Bugged Out

Poll Results

2010-10-01T14:25:00.000-04:00

A few of my polls have closed so I figured I'd put up the results before deleting them.

What have you parted with in the last 12 months due to bed bugs?
Of the 48 people who responded to this poll:

Sense of security: 75%
Sanity: 72%
Mattress: 52%
Bed frame, including headboard: 33%
Other furniture: 31%
Couch: 20%
Apartment: 20%
Friends: 20%
Significant other: 4%
Job/job prospects: 4%

If you have seen bed bugs on the train or bus, where have you seen them?
Of the nine people who responded to this poll:

I don't live in New York City but have seen them on my local transit system: 44%
Queens: 22%
The Bronx: 11%
Metro North: 11%
Yellow taxi: 11%

If you can think of one thing that bed bugs most smell like, what would that thing be?
Of the 31 people who responded to this poll:

Rotten blood: 25%
Rotten eggs and testicles: 16%
Musk (like an animal in heat): 16%
Coriander: 12%
Rust: 12%
Rubbing alcohol: 12%
Other: 3% (Those who chose Other offered their comments in the Nov. 2007 "Sniff, Sniff" entry
and said they smell like nothing, rotting flesh and dirty gym socks.)

These were far more fun than they were scientific, so thanks for participating, and please join in on Bugged Out's other polls.

Bugged Out Is Moving On...

2009-04-28T02:43:00.003-04:00

...the new location is www.buggedout.org

Thanks for the free blog, Blogger. It's been real. But I'm moseying on down to my own domain and WordPress and dropping the blogspot from the name.

Because so many sites have linked to bedbugsnyc.blogspot.com, this site will remain as it is, but this post will serve as the final update.

Art Through Pain Spring 2009 has received its first entry!

Later.

"Art Through Pain" Spring 2009

2009-04-06T09:37:00.005-04:00

I know it's been quite a while since I blogged, and I apologize for that. In the last two months, I have:

Moved out with M from my apartment in Queens and all the packing involved
Moved to a bigger apartment in the Bronx and all the unpacking involved
Got more steady work (a lot more)
Had no Internet connection for about a month as I waited for Verizon to transfer my connection to my new apartment
Begun to start my own catering business with M, purchasing supplies, designing the website myself and dealing with all the government paperwork

But let me get to the point...

I am holding the first semi-annual Art Through Pain contest from now until June 1, 2009. I will only allow submissions that express one's bed bug experience.

The categories for artwork are as follows:

Written word (essays, poetry, short fiction)
Visual (photography, painting, sketches, photos of sculptures, graphic design)
Video...nothing more than five minutes. You can upload it onto Youtube and send me the link. (sketch comedy, short film, dancing)
Music..Follows the same rules as video submissions (original music or parodies of existing songs with a bed bug theme.

Winners in each of these categories will receive a prize. Due to my current budget and the fact I poured my entire tax return into this apartment, I can only afford $25 for each winner. Each winner will receive a $25 gift card for whatever they want. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, calling cards, Applebee's, etc. Just tell me which one you want and provide me with an address to send it to. If you live in New York City, you can also request a $25 Metrocard.

Once the four winners are determined a second contest after June will consist of those four winning entries to win the grand prize, which is....
another $25 gift card or Metrocard.

Voting for your favorite entry (sorry, you can only pick one) will be available after June 1.

You can send your artistic expressions to artthrupain@buggedout.org

Good luck, and have fun!

Bed Bugs (Short Fiction)

2009-01-16T15:55:00.003-05:00

I decided to get the ball rolling on the whole art through pain thing that I'm trying to do over here, so I'm sharing a short story I wrote inspired by my experience with bed bugs. Please offer any feedback in the comments area.

Bed Bugs
By Bugged Out

I lie in bed, reading a book. The warm night air wraps around me like a fuzzy blanket as I peacefully turn the pages. The light buzz from my tabletop fan is the only thing that breaks the silence on an otherwise unusually tranquil night. Suddenly, in the corner of my eye I see a scurrying dot, taking a casual evening stroll on the tiled linoleum. I twist my upper body in reaction and fix my vision on the dot. A bed bug.

