Don’t be put off by the fact that Matt Lauer opens the segment by dropping the nursery rhyme bomb.

Watch the video below, and pay special attention to the system senior pest control technician Wayne Walker is using at the University of Florida: baking bed bug-infested items in a “makeshift styrofoam oven” constructed inside the room. Of course, the room itself also needs thorough treatment.

Please do not try this at home. But let’s all hear it for imaginative and creative professional bed bug killers!

Wayne Walker also stresses the need to educate students on how to avoid bed bugs.

We also hear that The University of California at Berkeley is using heat, cold, and pesticides to fight bed bugs.

Matt Lauer talks to Rick Cooper, who brings in a sample “mattress” with fecal stains, and talks about mattress encasements, how students bring bed bugs into their homes (and parents’ homes), and the difficulties of bed bug treatment.

(Bonus: watch Matt Lauer giggle in embarrassment at the phrase “fecal stains”!)

Along with other segments appearing in the print and tv news in the last week or so, I’d say this year marks the most back-to-college bed bug coverage we’ve seen yet.

• Back to school: news media focuses on bed bugs in college dorms
• bed bugs in the media: the Today Show, Tuesday morning
• Forget black mattress stains, bed bugs, shells, and eggs: NMPA press release tells consumers to look for “blood spots”
• Bed bugs lurk in hotel rooms, says ABC news

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I am sure it is a coincidence that I criticized Meredith Viera’s recent recommendation on the Today show that viewers recycle used mattresses via Craigslist and Freecycle. But I am glad they’re doing it, all the same.

Update 11/20:

University of California at Berkeley entomologist Gail Getty provided good advice about getting a good PCO (and following his/her instructions!), not self-treating with foggers and Raid, and not picking up used furniture.

Among the more interesting images provided was video footage of a bed bug excreting something on a sheet (bed bug feces, I presume), and of blood stains on sheets. (As an aside, we were contacted yesterday by Today, which is how I knew about the segment in advance. They wanted to use Amy’s bite photo, the first one on the Bed Bug Bites Photos page, but unfortunately, they appear to have been unable to get through to Amy in time to secure the permissions.)

My only criticism was that while the focus on inspecting a mattress is useful for the holiday travel season, it is important to remind people that they can get bed bugs not just from hotel mattresses, curbside sofas, or by picking them up at the movie theater or in an airplane. They can also get them without doing anything, if they live in a multi-unit building.

And I am still worried that Meredith Viera and many of her viewers who might not have caught this Today Health segment might not make the connection between the advice to donate used mattresses to Craigslist or freecycle, and the spread of bed bugs.

Overall, however, it was a good segment. And you don’t even have to crack open that Tivo file and fast-forward through Bush pardoning the Turkey. You can watch the segment here. (Right now, you can click “next” to the right of the video boxes to scroll to the bed bug video, but later on you might need to use the search box at the Today site.)

• Today show recommends sharing used mattresses on Craigslist, Freecycle
• more from Pennsylvania
• Another Craigslist bed bug story
• Kentucky Department of Public Health steps up its bed bug fight

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