...don’t let the bed bugs bite.’ What was once a cute good night saying to my children became an unwanted reality day after Thanksgiving. For too long these mysterious ink type stains kept appearing on our sheets along with a little swish of blood. Dennis and I checked under the sheets, checked our bodies
for cuts that could be bleeding in the night...nothing suspicious anywhere. We were baffled. I even went so far as to throw away the sheets and get new ones only for the problem to return.
One morning I felt something on my neck, captured it and put it in a ziplock bag. It didn’t look like any bug I as familiar with. Later that day when the landlord stopped by I showed it to him and asked if he recognized it. He squished the bug which squirted blood out into the bag and then declared that I probably had bed bugs.
After googling ‘bed bugs’ I was totally grossed out and called for pest control to come in. To tackle the problem all the bedrooms had to be dismantled, all clothing and bedding needed to be washed and then dried for an hour and a half to get rid of possible eggs laying in the clothing. The pest control guy sprayed for four hours. He was very sympathetic and assured me that I had undoubtedly picked up the visitors at a hotel earlier in the summer. This brought a certain hotel to mind from Devon.
...Apparently it is a more common problem in hotels than I was aware of. They get in your pjs or directly into the suitcase, ride home, find a good hiding place to multiply, come out in the night while you are sleeping, suck your blood like ticks, crawl back into their hiding places where they are then able to stay alive for up to 18 months without sucking your blood again. Grossed out yet?
I told the pest control guy that I had been talking with people about having bed bugs to which he informed me that I might not want to do that as it carried a bad connotation. I said I wasn’t going to hide the fact that I had these blood suckers in my house, it was just my reality. He laughed - probably thought, ‘yeah, right crazy American lady doesn’t know how bad it sounds to have bed bugs.’
For the next week, the washing machine and drier were running from 7:30 a.m.- 10:30 p.m. Garbage bags full of clothes and bedding la
y strewn all over waiting their turn. The furniture was topsy turvy. I did not want to return to my bed as the bait. Years ago people might just burn up the furniture to get rid of the pesky critters but that was not an option. We discovered their hide out in the drawers beneath our mattress inside the roller grooves.
This really wasn’t what I had in mind for the beginning of December. Some perspective was necessary in order for me to see clearly. Really this was just an inconvenience, nothing more. No one was hurt, no one in the hospital, all were loved, fed, warm and clothed. What more was there? It meant I had to let go of doing some things I had planned like Christmas cards but weren’t essential.The biggest adjustment was in my head.
We had the pest control guy come back for one more blast and a good dose of poison for the suit
cases to ensure we didn’t bring any of the bed bugs with us to America. We haven’t seen any evidence or live ones for awhile so maybe they’ve all died. Let’s hope so. We’ll chalk it up to another new experience, one that I could have skipped.