Despite the cozy dimensions of my bedroom I still have a hard time chasing the tiny beast. I slam the toe of the sneaker three or four times where the bed bug is, but it continues to flee after each attempt. It climbs up the wall and slips behind a large piece of furniture. I crouch nearby, waiting for the intruder to come out from behind. I remain still and listen, as if waiting to hear tiny footsteps but my tense, nervous breath is the only sound I hear. That, and the tiny red bumps on my legs and arms that itch so badly they almost seem to make a noise of their own.

If I were a Cherokee in colonial North America or a Bushman in the Kalahari, this position would be appropriate for hunting an enormous, ferocious wild animal like a bison or lion. But here I am, a slightly freaked out New Yorker crouching in an apartment in Queens, pledging death to a weightless creature no bigger than the nail on my smallest finger. Despite its tiny stature, their presence brings on a psychological attack most of us cannot stand. At least roaches run away from you; with bed bugs, it’s you they’re running after. A hunter that waits for its prey to sleep before sitting down to a supple blood meal. The itching, the sleepless nights, the itching, the antiseptic scrubbing rituals, the itching, the fear of friends and family finding out, the itching, the throwing out of furniture…did I mention the itching?

My knees grow weary from being in this position, so with no sight of the beast I stand up and consider the hunt a lost cause. I return to my bed and to my book only to see five minutes later another bed bug, or perhaps the same one from before. I spring into action and on this attempt, successfully slay the tiny beast. I lift up my sneaker to see the tiny corpse flattened and pressed into the treads of the rubber soles. I warily prepare a wad of toilet paper, half-afraid the insect may come back to life and extract its revenge upon me. Allow me to better explain the source of this fear.

Sometimes, when hit with an object such as a sneaker, you find the beast’s seemingly lifeless body underneath, as still as a spot on the floor. Confident in your success, you turn to grab a tissue to pick up the corpse. In that fraction of time in which your attention is turned elsewhere, the bed bug “comes back to life” and scurries away. Although the insect may have simply been stunned by the blow and not killed at all, it is this illusion of immortality and/or invincibility that, along with the whole blood sucking thing, strikes fear into the hearts of so many humans.

Though this beast is now nothing more than a hairy brownish-black paste stuck to my sneaker, the fear of its possible immortality is still present. The hairs inside my nostrils stand on end as I smell its distinctive musk. I’m not sure whether it is a pleasant aroma or a foul odor; the scent’s instant association with bed bugs has already turned my stomach a bit. I quickly scrape the remains off with the tissue and rush to the toilet to flush it all down. My paranoia wouldn’t let me throw it in the trash and risk it coming back to life, crawling out of the trash can and seeking revenge.

It’s encounters like these that truly make me question the superiority of the human species. How great can humans be if our confidence and sense of security can be blown away not by an attack but by the mere presence of a creature, on average no bigger than a fingernail? Dogs and cats, which we consider to be lower than ourselves would never panic at the sight of a bed bug. Even a well-fed pet would lick its lips in delightful anticipation of trapping any insect in its jaws and enjoying a light snack. Ironically these are the same animals we allow to lick our faces.
All these thoughts about bed bugs have caused me to forget all about my sordid little murder mystery. I climb back into bed and resume flipping through the pages of my book. Suddenly, I feel something crawling up my leg. In reflex I jump and wildly fling my leg from side to side. The beast flies off and onto the floor, fleeing faster than most bed bugs I’ve seen in a long time.

Grabbing my trusty sneaker, I slide off the bed and give chase. But it’s too fast for me, slipping into an air vent. My paranoia blazes outside the realm of logic. Could the beast I assassinated earlier have swam back up the pipes to my toilet and charged towards my bedroom, vengeance in mind? I soon shake off the fear, give up and resume once more to my book. A few seconds later I feel the faint weight of tiny legs on my left thigh.

