BED BUGS

Either don't make your bed, or turn-down your bed in the morning. The stops the bed being a warm, moist envronment which bed bugs thrive in.

Bedbugs are spoiling my sleep

they are almost impossible to get rid of, and with all due respect, turning down or not making the bed has nothing to do with it. your friend needs to vacuum his/her apt top to bottom, including all furniture and soft surfaces, and focus on crevices/baseboards. wrapping the mattress in plastic can help. there are a few pesticides that are supposed to work (drione is one), but they're not legal in new york. our downstairs neighbor got some stuff called real kill from home depot that we've all been using, with some success.

also - if it seems bad, the mattress has to go.

Thankfully I've never had them but I have had friends that have had to move because of bed bugs. Lauren is right they really are almost impossible to get rid of. Getting a new mattress and replacing furniture is usually a must.

ugh, wow. i can't imagine.

Also, tell your friend to check out the following sites:

http://www.bedbugregistry.com/
www.bedbugger.com

thx!

I was just wondering this morning if maybe I had bedbugs. I have a couple inexplicable itchy spots on my legs.

u should get itchy spots checked out! i guess they happen in scattered, small spots, but they itch a bunch

jesus christ am i ever glad that i got the hell out of new york

yea wtf, is this only a ny thing?

interestingly enough http://www.bedbugregistry.com/ is my friend's site.

Jesse, they feel like HORRIBLE mosquito bites. Raised and weepy.

good night

sleep tight

yea wtf, is this only a ny thing?

No, the bedbug infestation has been really bad here in Boston the last couple years. The dept of pub health now labels all items left on the curb with big stickers warning people of the bedbug danger. Gross.

EWW good point! i never thought of it

what I read is that bedbugs were history because of the kinds of chemicals we were using on roaches for the better half of the mid to late last century, but when the more ecologically safe baits and traps replaced constant spraying, the bedbugs came back.

my girlfriend had them a few months ago. We dry cleaned tons of stuff, washed stuff and kept them in the dryer forever, got rid of TONS of clothes/sheets etc, put the mattress in a plastic bag and put everything else that wasn't washed in vacuum sealed or just tied-shut bags. If you put clothes in an airtight bag and leave them there for 3 months, the bugs will starve. Beyond all that we sprayed and vacuumed and washed all our furniture.

In the end an exterminator looked around and said he didn't see any signs of the bugs (they leave little marks on the mattress, usually) and my girlfriend didn't get any more bites. He said it's possible to pick 1 up and bring it home, it eats for a few nights then you accidently kill it at some point and that's it. Maybe we were lucky.

If you put clothes in an airtight bag and leave them there for 3 months, the bugs will starve. Beyond all that we sprayed and vacuumed and washed all our furniture.

^ its more like 3 weeks

I thought they could live without out food for up to a year??

ddt is supposedly the be all, end all bed bug killer but it's not legal anymore. i think i read that there have been tentative moves made to relegalize it for limited use, but i could be making that up.

Black Market DDT

it's all rachel carson's fault

I guess, Laurel?

The best thing to do is to sleep somewhere else while isolating everything clean in plastic and waging chemical warfare.

if you can, allow your apartment to get below freezing for one night

I think the deal is that if you've had yr mattress fumigated or steamed, it's helpful to wrap it up in plastic afterward until you're sure the rest of the infestation is gone...otherwise it just gets re-grossed.

Ugh, what a nightmare. I moved into an apartment here in Vancouver with a minor infestation last year, and it was a serious pain in the ass. We ended up having a pest guy come in several times, thankfully paid for by landlord, who treated the place and also gave us this enzyme spray which kills adult bugs-- we basically sprayed down all the furniture and washed the floors, baseboards, etc. regularly with it. This went on for a couple months, but we got rid of them without moving or chucking shit out.

Thank goodness my apt is uncomfortably cold and has giant cement floors separating the storeys. Knocking wood I never get these.

me too... i'm kindo f scared

when i was watching 'i am legend' i couldn't stop thinking of bed bugs. quarantine NYC.

i am really not the person to get something like this. i'm so paranoid i would probably just move.

