious about used items, and also consider pressuring their government to take this issue seriously.

There is certainly no need to panic: I still use dry cleaners and sit on subway trains (gasp!) though the NYC epidemic is surely as bad as that in London. However, bed bugs are surely being spread in all these ways and more. Most people don’t consider this until they have them; those who do fear getting them over and over, since the rest of the world seems completely oblivious.

Articles in the popular press are a good way to spread the word. Hopefully this article will help start more conversations about bed bugs in the UK.

Yes, I said UK: despite the NOTW’s banner referencing “England,” the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish elsewhere in the UK (as well as their neighbors in the Republic of Ireland) are also battling bed bugs.

• Given that they spread like wildfire, why did bed bugs take 30 years to come back?
• Landlord won’t tell new tenants you have bed bugs?
• Spring break bed bug warnings!
• Bed bugs and marketing (again)

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