I react the same way I did before, shaking myself wildly as if in a seizure. I look frantically at my immediate surroundings, but the beast is nowhere to be found. As soon as I calm myself and lie back down, I feel three more bed bugs on my back, making me jump. I try to shake off and kill the beasts, but they, too have vanished.

It’s then I realize I am being attacked by the one creature more menacing than a bed bug. The imaginary bed bug, born in a nest of sheer paranoia. With my biological alarm system set on high sensitivity, my senses are plagued by the onslaught of countless imaginary bed bugs, crawling on any given part of my body at any time.

I spend the next half hour sweeping up and down my torso, legs, arms and even my privates with my hands, “feeling” the beasts’ presence. Although the book is right in front of me, I don’t think I’ve read more than a page since my first bed bug sighting. Convinced that no more reading will be done tonight, I put the book aside and force myself to go to sleep. This only fans the flame of paranoia that burns inside. The absence of bright light leaves me vulnerable to those bed bugs I cannot see.

The imaginary bed bugs continue to invade me, but now in multitudes. I feel dozens of them in my hair, legs, arms and the rest of my body. They crawl on me, and I jump up, toss and turn wildly. I keep telling myself that these attacks are simply a figment of my imagination, with little success as my paranoia rages on.

Suddenly I jump out of my sleep and to my horror, I find myself covered with bed bugs. So many atop my body they must crawl on each other just to move around. My sight is impaired due to the bed bugs that squeeze in and out of the tiny space between my eyeballs and their sockets. They lay nests in my eyes, and millions of babies hatch, born trapped between my lens and retina. My body throbs with the pricks of hundreds of simultaneous bed bug bites, their sharp little beaks piercing through my insides.

I’m getting some imaginary bed bugs right now just writing this.

I try to scream, but my mouth is crammed with bed bugs. My tongue cannot even move, my mouth is so packed with beasts. The bed bugs find their way into every orifice in my body, even in the tiny slit at the end of my penis. I try to breathe, but my lungs are filled with them. I can feel babies being born down there as my lungs burn from lack of oxygen. The beasts crawl up my anus; I can feel them exploring my small intestine and stomach. I can only pray that the stomach acid dissolves them.

I feel the beasts swimming inside me. My brain, devoid of oxygen, breaks down. Everything goes black. Just before I die I feel the bed bugs tearing through my flesh before finally bursting through to the surface. Bloodstained beats spill out of my chest and stomach through the enormous crimson gash.

I wake up from the nightmare, flinging my body into an upright position, hyperventilating and eyes bulging. The imaginary bed bugs are still there. I shake my legs and arms at their touch before turning on the light. I pick up the remote and aim it at the TV set. Maybe a little 24-hour cable news will put me at ease.

Just nothing involving bed bugs.

Copyright 2009 Bugged Out

Art Through Pain

2009-01-15T17:21:00.009-05:00

Dear Reader,

I've decided to shift the focus of Bugged Out to serving as a venue where anyone, but New Yorkers especially, can relate their bed bug experiences creatively. All the things that Bugged Out has been up to now will remain but the major focus will be on what I call, "Art Through Pain".

Why art? you might ask.

Like I've said before, there are already quite a few New York bed bug blogs that do a great job of covering bed bug legislation, tips, personal accounts, etc. I feel that artistic expression is an aspect of New York's bed bug infestation that I do not see being addressed elsewhere.

As a professional writer, novice illustrator and lover of percussion instruments, I fully agree with the idea that the arts can be a therapeutic outlet for people going through troubling and even traumatic events, and bed bug infestations count as both. From now on, Bugged Out will be gladly accepting submissions of bed bug-related artwork at artthrupain@buggedout.org.

A word on copyright: Though Bugged Out does support anonymity, all artwork will have to come with the name of its creator who I will assume is the copyright holder of the work unless I am informed otherwise. Contrary to what some may believe, copyright law protects works that are displayed on the Internet, so let's keep that in mind as we enjoy some of the art we may see on this blog in the future.