Even if you moved, you'd still have to go nuts on every piece of clothing or furniture you own, before you could even start dragging them into the hallway.

In their plastic bubbles.

right.

great.

Now I'm kind of nervous b/c I have a couple weird bites on me that itch, and when my neighbors moved in (about a year and a half ago) they told me that they had to leave their last place b/c of bedbugs.

oh. u should have a check up!

i guess using a hair dryer on your bed/furniture can help

oh god that just sounds like a hellish month, hairdrying your whole fucking apartment. i mean, it's just so awful.

the most telling sign of bed bugs is when the bites are several in a row, about an inch or so apart. Apparently they start biting you while you're sleeping, you get restless and move a bit, it knocks them out, they move an inch away and bite again, and this repeats.

it doesn't look at all like flea bites. very distinctive

Hmmm...well then I feel better. I sometimes have allergic reactions similar to the current itchiness, but I've been living in squalor for the past couple months (at least sort of--haven't done laundry in over a month b/c the laundromat is far away and the weather's been shitty) and I got worried.

(My laundry pile is now higher above my dresser top--about 4-1/2 feet. Just been buying new clothes and handwashing some.)

jesse! just drop it off!!

I should. But also I work a lot and (yet, somehow) I've been broke.

My life sucks a little bit right now.

=/ winter doldroms

the bites usually appear in groups of 3. it's not so much that they get knocked off, rather that they're feeding more than once as i understand it.

(bites appeared in groups of 3 for me, anyway.)

oh, and it's possible to have no reaction if you're not allergic to the saliva. i was waking up with itchy spots, and my bf wasn't. as far as he knew, nothing was wrong. we thought i had an allergic reaction to something until our neighbors mentioned it to us.

yes

this is what is happening to my friend -- her hsuband has no reaction

I've actually been told that men are far less likely to have a reaction to the bites than women are.

Sorry about that, ladies.

i guess, living as i am with my gay male lover, maybe we won't react

That would be pretty awkward if he were straight

you're right it would.

ha!

okay but what about clothes like stored away -- is it necessary to wrap/wash those too?

how are they stored? how close to the bed?

i think they're like in a dresser in the same small bedroom, in drawers

bedbugs love that shit, they're all over it. Empty out drawers. Deal with clothes, clean dresser.

so the friend i started this thread about, she moved recently. and in nyc they offer bedbug moving services, where they take all your stuff, put it in some space overnight and fumigate it. they also treat the new space. and she STILL FOUND ONE at her new apt.

but wanna hear the kicker? she's not sure whether or not she just saw one on her DESK AT WORK. WHICH IS IN THE SAME ROOM AS MINE. i'm on the fence as to whether or not i should be petrified. i don't have thousands of dollars with which to deal with this problem right now in my life.

yup, still kind of freaking out. she keeps telling me she's getting bites, this and that, baby bugs BLA. she's like my best friend and i've been supporting her throughout the process but at some point, if this happens to me, it's going to be hard not to feel bitter and i hate that.

Whoa, bedbugs are real? I thought it was just a cute thing moms said. I know absolutely nothing.

lol "sleep tight"

last night at 3:30 in the morning, my roommate and i found a couch curbside and needing a couch decided to take it. it sat in our apartment for about 10 hours before we figured out that it had bed bugs. we have hardwood floors, it wasnt touching any furniture and we dont appear to have any bites, but how worried should we be about them spreading and what measures should we take?

and yea, we're pretty stupid

If it was me, I'd assume they were everywhere already and I'd get a giant sack of DE and a steamer and never sleep again.

(ymmv)

Take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

maybe ill just fill the apartment with water for a few days and hope they drown

i got these in my apartment a few years ago when my downstairs neighbor brought in a used couch that was infested. getting rid of them required two visits from the exterminator, and putting everything i owned into giant ziploc/vacuum-sealable bags for three weeks. i threw out my mattress too, but i still got bites sleeping on the carpet.

it wasn't that bad because i spotted them pretty quickly and took action. i knew they were bedbugs because i knew what to look for. so with me it was a matter of killing the existing ones and making sure they didn't breed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K22mwRcx1gQ

bed bug

how fast moving bed bug

fuck that video

hopefully these ones were happy where they were

so gross

one apt in our building got infested last year and it created a total panic. ultimately the situation was contained but not until every apt got inspected by bug-sniffing dogs. twice. I was home for the inspection -- wild. a couple times the dog just FROZE in position for endless minutes and I thought oh shit but it turned out to be false alarm.

cool dog sniffing bedbugs

U already put the couch back on the curb and plastic-bagged the clothes you wore to carry it, right?

