Got Bed Bugs? Bedbugger Forums » Detection / Identification of bed bugs
If they love wood ... they love my house.
(2 posts)-
buggy_eyed_fool
newbite
Joined: Sep '11
Posts: 18offline
Posted 1 year ago
Fri Sep 9 2011 20:21:24
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Alright, I've been stalking this website for awhile now. I finally decided to register and post on here. I feel like I've read everything possible about bedbugs, yet I'm not 100% sure we have them. Err, wait, I am pretty sure ... but I'm praying someone will come along and say, "You don't know what you're talking about -- that's not a bedbug!" This nightmare has been going on for close to two years; however, I feel like I'm finally reaching a new level of tolerance. What else can you do? When it started, I got bit -- bit a lot. I passed them off as mosquito bites, but you can only believe that for so long. When it's 0 out in a harsh Michigan winter, you can't claim mosquitoes are the evil ones anymore. I would spend hours -- hell, I still do -- researching bedbugs. I would find a few stragglers on my mattress and then I wouldn't see any for months. My husband would get bit and tell me they were most definitely mosquito bites ... only to avoid the "bedbug talk". Evidently, he believes if you don't talk about it, it's not real. Anyhow, this is the real kicker ... we just finished an entire whole house remodel. When I say whole house, I mean we had four walls standing and nothing in between. Nine months later, we're back in our house. I have been meticulously cleaning EVERYTHING as we bring it in. We have thrown out our mattress, bedroom furniture, recliner, dining room chairs ... not because of bedbugs, but because everything stored in our garage was filled with mold. Ha! (I cried already. Might as well laugh about it now, right?) Anyhow, we have a new mattress and guess what? Pretty darn sure I spotted a little straggling bedbug on it. Everything that has came into this house has been thrown in the dishwasher or laundered on HOT. My only guess is these blood sucking pieces of crap are hidden in the crevices of this house. We live in a log cabin. There's THOUSANDS of cracks. Also, today, I found what I believed to be another bedbug in my daughter's crib. She also has a mark on the back of her neck. I've seen a total of five since we moved back in two weeks ago. I have never seen evidence of blood marks or whatnot on sheets or whatever else we're supposed to be looking for. I've steamed the hell out of everything with a $600 commercial grade steamer .... and my OCD has gotten significantly worse. Lastly, here is a picture of what I caught today. They are tiny. I've never seen a "big" one. I have to squint to see these little suckers. Judging from others situations (and gosh, I feel for you in a huge way), I don't think we have a bad infestation like what I've read stories about. What can we do now? We just poured our whole life savings into remodeling this place, so the last thing we can afford is to give the rest of our cash to an exterminator. I just search all the beds in this house daily -- obsessively -- probably hourly. When I see them, I let them crawl up on a piece of toilet paper and I flush them. Like I said, I've found maybe five.
Oh, and here is my actual initial question that I almost forgot to ask: is there something I can wipe these logs down with to kill them? That's my only guess as to where they're coming from. No one lived in this house either for 9 months during the remodel. You can only imagine my frustration.
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jrbtnyc
Member
Joined: Sep '10
Posts: 1,001offline
Posted 1 year ago
Fri Sep 9 2011 20:38:41
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Non-expert me sez it's definitely not a bed bug. Picture isn't all that clear but looks to be a beetle of some kind, perhaps one of the stored product pest species that eat grain or etc..
It doesn't prove you don't have bed bugs. Keep looking for crawlies and photographing them. If you post ten photos here for identification by experts, and nine aren't bed bugs but one is, then that would mean you do have bed bugs.
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