What would I love to see on Bugged Out?

photography
poetry
short fiction
(photos of) paintings
graphic design
essays
(photos of) sculptures
original music
sketch comedy
a short film (horror, maybe?)
performing arts (acting, dancing)

In an effort to encourage artistic submissions, I will be holding a art contest later this month. Where I come from the term "bugged out" is used to describe losing one's cool in response to a very bad situation. I figured it's only appropriate that Bugged Out shows something created by people to express just how bugged out they are by their bed bug problems.

New Year, New Direction

2009-01-01T00:40:00.001-05:00

When I started Bugged Out in January 2006, it was because I saw almost no sites or blogs that focused on New Yorkers who were suffering from bed bug infestations. Most of what I saw was advice for people to throw a fumigation tent over their detached homes. I saw a void, and when I saw no one else filling it, I decided to do it myself.

But that was then, and this is now. There are many blogs about bed bugs and New York City, Bugged Out kind of gets lost in the crowd. There are a lot of great New York-centric bed bug blogs out there, and most of them have more specific missions that just being an online community for New Yorkers living with bed bugs. And they do a way better job of fulfilling those goals than I ever could.

I could commit a lot of time and energy to making Bugged Out about covering bed bug-related legislative policy in cities whose leaders are actually accountable to their constituents or picking out bed bug headlines in the media or chronicling my own personal hardships with bed bugs, things that are already being accomplished elsewhere on the Web. I could just retire Bugged Out and declare it obsolete, leaving it as an archive for readers to browse and only regard as a dead, stagnant tombstone to a blog that once was.

Or I can take Bugged Out in a completely new direction by doing the same thing I did three years ago: do something I didn't already see being done.

Wow, I just unintentionally used the verb do in four different tenses in the same sentence.

But let me get back to the point.

Starting January 15...new look, new mission statement, new direction.

New Bugged Out.

Happy New Year.

Do You See What I See?

2008-12-26T23:55:00.003-05:00

For those of you familiar with my previous post regarding my discovery of bed bug shell casings in a plastic yellow basin of mine, it should be interesting to note that not everyone agrees with my conclusion. Some people are saying they are bed bug eggs, live bugs, dead bugs, babies, etc. Unfortunately, the pictures were taken with a mediocre digital camera and the evidence has since been flushed away.

But now I've uploaded the originals, straight from the camera to a specially marked Picasa Web Photos album. Be sure to use Picasa's zoom function so you can get the best look possible. Also, if anyone wishes to download the pics and enhance the blurrier images with their very expensive Adobe software, they are more than welcome.

Have fun, and happy holidays.

They Left Their Calling Card...

2008-12-17T20:57:00.004-05:00

Perhaps one of the more annoying aspects of a bed bug infestation is that even when you don't see them anymore, you still come across little discoveries like this just so you know they're never really gone.

What you're looking at in this yellow basin are bed bug shell casings. As bed bugs grow, they also grow a new shell which breaks the old shell, kind of like a snake shedding its skin. This basin was empty and under my bed for the last month. Now M and I can't even remember the last time we saw a live bed bug or even been bitten by one, but this disgusting find serves as a friendly reminder that we should never rest easy. We should never stop inspecting our own homes, and most definitely, we should never stop cleaning. Most importantly this discovery serves as a reminder that those who have endured bed bug infestation should never, ever assume their homes are finally bed bug-free.

One of my financial goals if for M and I to have enough money one day to hire someone to do all this bed bug cleaning (the weekly mopping, the inspections, etc.) so we can somewhat relax.

Blood Suckers Are All The Rage

2008-10-15T13:33:00.000-04:00

Due to technical difficulties (temporary inability to pay my Verizon bill) I haven't been able to blog the last few weeks.

In these last few weeks I've kind of gotten hooked on this new HBO series, True Blood. It's really a great TV series which M and I watch religiously. The show is set an alternate reality in which vampires do exist and have "come out of the coffin" upon the invention of synthetic blood (the product is called True Blood) originally designed the demands for human blood transfusions but had the unintended side effect of providing vampires with artificial food, so feeding on humans is no longer necessary. The show itself focuses on a fictional Louisiana town called Bon Temps (the name means "good times" in French; I wonder if that's some sort of literary device) in which a telepathic human waitress falls in love with a vampire and whose boss is secretly a shape-shifter who can change his form to resemble any animal. Anyone who hasn't seen it should definitely check it out on HBO or on YouTube.

