You might think that once a bed bug infestation is gone from your home (or you’re gone from the bed bug-infested home), that life would be normal again. In many cases, that’s not exactly true.

The second installment of a series of articles on bed bugs by Alan Good in McSweeney’s focuses on the author’s move to New York City, and the lasting effects of having experienced a bed bug problem.

Bed bug sufferers are often forever changed by their newfound awareness of bed bugs, the havoc they can wreak, and how easily a person might one day pick them up again:

As a seasoned gangster knows never to make himself vulnerable, never to sit with his back to the front door of a restaurant, but to position himself unobtrusively in a seat from which he can survey the entire scene, the sufferer of bedbugs, once rid of the infernal pests, is always quietly aware of the risks of re-infestation. The sufferer is burdened with a level of consciousness of which the mass of his neighbors remain blissfully oblivious, namely, that a bloodsucker is born every minute (an ultra-conservative estimate) and extreme care must be taken to keep them out of the house. The sufferer undertakes his precautions unnoticed. He is careful of where he places his bag, refrains from leaning on walls or subway pillars, is wary of attractive items left on the street and will only take them home if, first, they are extraordinarily marvelous or useful and, second, they can readily be ascertained to be bedbug-free.

For many of us, some of these concerns may lessen in time. But many people change at least some old habits forever.

I know you’ll want to read the rest of Good’s essay here.

I commented on the first post in this McSweeney’s series here.Similar Posts:

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Bed bugs in the New York Times, bed bugs in the Huffington Post, bed bugs on the BBC, and NPR.

Forget all that, Mr. Cimex Lectularius!

You know you’ve arrived when people write about you in McSweeney’s, which promises us not just one, but an entire series of pieces about bed bugs:

Like the Jonas Brothers, bedbugs are everywhere. They were even found, unlike the Jonas Brothers, in the apartment of Alan Good, the author of this column, which we’ll bring you, every other week or so, observations on and news and harrowing tales of the aforementioned insidious parasites.

We love bed bugs being discussed in the media, period.

But personal tales of bed bug woe are often more informative than researched news spots.  There’s nothing like a personal narrative to convey the length and depth of disruption to one’s life that a bed bug infestation can cause.

My favorite part of Alan Good’s initial bed bug column, however, is the ending:

There will always be doubt, anxiety. Bedbugs, to me, indicate cosmic hostility. Either God doesn’t exist, or God exists and hates us or at least isn’t fond of us. I cannot accept that a loving God would create a creature whose sole purpose is to feast on the flesh of his so-called children. I find inspiration in these lines from “The City of Dreadful Night” by James Thompson:

The vilest thing must be less vile than Thou/From whom it had its being, God and Lord!

Maureen believes in God, and she believes God, who is loving and good, has a reason for everything he creates. This must include bedbugs, so one day she asked a priest who works at the shelter why bedbugs even exist. He answered that, while they probably have some sort of evolutionary function, they might just be here to annoy us.

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Slightly delayed news round-up:

newyorkshitty.com » ‘Tis The Season: Don’t Let The Bedbugs Bite!

miss heather of newyorkshitty.com shares a current photo of suspected bed bug refuse at the Astral Apartments in Greenpoint, and shares an article from exactly 121 years ago, decrying the need for “quality affordable housing”, free of vermin.

Glenwood Springs Post Independent – Valley News (Colorado)

“Tom Cornwell, president of the Colorado Pest Control Association, will be speaking to representatives from hotels and motels, … and public and housing personnel from 11 a.m. to noon Friday, Dec. 7.” Public education is the key to beating bed bugs.

Stamford, CT: The Advocate – Flooding and failing health leave residents seeking help (flood evacuees get bed bugs in hotel)

“During the spring nor’easter, a Stamford senior housing complex was flooded, and residents were forced to move to a hotel temporarily. Upon returning home, residents discovered their building was infested with bed bugs.”

Some Crazy Garbage: Away, ye critters

A blogger’s first-hand account of a Pest Control Operator’s visit. Yes, google alerts sends me multiple such posts a day from various “newbites” around the world. But this one was entertaining to read, even as it conveyed the tale of woe you have come to expect.

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A newbite named NotSoSnug has gotten our attention in the forums with his unique approach to his bed bug situation.