Borrow a high-powered steamer if you can (a friend of mine just bought one for all kinds of cleaning, and apparently it'll work to steam floors & baseboards to kill bedbugs too). If no steamer, at least vacuum (and throw out the bag or empty the compartment or w/e right after). Vacuum or steam all the furniture nearby too.

Then get diatomaceous earth from...wherever you get it, maybe a neighborhood hardware store or Home Depot or something? and sprinkle it all around the baseboards. If yr paranoid abt that 10-hr window, vacuum throughout the house & sprinkle the d. earth at will.

Wash the clothes from the bags in HOT water, then dryer-dry them for a WHILE, so they get super-heated.

You can put like books and stuff into plastic bags and freeze them for a few weeks too, if there were piles of books on the floor or etc.

I wd vacuum & repeat the d. earth a week from now, and then two weeks from then, and so on for like the next month. You never know if some eggs might have been laid and then will later hatch. Don't leave any clothes, books, furniture, or soft stuff (pillows, blankets, etc) in that area for at least a few weeks just in case any bugs got in the floors or baseboards.

Is that paranoid enough?

Also if the couch is still there, do the next passer-by a favor and spray paint "bed bugs" across the upholstery or stick a sign on it or something.

Laurel, I want to be on your bedbug destroying team plz.

If hardware stores don't have DE, pool supply places carry it (used as filter medium) and you can buy it on-line. Get generic DE though, or food-grade if you want, but don't fall for the special $$$$ bedbug powders, it's just repackaged and super-spendy.

i can't remember the brand of DE i got but i ordered mine from an online garden supply. it was "food grade" rather than the harsher stuff (for swimming pools, etc) you can get at home depot.

xp

i recommend food grade because it's a thin powder and you WILL inhale it.

I've never had them please God but some friends did! I guess the details of their treatment stuck with me cos I am mega-afraid of getting hit myself. I think I could handle the destroying team duties, but it's a shitload of work if you get a real infestation, you have to segregate and bag and wash and dry-clean and wrap EVERYTHING and you have to do it all again in expanding windows (1 wk, 2 wks, 4 wks, etc) and vacuum and stuff constantly.

Have also known people who got them and got overwhelmed and just threw everything out and it's so sad & wasteful & EXPENSIVE, and no one I know can rly afford to be throwing out new mattresses and couches and shit! Hell, I don't even HAVE a couch. And my apt is way too small to keep anything away from anything else, so I'd be screwed.

i also got a bunch of sealable plastic crates from the container store that i could keep my books and paperwork safe in (they can hide out there).

There is a company here that will put all your stuff in a special storage thing and heat it up! I'm sure it is $$$$$ though. Maybe not so much as throwing everything out.

I have been researching neem for a bunch of various reasons lately, and even though it reeks to high heavens, I would try the "legs of the bed in large cans of neem oil" trick in addition to steaming, sealing the mattress in one of those bags, and DE.

Apparently pioneers used to put the legs of the bed into cans of kerosene for same reason, but undoubtedly Jaq's (herbal?) oil suggestion is 1000000000x safer. Kerosene not really being a good thing to have sitting open around the house.

And yeah, the mattress bags are a must if you get a real bedroom infestation. Either they can't get in, or if already there, at least they can't get OUT and will eventually starve!

My office had a reported incident while I was on 2-wk vacation and they brought in a quick-freeze team, I guess they spray a super-cooled vapor on affected areas? It doesn't leave residue or chemical traces behind so it's safe for climate-enclosed places like office bldgs.

If hardware stores don't have DE, pool supply places carry it (used as filter medium) and you can buy it on-line. Get generic DE though, or food-grade if you want, but don't fall for the special $$$$ bedbug powders, it's just repackaged and super-spendy.