Now there's a new movie, Twilight, in which a human falls in love with a vampire.

Despite my fascination with True Blood, I don't know why this vampire stuff is all the rage. Scores of people have been living with nocturnal blood sucking creatures for the last few years. Where's our HBO TV series? Where's our movie?

Shit, I think I'd rather have the vampires than the bedbugs.

The Debates, Bed Bug Disputes Filling Our Courts and Bed Bugs on Broadway

2008-09-27T14:26:00.005-04:00

Did anyone see last night's Presidential debate? I wonder where the candidates stand on the bed bug infestation in the U.S.?

I came across this story in the New York Sun about how bed bug disputes between landlords and tenants are piling up in the city's courts. One example offered was of a tenant paying $7K a month for an apartment on the Upper East Side who signed a lease without knowing that several floors in the building were undergoing a massive extermination of bed bugs. Now the tenant wants out of the lease, arguing he wouldn't have signed it if he knew about the bed bug infestation.

What I'm wondering is, why the hell hasn't this impacted real estate values yet? I mean, everywhere else in the U.S. the mass foreclosure of homes is driving real estate values down, but in New York, people are still being charged $7,000 a month to live in a bed bug-infestation building! Many New Yorkers I know are leaving the city to live in states and buying foreclosed homes to live in because they can no longer afford to pay so much money in NYC for so little space, and no free parking to boot.

All I know is that the sky-high rents in New York City will not stay that way forever, and be bugs will definitely play a large role in the devaluing of property.

In other news, I guess I was on to something when I started writing my bed bug haikus.

I just found about this new musical called Bedbugs! Here's the ridiculous synopsis from their website.

"80s rock excess meets the Creature Feature. It’s 2012 and Carly, an exterminator hell-bent on avenging her mother’s freak death, has accidentally mutated NYC Bedbugs into bloodthirsty killer Hair Metal Rock Gods. Sweet sidekick Burt has a plan, and troubled Canadian chanteuse Dionne Salon has stumbled onto the scene. But will Carly listen to them and save NYC—or be seduced by her own creation?"

It doesn't exactly sound like something I'd pay to see, but apparently it has sold out in the past, so someone must like it. I seriously doubt that anyone in 2012 is listening hair metal rock. I'm glad it died in the 80s.

I wish someone would write a musical about living with bed bugs in New York City. No shortage of drama and conflict in that story!

More Bed Bug Haikus!

2008-09-09T21:01:00.005-04:00

I didn't know what to blog about this week and I had a bit of a creative streak, so I churned out some more bed bug haikus.

***

R wants a task force

But her pleas fall on deaf ears

Bloomberg’s bed bug-free

***

R wants a task force

Can we trust the government?

Ask the Indians

***

A menage a trois!

M, a bug and me

Not very sexy

***

Caitlin’s M.I.A.

Her bed bugs, long time no see

They are just hiding

***

Bed bugs in college?

Students with bites and huge debts?

Stay home; get a job

***

Renee still insists

On City bed bug task force

But pols do nothing

***

Hey, nobugsonme!

Hablo espanol tambien!

Bed bugs just speak bite.

***

For bed bug orgies

Poor Brooklyn is Ground Zero

Thank God I’m in Queens

***

Exterminators

$300 a room

Go out and turn tricks

***

Exterminators

$300 a room

Time to sell cocaine

***

$300

For bed bug control

Where is price control?

***

Let’s get together

Start our own bed bug task force

Cuz’ Council does zilch

***

Bugs on your mattress

Bites all over your body

Which wrist to slash first?

***

Just pick up your phone

Tell 311 bed bug woes

Who promptly do zilch

Feel free to share your own bed bug haikus. Remember, the first line is 5 syllables, the second line is 7 syllables and the third line is 5 syllables! Have fun!