This is NotSoSnug’s comparison of a nymph and adult bed bug (perhaps one of our entomologist friends could confirm the life stage of the nymph for us?)

bugz4_F

Originally uploaded by NotSoSnug

After having the landlord get a pest control operator (PCO) in to treat his apartment for bed bugs, NotSoSnug did not simply go about his business while the bed bugs died. Yes, he did stick around and sleep on his air mattress, on a tarp surrounded by double-sided tape. (A common strategy, I am nevertheless skeptical about how often people trap bed bugs this way.) Just as others do, he kept sleeping in his room, if not in the actual bed.

NotSoSnug went further, though. He made it his personal mission to wake up every two hours and hunt bed bugs with a red light, which he informed us does not disturb them as a normal light would.

Here’s what NotSoSnug had to say about his methods:

I sleep on a tile floor isolated by tape/vaseline about two feet from my retracted murphy bed. The bed when retracted looks like a big cedar tongue in groove closet against the gyprock wall in my bachelor suite. This is their harbourage, hopefully their only one as there is alot of tongue in groove in this place and it all wasn’t treated! So far I’ve only noticed activity associated with the treated murphy bed and one treated lounge chair. I am unsure but I may have received a bite from an isolated, untreated, upholstered computer chair.

Yes: murphy bed, built into a wooden tongue-in-groove structure: are you getting worried? This is, unfortunately, a bed bug paradise.

Even with the isolation I am not sleeping well, partly out of anxiety and partly because I am incessantly curious. So I wake up at intervals all night. At first I was using my white LED camping light when they were limited mostly to being active in early morning before treatment and before they got really hungry from my isolation. But I could see the white light alarmed the critters and I had to be furtive with it. Even so I caught 25 one night with the white light a few days before treatment! Then I realized from reading somewhere a red light might work and I had my red LED tail light from my bike. So out it came and me and my trusty sticky tape were ready.

The red light does not alarm them but movement does. I have to lay still on my air mattress and sweep the murphy bed with the red light to spot them. They may be moving or still. If I sneak slowly I can tape them before they realize I’m upon them. I use a piece of 2″x2″ sticky packing tape cut to size. Since I don’t have to move far it’s not hard to sneak up on them even with their speed. Sometimes I have to wait until they have crawled away from a groove or crack sufficiently so I can nab them. Sometimes I can clumsily and groggily nab them half into a crack. I’ve nabbed 2nd instar nymphs up to adults this way. Some 1st instar nymphs were inadvertently retrieved during taping the older bugz as well.

Any ones I’ve seen I’ve nabbed, with patience. Even if they disappear for a bit they inevitably come out as they are looking for a meal and unwilling to leave with a fresh bod nearby.

I’ve noted that they seem unwilling to venture out on the tile preferring to lurk on the wood. I’ve only caught very few out on tile, two adults and two nymphs before treatment and since treatment I’ve only seen two adults venture onto the tile, and then only close to furniture. And I’ve only seen 2 (adults) out during the day, on the floor, pre-treatment and none on any walls or the kitchen or bathroom or closets. Of course the 1st instars are virtually invisible to me on any surface so I may have missed some. But I am thankful for having the tile, it makes looking for them easier and seems to limit their excursions somewhat!

I’ll add that it embarasses me I didn’t notice this many critters in the months preceeding my discovery. I had bites but thought it was my seasonal excema. I wonder that so many bugs have remained limited to one area. Lots of nooks and crannies I guess.

NotSoSnug had bed bug bite reactions for two months before discovering the problem. There are clearly a lot of bed bugs here. This is the tally for the bed bug hunting he has done after treatment began on November 11th:

Date/Number of Active Insects Caught
Mon. Nov 12 – 2
Thurs. Nov 15 – 25
Fri. Nov 16 – 2
Sat. Nov 17 – 7
Sun. Nov 18 – 1
Mon. Nov 19 – 12
Tues. Nov 20 to Nov 23 Free from visible activity so far

In an email, NotSoSnug mentioned only one dead bed bug was found in the last five days. It is important to note that there were probably many more bed bugs (these are just the ones NotSoSnug caught while on his regular “hunts”) and there are likely still bed bugs there now. Bed bugs take 3-10 minutes to feed, from what we understand, and anyone getting some shut-eye, even if it’s once an hour or two, will miss some of the action. This surely represents only a sampling of the real total population. And some of these bed bugs likely crossed pesticide and would have died anyway, but no doubt at least some of them would not have.

Nevertheless, I thought this was an interesting experiment, and even if this sampling represents a wider population, it gives us some idea of the arc of the treatment’s effectiveness. A downward-moving number is a very good thing.

NotSoSnug caught and categorized the bed bugs according to when he found them, then scanned the results.