WOAH. I am currently using with Diatamaceous Earth for a flea problem (thanks hillbilly neighbors!) It's best acquired from a feed store, if you are near one. Home Depot definitely doesn't carry it. You can order it online, but the shipping makes it cost at least twice as much as usual.

DE for use in pools is apparently way different from the Food Grade stuff. From what I've read, the pool stuff is chemically treated and dangerous to human and pet health.

Should mention that Food Grade DE is way cheap and has been very helpful to us so far when used as recommended against fleas.

there's a method of bedbug removal using OZONE where you don't have to bag all clothes etc but it's super super expensive.

if doing as laurel said is the only way to prevent bed bugs then im prob going to get bed bugs.

after we brought the couch out (and labeled it, fuck those other people), we put any clothes that we used when handling it in a bag outside the apt and since then we've been doing general cleaning and searching. neither of us got bit last night, and i slept on the same bed as the shorts i was wearing when sitting on it, so it seems like the risk are bugs getting into something like the baseboards or their eggs/larvae getting on something besides the clothes. if any appear, we'll call the landlord and proceed from there.

i messed up here, im not denying that, but fuck those people who put this furniture curbside next to a corner that has the area's 3 major bars. i cant imagine how many people sat there

This is the reason I get really mad when people sell their used mattresses in NYC. fear of bedbugs > fear of stds

My friend and I got badly bitten when we were staying in Central America. I wake up when I am bitten by a mosquito, but I woke up with about 100 bites on each arm and all over my body and never felt them bite. I think the bites actually take a couple of days to show up so I have no clue where I was staying that had bed bugs (my friend's bites didn't show up until she was back in the US for a day). But the bites turned red/purple to green and yellow and I had discolored splotchy skin for about 2 months before it went away completely.

I threw out almost everything I was traveling with before I got on the plane, got picked up at the airport in a truck, threw my bag and the pants I was wearing in the truck bed before I got in. When I got home, I requested a bedsheet and took all of my clothes off from under the sheet and threw them away before I would enter my house. I ran straight into the bathroom and took a long hot shower.

I kept my backpack in a sealed bag for about 8 months. And then I still washed it twice in hot water and put it in the dryer.

I had nightmares about getting bitten for about a week, but didn't get them.

it's possible to remove bedbugs, though real difficult. my roommate had a bedbug problem in both rooms (before I lived here) and they've not recurred. it was a few years ago. it just takes persistence and thorough cleaning.

thats a fuckin horrible story, yerac. purple -> green/yellow?!

my bf's house (kind of typical punk/metal house, bands play and stay there @ least once a week, 10 bands practice there) has bedbugs off and on. they keep hiring exterminators and they go away, but they always come back. it is nothing like yerac's experience ^there, though. i have woken up and had usually 3 mosquito-bite-looking/feeling things.

One time I had really bad bedbugs but they went away and then after having no bites for three weeks I had a dream that I got bitten on my shin and I woke up and I had a bite on my shin!

(you don't normally notice)

the bites normally take a couple of days before they show up and start itching

the cool thing is after long enough of getting bitten you become immune to their poison and stop noticing the bites

fuck just typing this shit is making me itch

i lived with them for almost a year. we tried everything to get rid of them, in the end i just threw most of my stuff out and moved the hell out. thankfully they didn't migrate. anyway i guess if you had an infestation you'd know by now

it sounds like shaving your body, having a shower, walking across town naked to a new area, move into a new apartment still naked and starting again from scratch is the only real option

I had bedbugs last year in my last apartment, a former hotel built in the 1920s. The building management sent in an exterminator once a week for three weeks to spray, while my belongings other than furniture were put into plastic trash bags and moved to another apartment. Didn't do any good. Then they sent in a different exterminator, who sealed up my apartment and heated it to something like 130 degrees, and that did the trick.

I still fear that some of my stuff, in storage, still has some bedbugs crawling around in it. I hope not.

Meanwhile, the building paid to have every piece of clothing I own laundered or dry cleaned, which effectively has kept me from writing about them online.

Shit, I forgot that you had bedbugs, Eazy. I'm going to pretend I didn't read this, though, because the only thing I've been able to say to keep Kr from going into full-on panic mode is that we've only heard of one infestation personally.