Menage a Trois (not the cool kind)

2008-09-02T17:49:00.003-04:00

I knew I'd come in contact with a live bed bug in my home sooner or later, but not like this.

Before yesterday, I hadn't seen a live bed bug in my home for about a month, which is why I didn't have much to blog about. But yesterday M and I were engaged in foreplay on the bed [we had misplaced our clothes ;) ] and we were kissing when she stopped and told me I had a small brown bed bug on my cheek. Using her fingernails as tweezers she expertly plucked it off my face, and apparently the bug's beak was still penetrating my flesh because it stung a bit as she jerked it off (the bed bug, not me).

Unfortunately, M and I are not swingers, so we instead invited our little go-in-between to a friendly game of Bed Bug Barbecue. Needless to say, the romantic mood was shot and we got dressed faster than a john in a haunted whorehouse.

My only dilemma, besides having seen a live bed bug in my home, is that I have no idea whether the bed bug was male or female. I don't know whether I should just be grossed out or if I should join the Royal Navy.

A Bed Bug Task Force

2008-08-22T19:36:00.004-04:00

Apparently another bed bug blogger was so moved by my last post that she decided to offer a one-word rebuttal.

Renee has had this campaign for a bed bug task force to be established in this city for a while. Unfortunately, she's waiting for the government to get around to it. For those of you familiar with Bugged Out, I've been chronicling an endless journey to nowhere as the City Council pretends to help New Yorkers. In January 2006 Councilwoman Gale Brewer introduced into the Council legislation that would ban the sale of reconditioned mattresses, ban new mattresses from being transported next to new ones and establish a Bed Bug Task Force. Long story short, the bill died in committee and is dead until further notice.

I feel that no matter how many times Councilwoman Brewer re-introduces her bed bug bill, it will meet the same fate. I responded to the post titled "Bugged Out Thinks We're Wasting Our Time" and suggested that Renee is not wasting her time by calling for a bed bug task force in New York City, she's just wasting her time if she's going to wait for the government to establish one. The City Council had two and a half years to get this going; it seems a bed bug task force would have to come from the private sector, in the form of a nonprofit organization.

I'd really like to discuss launching a nonprofit bed bug task force, but I have no idea what it takes to start a nonprofit organization, or specifically what social services could such an organization offer to those suffering from a bed bug infestation.

Any suggestions?

New Poll

2008-08-11T15:54:00.002-04:00

Writing about government intervention in regards to bed bug infestations inspired me to launch a brand new poll on my side bar asking visitors if they've ever turned to the government for help with their bed bug problems, and if so, who in government did they turn to? Please participate in the polls. They're slightly more fun than putting on your socks and every week a randomly selected poll respondent will receive a permanent black marker with which to mark their recently discarded furniture as infested.

I personally have not contacted the government mostly because I have no faith in the government's ability to do anything well.

But for those who have slightly less pessimistic than I am in the belief that government is a necessary evil and have actually contacted government officials for help in this matter, what has the response been? If you wish to share you story on this blog entry, please indicate which government agency helped you in this matter and if you're not in the U.S., tell us which country you live in.

Thanks.

Bad news for Bushwick...

2008-08-09T19:15:00.003-04:00

Leave it to the Brooklyn Eagle to give readers in-depth coverage of the bed bug situation in Brooklyn. Unlike the Daily Snooze and other New York dailies, the Eagle doesn't have their covers plastered with the Yankees or Paris Hilton.

That's the only good news here. The bad news is that according to 311, Bushwick is the "bed bug capital of Brooklyn", logging 550 complaints of bed bug infestations from that neighborhood only in the first six months of 2008. Stay away from those benches in Bushwick Park!

The runners-up for the title are Flatbush, Midwood and Prospect Park South. Other honorable mentions include Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn, and Boerum Hill with Mill Basin and Flatlands coming in dead last in number of bed bug infestation complaints.

The article also contains a few personal testimonies and a few basic tips I'm sure we're all familiar with by now. Pretty well-written and reported.