And here is NotSoSnug’s pictorial record of his “finds” (you can click on the photos and then choose the largest size for better viewing):

bugz5_FE

Originally uploaded by NotSoSnug

bugz6_FE

Originally uploaded by NotSoSnug

bugz7_FE

Originally uploaded by NotSoSnug

This is one way that someone with no evidence of bed bugs could obtain proof they were being bitten by bed bugs, for their landlord or PCO. It’s surprising how often people and their PCOs have trouble finding a bug, and the red light strategy seems promising. Remember that if you have a smaller infestation, it could take longer to find a sample.

I don’t encourage others to try and do this long-term, to the degree NotSoSnug has. Sleep is hard enough to come by when you have bed bugs, and waking at 1-2 hour intervals is murder on your system. I do think we can learn from this experiement, though. I also hope NotSoSnug gets some sleep.

The downside of NotSoSnug’s story is that his landlord is not willing to do a follow-up treatment, so clearly necessary, with a strong infestation like this. And NotSoSnug is going to be moving, a daunting prospect with bed bugs. We wish him well.

You can read the forum thread where NotSoSnug originally posted his story here. And you can look at his flickr collection here.
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Bed bugs? Questions? Thoughts?

Please use this thread to comment or ask questions while the forums are down.

Note: You can login to comment with the same name and password you use in the forums — and ignore the error message you will receive after posting.Similar Posts:

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Welcome to Brooklyn

Originally uploaded by TheGirlsNY

Bushwick, Brooklyn is home to two large dueling loft buildings: 248 and 255 McKibben Street. Yes, that’s right: they’re buildings so hip, fun, and now, they have their own myspace pages. (Don’t laugh, but we have one too.)

Gawker did an article today about the buildings’ problems with bed bugs, though judging from the comments there and on myspace, only the residents of 248 are claiming to have a problem with bed bugs.

The Bed Bug Registry has complaints from thirteen different tenants about the building. (For its neighbor 255 McKibben, there are none.)

248 McKibben also has a whole blog running on myspace about the building’s alleged bed bug epidemic. It makes for interesting reading. The residents are correct that the entire building must be treated, if the infestation is as extensive as they claim it is. There’s a reluctancy on the part of some residents to call HPD (311) and file a housing complaint, for fear they won’t get references from their landlord in future.

Such concerns abound on our forums too. I have not heard from anyone who has filed an HPD report on a landlord and who has not been able to rent after that. I do know multiple people who have “pissed landlords off” by expecting to have pest problems, leaks, etc. fixed, and whose landlords were so happy to see such “troublemakers” move on that they gave the next landlord glowing reviews!

So I think the idea is kind of an urban myth. If it happens, though, surely the tenants could clip articles about how infested their building was, and show it to future real estate brokers as evidence that they had good reason to file an HPD report. Frankly, shouldn’t the real estate brokers recognize that if HPD agrees with the tenant that their building is infested (and files said report), then the tenant should not be blacklisted in this way?

Or are we all going to end up living with bed bugs because we’re afraid our landlords will not give us a good reference when we want to move to another building with different amenities and more bed bugs? Because if everyone is afraid to demand their landlords treat the problem, we’ll all have bed bugs soon.Similar Posts:

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Remember when you were little and the lights went out and your parents got out the candles and flashlights and you pretended you were camping in your living room? A bit of that spirit of “roughing it” is called for right now; as per my last post below, the forums are temporarily down due to a technical glitch.

If you need bed bug advice, have a bed bug horror story, want to update us on an ongoing issue, or have a great idea, post a comment below. We’ll respond.

(And when the forums are back, we’ll go back there.)

Thanks for your patience, and don’t be shy. We’re still here to help, despite the capricious whims of the technogods.trolls.
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I hope soon the forums will be up and working again. Until then, this is the ongoing thread where people ask questions about bed bugs, give us updates on their bed bug situations, and share ideas for fighting the little mahogany monsters. When it gets too long, I close the thread and start a new one to keep the conversation going. If you want to see it, the prior thread was here. To see all the Tales of Woe entries, click here.

Comments for this thread are closed. To tell your tale of bed bug woe, please come to our forums!

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This is the ongoing thread where people ask questions about bed bugs, give us updates on their bed bug situations, and share ideas for fighting the little mahogany monsters. When it gets too long, I close the thread and start a new one to keep the conversation going. (The last one was 133 comments, so here we are, starting again!)

The prior installment is here. Similar Posts:

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This is the place to post your bed bug stories, updates, questions, etc. Just click comments and fire away.

The previous entry in the series is here.Similar Posts:

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