Got Bed Bugs? Bedbugger Forums » Tales of Bed Bug Woe
Puzzling Bugs
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bbfiend
junior member
Joined: Sep '09
Posts: 82
Posted 2 months ago
Wed Sep 2 2009 18:38:32
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This is our experience contribution:
My husband and I recently got some bedbugs - the suspicion is that we got them from a local movie theater here.
I was the original bait, my husband wasn't bitten for a couple of weeks. We thought the bites were from mosquito, after all, this July had been super rainy and going to the park daily with the dog does attract the attention of these mosies. How we realised the truth is a bedbug crawl around on my husband's jeans one evening (he got multiple bites under his jeans that day). That night, I called a friend who has had bbs for her pest control guy. Called the guy up and made an appointment for inspection.
We kept the bug we caught. The next day, we bagged up ALL our clothes and threw a-third of our clothing away (call it purging). In the process, we caught 3 more bugs, of varying sizes. When the exterminator got to our apartment, he had an easy task, since all fabric stuff was bagged up. He spent about an hour going through 5 rooms, spraying and inspecting. Strangely, no bbs were found on our mattresses (we had just moved and had not bought a bed yet, so camping on mattresses temporarily). He suggested not to buy a bed till we are cleared of this pesky issue. The diagnosis is that we do not have an infestation, he could barely find a bug. However, that night, we caught 5. Somehow, the bugs came out after the spraying.
Interestingly, I react instantaneously to the bites. Besides the itch, somehow I sense the bites. My husband's bite don't blow up till the next day while I start to see welts of distended proportions almost by the minute. The good thing to this is that I would wake up knowing I had just been bitten and would be able to catch the bugs.
We started a new routine at night, being the obsessive people we are and driven by this insane desire to win the fight with these bugs, we took to staying up at night, taking turns watching, basically, I would sleep first, while my husband would sit on a high chair, watching the bed and after a few hours, we would switch and we did this for more than a week and then some after that. We did get to kill about 20 bugs in all, over the last 2 months. I choose to think that a dead bug is one that will not reproduce and grow more pesky vampires.
In the day, we spend hours doing laundry - we spent days and quite a bit of money on it. Necessary, I know.
I know we sound crazy, but luckily our work schedule allow us this routine without going crazy. This whole fight did get to us, my husband is more psychologically freaked out by it than I am. I am just thankful these don't transmit diseases.
We also experimented with the bbs, after reading about heat and cold treatment on this site. We had found 2 once and kept them in separate ziploc bags. One was a full size and one was medium. Put both in the freezer for 8 hours, when we took them out, they looked still and dead. When we moved the bigger bug, something came out from it's end tip - white drop, possibly an egg? Fairly hard, used my nail to crush it. Not convinced, we kept them in the bags and let them thaw out, kept them on the table, in the bags, for about a week. What we wanted to see is if they could thaw out and come back to life. After about a week, their appearance changed. They looked drier, less glossy. Still dead. That was fun, torturing these bugs. I wish we could spank them and make them tell us where the others were hiding though. Wouldn't that solve a lot of our issues?
The exterminator came each time we found a bug (or 2), eventually, it would be 2 weeks before we saw the next bug and now, it's been a month before we found one - last night! Yikes! Didn't think they could be in the living room, but I was bitten at about 11pm while watching Family Guy. Don't know why and how it was there, I was on the couch the whole night before when i had a sleepless episode but didn't once get bitten and then suddenly, one bit me last night. Again, my ridiculously superfast reaction came on, and it helped catch the little bugger. It was hiding under the back cushion of the couch.
So this is what's puzzling me - how is it that we had been doing what we had been doing, according to the exterminator's advice and progressively not get bitten and then suddenly we would get one. Or 2 or 3 or 4? To date, the exterminator had been here about 5 times. Each time he sprayed, we would see dead insects the next day.. yes, the spray also killed whatever other bugs there were in the apartment.
This doesn't make sense. Maybe I shouldn't be trying to rationalise their pattern of operation here, but I don't get how in 4 weeks, there was nothing and then suddenly, one would pop out of nowhere?!?!?!?!?!
Could it be that the bugs were feeding off on my dog and not us in the past few weeks and decided that canine blood isn't the same as human?
We are still living out of ziploc bags. All our books had been packed away and sealed up. Keeping up with the vacuuming and laundry. I don't want to live in denial, I need to still stay on top of this, don't want this to come back a year later to haunt us!
Anyone ever have similar experience? Please share.
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you have drunk bedbugs! mine are drunk, too. they travel from my room to my roommates room to bite her and then come back to sleep in my couch. i think they're on drugs or something.
nah, really....i had a hard time with them the first time around because i couldn't figure them out. where, why, how, none of it was typical according to all the sites i read. i don't like an insect being smarter than me but the truth is....they react to their environment. after one year bb free i've started getting bit again. i believe it to be one bug. ONE FRIGGIN BUG that somehow decided not to cross the poison barrier. but that's the thing...they don't have to eat every 5-10 days and they can last up to a year on one meal. so if they smell poison and divert into the walls and find a rat (or dog) to live off of then they will. when poison is gone and you are available they'll bite you! i may totally be giving them too much credit but i kept a schedule and count of my bb's and i studied their pattern (it was easier because i only had a few). after they spread there is no pattern. but that's why you should always sleep in your bed. don't make them spread to another room to catch you!
i wish you luck! it sounds like you're handling this quite well. i'm lucky because i'm in Brooklyn so my apartment can only be so big (eventhough it's huge to NY standards) but those who have 3 bedroom, 2 floor homes have a bigger fight. there's so much room for the bugs to run away to. i think if you just stick with it then you'll beat them. or maybe think about hiring a bb dog? maybe if you can find the babies you can stop them! good luck
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bbfiend
junior member
Joined: Sep '09
Posts: 82
Posted 2 months ago
Thu Sep 3 2009 22:04:29
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hi cb,
thanks for sharing. funny, we are in brooklyn and like you, our apartment is big according to nyc standards! funnier, we actually have a scent hound. not that that's much help, his job is to hunt for food.
anyhow, psychologically, i think i'm coping well too, my husband has a little bit of a harder time.
we're still living out of ziplocs (time to buy shares in that company!), still caulking coz as you know so many brooklyn apartments are so badly maintained, cracks and crevices everywhere.
our next thing is to encase our couch. small one - love seat, so i figure getting a king-sized mattress encasement will be enough to encase the small couch. the one night i slept on the couch, i didn't get bitten (bad sleepless night it was though not coz of bbs), the next night i was just laying there before going to bed, watching tv. it was definitely a desperately starving bb, i think.
we did kill all those we caught and like i mentioned before, when i get bitten, i react so quickly that i usually can catch them. i'm a good bait - they bite me, i kill them.. hehehehe.. thankful they don't transmit diseases though.
did catch 2 nymphs.. clear, we saw them coz of fhs blood they took from us.
again, a dead bug is a good bug.
thanks again.
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