The article made me wonder how my own neighborhood ranked in regard to bed bug complaints so I Googled bed bug 311 complaints. As a result, I came across this interesting bed bug blog which featured 311 bed bug complaints for every neighborhood in New York. Actually, the areas are not categorized by our city's vague neighborhood boundaries but rather by Community Districts, which may encompass more than one neighborhood (you have to scroll down a bit to find the chart).

According to the chart, which only tracks up to June 19, 2008, Bushwick, with 550 complaints logged, is not only the bed bug capital of Brooklyn but of all five boroughs as well. The runners-up citywide are Washington Heights/Inwood (477 complaints), Flatbush/Ocean Parkway/Midwood (364), West Harlem/Morningside Heights/Manhattanville/Hamilton Heights (332), and Central Harlem (330). Given these statistics it's hard not to determine that the bed bug infestation in New York is concentrated in Brooklyn and upper Manhattan.

But I have to question the accuracy of 311 complaints as an indicator of which neighborhoods are have the highest rates of infestation because I don't think that most New Yorkers think to call 311 about a bed bug infestation. I certainly didn't call 311 about my problems, but that's only because I don't expect the government to do anything about it. But I've had a lot of people suggest I write my Congressman or my Councilman or my Senator. As if that will do anything.

Despite all of its most expensive efforts, the government can't keep people from getting high, it can't stop racism or sexism in the workplace, it can't prevent gun violence, it can't combat poverty, can't bring democracy to Iraq, can't keep illegal aliens out of this country, it can't keep jobs from going overseas, it can't teach children basic skills, it can't provide health insurance for everyone who needs it, it can't respond to emergencies in a timely fashion, it can't rebuild Ground Zero even after seven years, it can't provide adequate health care for its soldiers, it can't help people who are losing their homes, it can't balance the national deficit, it can't prevent terrorist attacks, it can't adequately equip its troops, it can't find Osama bin Laden, it can't rehabilitate criminals, it can't keep politicians from accepting lobbyist "gifts", it can't control who or what passes through its borders, it can't keep teenagers from having sex, it can't guarantee its citizens guaranteed Constitutional civil rights, it can't keep prostitutes off the streets, it can't put out a bunch of forest fires at once, it can't protect the public from trans fats or second-hand smoke, it can't lower gas prices, it can't figure out whether or not a foreign country has weapons of mass destruction, it can't adequately protect its own nuclear energy facilities from terrorist attack, it can't facilitate a remotely democratic electoral system, and it can't protect the environment.

Given all the ongoing and historic failures of government, why the hell would I ever think my government could do a thing about a bed bug infestation?

If anything, government may actually be the problem. Two words: DDT ban.

Does the Media Hate Bed Bugs, Or Just The People Who Have Bed Bugs?

2008-07-21T13:26:00.004-04:00

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. I was recently in the hospital for six days due to a serious diabetes-related ulcer in my left foot. As a result, I lost my job at AM New York and am currently taking nausea-inducing antibiotics and am hooked up to a small machine that sucks out the infected tissue from the wound.

The good news?

My doctor reports that my infection is 75% healed.
I did not see one bed bug at the hospital where I stayed which was a great relief to me because while I only see dead bed bugs in my home and a live one rarely, I was still very afraid of carrying a bug to the hospital. I've experience a rise in bed bug paranoia ever since I found out an unused extension cord had become a nest for bed bugs.

I did find an interesting article regarding bed bug infestations in precinct jail cells and police cruisers, this time in New Rochelle, a small town in Upstate New York. It amazes me how ignorant most people are in regards to bed bugs. I've met many people (mostly Americans) who think that bed bugs do not exist outside of New York City. I don't quite understand the logic behind this theory (perhaps they are associating bed bugs with a particular ethnic group in New York City) but I am always pleased when I read about bed bugs infesting areas that are far away from New York City.

"Capt. Kevin Kealy said the issue first cropped up about three weeks ago, when some prisoners in the cell block complained of insect bites. There are no mattresses or cushioned surfaces, just a solid sleeping bench in the holding cells, he said, but bed bugs were discovered on the floor. The cell block was quarantined for three days of chemical applications to exterminate the bugs, Kealy said. "That seemed to have worked," Kealy said. But then bugs turned up in three radio cars from different tours, including a car used for a daytime tour of duty yesterday. The car was taken out of commission for 24 hours so it could be fumigated, he said."

