Got Bed Bugs? Bedbugger Forums » Bed Bug Success Stories
Success (We Holy Hope)
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CimexintheCity
newbite
Joined: Sep '08
Posts: 7
Posted 1 year ago
Wed Sep 10 2008 15:38:07
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I would like to think that we are a success story, though it’s only been more than a month. Since I can’t see returning to this web site a year form now (no offense anyone), I’ll post my story now. Here’s the back story: We live in Northern Virginia and our previous condo complex had a BB problem. We lived in a garden-style building built in the ‘60s and we were told that at least one unit on the basement level and one unit above us had BBs. As a precaution, they checked all units and, even though our particular condo was given the all-clear, they did a preventative treatment to our unit (just spraying the edges, not treating the mattresses, etc.). A few months later, and unrelated to the BB situation, we moved to a townhouse a few miles away (this was mid-May 2008). Fast-forward to the first week in August. After returning from a week-long vacation, my wife saw a bug crawling across the comforter on the bed. I immediately thought it was a tick (a souvenir from our trip up north) and took it into the bathroom to kill it (as some of you may know, ticks are really hard to kill—only a lit match will quickly do the job). As I realized how easy it was to kill this little sucker, my wife announced she’d found another one—under the sheets (cue screeching string section from “Psycho”). We both knew what was happening. We checked along the box spring and found the tell-tale sings and a few live BBs. Oddly enough, my wife and I have had very little reaction to BB bites. I have never noticed any bite marks or swelling. Before our trip, my wife did have raised bumps along her arms. We wrote it off as excema, a skin condition she had before on her hands, and stress related to her job and pregnancy (yes, she is now 5 months pregnant). In fact, we thought the vacation was so relaxing, it made the bumps go away. Actually, it was the absence of BBs. (This lack of reaction is a mixed blessing. We don’t suffer from the bites; at the same time, it will be hard to ever know if the BBs are gone before we have an epidemic).
Not knowing exactly what we should do, we moved to another bedroom on the same floor to avoid getting bit. It was an IKEA bed with no box spring and skinny metal legs and, as a precaution, I put a Tupperware bowl under each leg filled with water. Of course I later learned we should have stayed in the master bedroom since BBs will follow you and became entrenched in you new space, but we just wanted a BB-free bed. The next day we bagged all the clothes in the room into black bags and began the process of washing and drying everything. Since its summer in the DC area, we rotated other black bags of stuff we didn’t wash in my wife’s car, parking it in the sun whenever possible. We used a meat thermometer to check the ambient temperature in the car (not very scientific). It usually went over the magic 120 degrees, though no idea how hot it was inside the bags.
The exterminator came the Tuesday after the Sunday we found the BBs and I hired him on the spot (not a good idea—shop around it you can). He promised to kill them in two treatments (if we followed his advice) and gave us a six-month guarantee. He returned Saturday morning and sprayed around all the baseboards, de-BBed the beds and couch, and sprayed a “knock down” fog that would bring the BBs out to track through the poison. We came back four hours later with our two cats to a peppermint-smelling townhouse (if pregnant, be sure to tell the exterminator; we didn’t, but should have. Drat). We bought a new mattress/bedspring the next day and had it delivered Thursday. Wrapped up the box spring in a plastic drop cloth and had the mattress company haul it, and the mattress and frame, away. For the first time, we returned to the master bedroom. Wrapped mattress/box spring in protective covers and put each leg of our new frame in a Tupperware container full of mineral oil. I also put double-sided carpet tape on the containers, just in case.
After the exterminator came, we saw only a few BBs. A couple lethargically wandering around the bedroom in daylight; one on the steps leading down to the second level; one in the master bathroom; one in the kitchen on the day of the mattress exchange. Last night, I retrieved a bag from the car and removed my ties for work in the dining room. This morning, my heart leapt when I saw a BB on the carpet near the table. It was dead, and not just kinda dead, but crusty, no-legged, disintegrating-in-your-hand kinda dead. The bags in the car had done their work. Other things we have been doing: Vacuuming frequently. Used to throw out vacuum bags, now I store bag in large Ziploc between uses. I also bought the complete kit from Tallman Scientific. It costs a couple hundred bucks, but it’s worth the piece of mind and comes with fantastic mattress/box spring covers, a contact killer (which impressed my exterminator, but advised against using around my pregnant wife), DE dust and applicator (my exterminator said his company used the same metal/rubber applicator that Tallman includes) and gloves/mask. Although the residual spray the exterminator used will last for 90 days, I applied some dust last weekend in electrical sockets, in the bottom of the dresser, and around some of the baseboards. I also sprayed the contact killer deep into some of the crevices in the dresser and nightstand.
We pray daily these things are all dead. We still have all our clothes in some sort of bags (many in XXL or XL Ziplocs) and not in the dresser or bedroom. Sometimes we get a tad sloppy by not bagging some laundry and our hanging clothes are left unprotected in a closet in the computer room (I have to wear professional clothes to work). But we are hopeful. We are much luckier than most people because 1) we live in a single-family townhouse that cannot be re-contaminated by neighbors not committed to the problem; 2) we caught the problem fairly early since we knew what to look for; 3) we had just moved from a much smaller space and had very little clutter in our bedroom and no pictures, etc., on the wall; and 4) we had the resources to immediately hire an exterminator, replace our mattress, and buy extra ammunition to kill these little f*****. In hindsight, we should have never moved with the mattress and decontaminated our other belongings. We should have vigilantly checked for BBs since there was a problem in our previous building. We should have never moved to the second bedroom after we found BBs. I will definitely check back if the BBs make a return. If you never hear from me again, consider this story a success. Good luck and death to all BBs.
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CimexintheCity
newbite
Joined: Sep '08
Posts: 7
Posted 1 year ago
Wed Sep 10 2008 15:51:11
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Sorry. Above post changed to show that problem found in August, not September. Thanks.
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Good luck. Great username.
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Marixpress
member
Joined: Sep '08
Posts: 305
Posted 1 year ago
Wed Sep 10 2008 18:38:27
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Thanks for sharing your story. I hope they're gone for good!
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