Do you guys have them, or is she just worried about it? I think they're much more common in the types of buildings I've lived in than the one you live in. Have you seen the Bed Bug Registry? You can see if any buildings around you have had any reported infestations.

Do you guys have them, or is she just worried about it?

The latter.

I think they're much more common in the types of buildings I've lived in than the one you live in.

I thought that might be the case but I had nothing to base it on.

Have you seen the Bed Bug Registry?

No, will check out!

ok the exterminator came yesterday and my apartment was clean except for like 5 bugs in my box spring. he sprayed it pretty heavily and gassed the area but still told me i might want to consider getting rid of it. i should do this right? i definitely would except for the fact that im broke and it would mean sleeping mattress-on-the-floor for the time being

do it.

ok.

ooh, i was instrumental in someone else's life decisions! i feel powerful.

hahaha I just saw Starship Troopers for the first time and hence will not be able to construct a cogent response to this thread for the forseeable

in the past 2 weeks i've been seeing a shitload more spiders in my house than ever before. denver is also a pretty bug-free place, the cold kills them off. I DONT KNOW WHATS GOING ON

did it.

xxxp

Good luck not itching after reading this new yorkers.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1313368/Nikes-flagship-store-latest-victim-New-York-bedbug-infestation.html

please oh please let the tiny cream-coloured insect I just found in my bathroom not be a bed bug nymph

(I think it may be a book louse, and I really don't want a full-on book louse infestation either, but it'd be preferable to bed bugs and the internet suggests that it's a lot more possible to get just one book louse than it is to get just one bed bug)

(itches anyway, just from the power of suggestion)

Was it translucent? Did it have a black spot at the base of its abdomen?

itd be weird for a baby bed bug to be in the bathroom imo

Yeah, I think it being in the bathroom is the #1 point in favour of it being a book louse, because the internet says they like damp/humid places, which our bathroom is for hours after the shower is used.

No black spot. Think it may have been translucent but I'm not sure as it was tiny (about 1mm), light brown and walking across a variety of beige surfaces. So the other internet-gleaned point in favour of it not being a bed bug is that a bed bug would have to be less than a day old and not have eaten yet to be that small and pale - seems the odds are against seeing one in that stage.

The name "book lice" strikes fear into my heart a bit as we have a lot of books, but it sounds like they'd rather eat flour and grain than cause noticeable damage to c20th paperbacks (so next stage is check the kitchen), and it's quite possible to see a few of them and never end up with a major infestation. So that's good. Just not good at dealing with unexpected insects sitting on the toilet paper I was about to use (TMI, but !!) at 1am

I'm pretty sure if bed bugs are really small to the point of not having fed they're almost invisibly translucent and don't get brown until they're older and full of blood.

I did have some in my old bathroom though, them having apparently crawled through pipes from neighbouring properties, so keep an eye out just in case. As long as you're not actually being bitten by anything you don't need to be too worried.

:(

oh no!

do they eat you?

Found a bug last night. Fucker was jaunting across my bed. Caught it, looked at it, flushed it. Then I panicked. Washed all my linens and duvet and pillows, didn't sleep a wink, found a few discarded encasings but haven't found their lair yet. I have never experienced a single bite. Terminix is coming tomorrow to do an inspection.

THIS IS AWFUL

Oh man good luck. They don't have a lair really, they'll just be laying eggs in assorted places in/around the bed.

And if the exterminators try to tell you that you'll need to throw out furniture/clothes/linens, consider getting someone else. You shouldn't have to discard ANYTHING if they do the job properly.

