bedbugs!

[EdipisReks]

i think i have bedbug psychosis. a couple days ago, i found a bedbug on the curtain by my laundry hamper. i'm almost completely sure that it was a stowaway from somewhere i visited on Saturday, maybe the movie theater (Cincinnati is right behind NYC as the bedbug capitol of US). it was a late stage larvae, according to pictures i found online, so not an egg layer yet. i haven't found any signs of any additional bedbug presence, and i've torn my apartment apart twice in the last two days, with no evidence of an infestation, yet every time i feel something on my skin, real or imagined, i jump. my neighbors across the hall seem like the kind of people who would have bedbugs. i think the bedbugs are watching me when i go outside. i think the bedbugs can read my thoughts. i think the bedbugs killed JFK. arrrrgggghhhhh. i have a large bottle of sterifab coming to me and perhaps, if i douse myself and my environs with it, seven times a day, and wear tissue boxes for shoes like Howard Hughes, and perhaps burn the building down, the bedbugs will stop invading my dreams. my building does have a few nice house spiders, perhaps i can coax them into an alliance against the brain bugs that feed on my emotions. it's a communist plot to sap and impurify my precious bodily fluids

what is it about bedbugs that just drives one crazy, even when they aren't there?

[Eamon Burke]

Because they are tenacious little a**holes, that's why! I've moved TWICE because of them, and lost thousands in furniture. My wife and I slept on a pull-out couch mattress directly on the floor(she even delivered a baby on it!), for 2 years because of bedbugs destroying 3 poorly designed, crack-riddled bedframes.

There is now a bedbug sniffer tool, and you can use dogs to smell them out.

We can't even eat flax seeds at our house because if one goes stray, my wife gets flashbacks and goes shell shocked, on an obsessive swat-search killing binge.

KILL
THEM
ALL.

[EdipisReks]

man, if i have gone as crazy as i have over finding one stray, i'd hate to see what i'd be like if they infested.

[Pensacola Tiger]

man, if i have gone as crazy as i have over finding one stray, i'd hate to see what i'd be like if they infested.

In that case, I wouldn't recommend watching "Joe's Apartment":

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi698941721/

[EdipisReks]

roaches i can handle.

[tk59]

Yeah. A few years ago I picked up an English house sparrow chick outside. A little while later (a few seconds?), I realized little mites were crawling up my arm. I was paranoid about the little buggers crawling on me for weeks.

[SpikeC]

You need to spray your space with DMSO. It will kill them all!

[EdipisReks]

heh. i was thinking maybe hydrofluoric.

[mr drinky]

Yeah, I have a bit of that paranoia going on too. I was in Dallas staying at an extended-stay hotel last spring and woke up to find an engorged bedbug on my chest. I slept the rest of the night on the table and checked out the next morning. Now when I come home from a trip, I put all of my clothes (dry) in the dryer at high heat, vacuum out my bag, and zip everything up tight.

I think if I found one in my house I would pay for the heat treatment. I hear it is expensive, but what will cost more is if you throw out a lot of furniture, find that you didn't get rid of them, and then have to throw out another round of furniture.

Now when I get any bug bite I wonder if it is a bedbug, and I about went nuts a couple summers ago when I got a bunch of chigger bites on my legs. And now it is wood tick season, and they even sort of look like bedbugs.

k.

[heirkb]

Bed bugs just suck. No way to get around it. I've had to deal with them once in NYC and they're a total pain. I'm surprised you guys lost furniture because of them, though. Can't you have the furniture, matresses, etc. sprayed like mr drinky mentioned? That's what I did and it was fine after than.

Like mr drinky I always worry that any bite at all is a bedbug bite. Until I see that "breakfast, lunch, and dinner" pattern, though, I don't think I'll freak out too much. That's when you see multiple bites concentrated really close to one another.