I am probably going to pony up for a thermal heat treatment.

h/s, where do you live?

denver

ok, I had a similar problem in Denver and I don't know what type of housing you live in but make sure they're not bat bugs, a close relative of the bedbug. Save one, drown it in alcohol, and the exterminator should be able to tell the difference. This distinction is important because if they're bedbugs, you foot the bill. If they're batbugs, they become your landlord's responsibility (for not securing the abode from bat infestation). Do you live in an old building? Could there be bats on the premises?

bat bugs are cute

That was very misleading.

so is life

fuuuuuck this

oh by the way, I never did find any more bed bugs nor did Terminix nor did another exterminator who came out... so.. yeah, case closed I guess?

in hotel meetings these are referred to as "B.B.'s which cracks me up: an enemy so evil you dare not speak its name

"B.B.'s"*

living in seasia, bedbugs are a real concern, and i encounter them on almost every backpacking jaunt i take over here. a bad infestation is a nightmare, we're talking like 100+ bites at a time, they show up a day or two later and itch like a motherfucker. i've found an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure - if i get bit on vacay i quarentine my whole bag on the porch for a day or two, empty out everything and spray the shit out of it with bug killer, then do the same the next day. spray the shit out of little hidden corners of my bag as well. also i spray my bed 2 or 3 days in a row, shooting the stuff into those little airholes in my mattress, into every little hidden corner within 10 feet of my bed, etc etc. i got extra paranoid after i smashed a little baby bedbug running around on my matress 2 nights after i came back from a trip, even though the bag hadn't even entered my house and i'd immediately laundered the clothes i was wearing 5 minutes after i took them off in my bedroom.

so far i've managed to avoid a proper infestation, knock on wood. but i'd say in this day and age, dumpster diving for sofas and mattresses is totally off the menu due to these evil little fuckers.

I got some bites of some sort last night, went on full paranoid mode and threw out ratty couch, buncha old clothes, bagged the rest, cleaned everywhere. roommmate sez no bites.

I know the neighborhood has had problems so it's not totally ridiculous to go into paranoid mode. the landlords actually had some dogs come in this building earlier in the year.

our mattress is crap and slowly killing me and I don't have that many things in my room so I'd be more w/e about it if it weren't for the fact that I'm going home to california in a few days and if I somehow infect my parents homes I will feel awful.

also my window was partly opened and unscreened and it is summer could it be mosquito bites, yes, yes it could

What do the bites look like? Are they all in a row?

If not, you are probably overreacting . . . but now have a clean apartment.

We have an announcement in the hallway as you walk in to call the super immediately in the event of bedbugs.

they weren't exactly in a row, but I only vaguely remember them cause it was 3 am and they were gone when i woke up

but yeah there was no evidence of anything in the mattress or box springs. I found one creature near the window that might have been a spider or might have been a bed bug, I dunno, I killed it. it didn't really look like the pictures I saw online but didn't entirely look like a spider either.

anyway I was more concerned about j's reaction than actually dealing w/ the bugs

no such thing as an overreaction when it comes to bedbugs

FUCK

Oh dear. Are you sure?

For sure. Waiting for the super to call the building property place and arrange for the exterminator to come by.

Last night we noticed two on the box spring, then investigated the rest of the room and found another 10 or 15. We put all of our clothes into plastic bags but haven't washed them yet. I wish the bug guy would just come by and deliver the news so I can get on with ruining my weekend.

Oh man I'm sorry to hear that. I was warned to be very careful about being in and out of people's houses all day (hospice gig)--avoid bringing coats and bags and stuff in; keep change of clothes in the car and swap out before coming into own home. I do exactly none of those things in actual practice :(

Yeah, go actually carry out that routine seems so tedious, I can believe anyone would do it!

#shitpeoplewithbedbugssay

ugh i'm so sorry.

I used to dread getting bedbugs SO much, and I still dread it, but I felt much better when an exterminator once hand waved and told me "bed bugs are easy- it's fleas that are the real pain in the ass to get rid of".

I'm still in denial I think. I think the worst part will be hogging the 3 washing machines for the whole weekend (there are 3 for the entire building - around 60 units)

Oh, also when word gets out that we have bed bugs an everyone else completely hates us

they won't hate you, they just won't ever come over

i'm sorry to hear about your situation
stay strong karl!

Do NYC neighbors really still condemn bed-bug-havers? Where the fuck do they think the bed bugs came from? Spontaneous generation in your apartment alone?

It's ok. Feels like a rite of passage that I've been lucky enough to avoid until now.

Ugh, just had a daydream about one of the bugs filling himself up with my blood, and then she returns to the mattress and has a make out sesh with the husband bug and my blood flies around the box spring. After an appropriate bed bug gestation period passes, a squealing newborn emerges from a pool of my blood.

In some ways I am most powerful as the provider and deity for this community of parasites! *drop d tuning drone*

I don't actually know if the neighbors will be mad or not, but I'm just assuming they will. I've read too many polls about what American think about basic scientific facts to have any faith that they'll understand where bed bugs come from. :(

xp that is actually less horrific than the reality of how bedbugs reproduce: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traumatic_insemination

(trigger warning for that link if u couldn't already tell)

i recommend that you do not luxuriate in the horror -- just take care of business and move on
otherwise, it can become kind of all-consuming (and insomnia-inducing, at least for me)

and yes, people all over the country will still turn up their noses at finding out their neighbors/friends have a BB infestation

xp that is actually less horrific than the reality of how bedbugs reproduce: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traumatic_insemination

(trigger warning for that link if u couldn't already tell)

― example (crüt), Friday, February 27, 2015 11:12 AM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that is fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked up

gotta say BED BUGS live up to the hype. they are as bad as ppl say.

Once you have gone to INSANE-seeming lengths to get rid of them (and you should), I gotta rep for a product called Fabriclear which is a nontoxic spray, easy to find in stores/online. It works, but I recommend using a whole bottle every 2-3 weeks until you're SURE they're gone for good.

i stayed in a hostel in amsterdam about 10 years ago and in the days following it all these tiny bites emerged everywhere on my body, it was terrifying. figured it was bed bugs but i did not carry the infestation with me, thank fucking god

could've been fleas if the bites were small and they didn't haunt you for impossibly long periods of time

1. Get a mattress & boxspring cover so either they're in or they're out but they're not both. If there were any inside they'll be dead in a year or by the next time you move, which is the only time you'll ever take the cover off anyway.
2. Dryer dry or freeze or dry-clean everything. (Things like books that can't be washed can go in plastic bags in the freezer.)
3. Whatever kind of spray works and you're comfortable with its level of toxicity.
4. Diatomaceous earth sprinkled around the baseboards and bed and stuff.

It's kind of a long-term job meaning you go back and do it again in 1 week, then 10 days, then 2 weeks, etc, but you don't have to throw away the entire contents of your apt like some people used to do!

JESUS CHRIST BEDBUG COITUS WTF

I had no idea, and now I can never go back to not knowing. Fuck.

remove bookmark :(
good luck karl

"bed bugs are easy- it's fleas that are the real pain in the ass to get rid of"

yep, fleas not nearly as horrific as bedbugs but I am dealing with the 3rd wave of flea bites in last 8-9 months because the crazy lady downstairs doesn't clean her apt/take care of her cats and it vexing

What are y'all's opinions re:heat treatments? My friend swears by the ones she had done at her old apartment.

Just ordered a new bed (overdue for one anyway, but y'know, no money forever).

Might buy some of that Diatomaceous earth ment'd above to put under the bed and mattress at the hardware store.

Besides washing or burning all my clothes and towels, what else? Near zero-budget level.

btw they might be fleas, i don't know, but the doorman told me last year that someone in the building had bedbugs.

Once you have gone to INSANE-seeming lengths to get rid of them (and you should),

yeah, i just can't expend that kind of energy on anything.

also i haven't actually seen one yet, but the 3 bites i got look like the internet pics.

if you haven't already done it:

1) buy a plastic cover for your current bed, if you still have it.
2) when the new bed arrives, keep it wrapped up in plastic and away from everything else. don't want to risk ruining your nice new bed while this is going on.

the best tip that i didn't know about at the time is:

3) this'll look a little insane, but push your current bed away from the walls a few feet, then put soapy tupperware containers underneath each of the four legs. these are death moats to protect your bed. Advanced guide here: http://cchealth.org/bedbugs/pdf/How-to-Make-Your-Bed-a-Safe-Haven-from-Bed-Bugs.pdf

hmmmm... thanks.

biggest problem is i don't have a few feet. and my bed doesn't really have legs. (The frame basically broke apart years ago.)

i think getting rid of a few of the mounds of magazines and newspapers would probably help too.

hmm, not having legs on the bed is a bummer, my wife and i used these little cup things on the legs of our bed with diatomaceous earth in them when we lived in a place with bed bugs and it worked really well - never got bitten. i suppose just putting diatomaceous earth all round the bed in a little mound could help.

we threw away our box spring, dried everything fabric that would fit in a tumble dryer for like a couple of hours, and put a cover on the mattress, threw away some books that were near the bed (found a bed bug inside a copy of borges' labyrinths) . a couple of months later we were lucky enough to be able to move - our landlady's daughter had had bedbugs and left a bunch of her washing in the basement, with bedbugs in it, basically infesting the house. landlady didn't care about this or even think it was the root, was the final straw. our new place just had black mould instead of bedbugs.

thx jim & Karl

i see online that my bldg management will send an exterminator, so i guess i'm calling.

btw KM that pdf you linked recommends a fabric cover as being safer than a plastic one.

also a new frame is coming with the new bed, so i guess i could put the d-earth under the legs then.

so it's safe to unpack the new bed about a month from now?

fuckin' nightmare

Been through it -- nightmare it is.

More effective than an exterminator is if they can heat your apartment to something like 120 for 8 hours. Heat kills better than anything they can spray.

i used a fabric cover, it worked - still have the same mattress now and have been bedbug free for 3 years

commisserations dr morb

my apt goes up to 120 in August, but i hope i'll have moved by then

Ugh, bed bugs are vile and hideous. I had them for a while, though it took me long enough to find what they were and what was happening. Someone in my building had told me a while before that her neighbour had had them, I didn't think anymore about it but the little bastards are nothing if not expansionist. Anyway, ditched my bed, bed clothes etc, found them in a pile of magazines near my bed, and in the spine of a book and several other places. I got rid of them by going on a mad killing spree, armed with WD40, which kills them (and most insects) instantly. Touch wood, they've never come back (holes and knotholes in wood being somewhere they like to congregate).

... this was several years ago, so pretty certain I'm safe now.

i'm a pedestrian. does WD40 leave stains?

Probably, I'm not recommending it as anything other than a way to instantly get rid of the bastards. Professional help would be preferable.

so i take it the boxspring/mattress covers are in the bedding store

Bedding, Bathing & Beyond has them.

Bed, Bath & BED BUGS

tore the bed apart, found nobody.

spread the d-earth around.

so my landlord's exterminator refused to spray for them bcz i had no "evidence"

ie i didn't save the one i pulled off my butt at the beginning

now i have psychosomatic itching and am determined to move

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/10/bed-bug-madness-the-psychological-toll-of-the-blood-suckers/381447/

the new bed i bought in April is still in the box, of course.

who has a freezer big enough to put all their books?

fuck this, had a scare which, yeah, posted about up thread about a thousand years ago.

now it's the real deal, not def infesting, maybe coming from neighbors apt. dealing w/ our own pest control company we called and managements, someone's coming friday. start some treatments as well as super going to use silicone to plug up gaps around floorboard.

in the meantime box spring and mattress and pillows are covered. bed pulled away from wall. Was recommended to temporarly put masking tape covered w/ vaseline around the bed so doing that now.

bugs have no effect on me. wife is covered in huge itchy bites. we'll start drying and bagging clothes shortly but don't know what to do with all the books in the bedroom. And my entire home studio. mangement's people do the spray, they say is fine for electronics. that makes me really really nervous.

fuck this. was about to make a snarky comment about bringing back DDT but went and read about that and decided that's a stupid thing to say.

I used diatomaceous earth round the bed frame (You get special plastic cups that you put the legs in and the diatomaceous earth sits in a little moat around them). Put any fabric that can withstand being put in the dryer on high in the dryer for 90 minutes or so. Vacuum like crazy, dumping the bags immediately if you have that type of vacuum. If you have the time look through your books, I literally found a bug sitting in a book. And threw the book out. Can't think of anything else other than the spraying.

in the most horrific apartment i ever lived in, i think only reason the bedbugs went away was because ants came in and killed them

where can i get these ants you speak of?

this is a nightmare of mine. best of luck

That sucks. Does Marie Kondo have a chapter about this?