Now some people might read that article and come to the conclusion that criminals spread bed bugs, or confirm some misconception that only poor people spread bed bugs, since most blue-collar criminals are poor. I think some people just like to equate bed bugs with a particular group to offer some logic or explanation toward the spread of bed bugs, or in some cases, their own bed bug infestation. For example, someone might believe that only people from the Middle East bring bed bugs to America and may think to themselves, "what Middle Eastern person have I been in contact with the past few days?" and use this mis belief to express their own real prejudice against people of Middle Eastern descent.

I don't know, I'm just babbling. Sometimes I feel like the media depicts people suffering from bed bugs in an unfavorable light, as if they're telling their audience, "This could never happen to you; these people are very different from you and I." In this particular article, only the inmates (and one cop) are reported as having suffered bug bites, and the inmates are directly blamed for having introduced the bugs to the cruisers and jail cells, even though the officers' locker room, which is obviously one part of the precinct a suspect would never be allowed to enter, is also fumigated.

The original bed bugs must have come in on a prisoner, he said. While the county jail said they did not have "a massive infestation," it only takes one person to carry in the bugs and create a problem, Kealy said.
"The concern is even if you exterminate every inch of the place, another prisoner could bring them in and they re-infest," Kealy said.

Myabe this is just isolated to American media or New York media. I know Bugged Out is visited by a lot of people from across the U.S.A. and around the world, so can anyone tell me about the quality of media coverage of bed bugs in their hometown or country?

Thanks.

Bed Bug Alert/New Job

2008-06-29T18:13:00.003-04:00

I haven't had too much time to blog because I went from having no job to having two jobs. When it rains it pours, right?

The first job I'll blog about later, but my morning job is for AM New York, a free daily newspaper here in New York City. My job is basically to stand near a subway station and hand out copies to passersby (mostly commuters) from 6:30 am to about 9:30.

AM New York doesn't pay much, but when I haven't been able to find work anywhere else, I've relied on AM New York to at least provide me with a steady paycheck until I can find something better. This is like my third time working for the company in three years. I don't make a lot of money, but at least my supervisors and the public treat me with more respect than when I worked as maintenance at a supermarket or as a cashier at a wholesale club. Plus I'm located within walking distance from my other job.

If you want to stop over and say hi, I'm at the 116th Street station near Columbia University in Morningside from 6:30 to 9:30. I can talk and hand out newspapers at the same time, so you can tell me about your own bed bug experience and take a newspaper, too.

About the bed bug alert, maybe it's just me but the 116th Street station smells like bed bugs. Maybe you can come down and tell me for yourself if the station smells like bed bugs, if you're familiar with their pungent odor.

Later.

How To Tell A Friend About Your Bed Bug Problem

2008-06-04T16:21:00.004-04:00

I've received a few comments from people who don't know what to tell their friends in regards to their infestation, or from people who've had bad experience revealing their bed bug problems to friends and family.

Like this comment from one understandably freaked-out Australian:

I am very conscious that everyone I have told ("friends") think that I've done something to bring this upon myself, and also that it's not a big deal. Of course, offer to show them the bugs, and they FREAK OUT and flatly refuse. It's real hypocrisy in action.

There is no easy answer to this. The answer really depends on who it is you're telling. The one thing you can be sure of is that you can definitely tell who your real friends are by telling them about your bed bug infestation. My advice is to tell as few people as possible. God forbid they become infested, either by you or somewhere else, they will blame you or worse, sue you. Better to keep such information to yourself, especially when you have no real way of knowing if your friends got bed bugs from you or from another source.

Last week I regained contact with an old friend who I had not seen in years. Our phone conversation became very uncomfortable when he asked me what had been going on in my life in the last few years. Careful to choose what events to tell him, I told him about meeting M, launching my other blog, I'm Not The Only One, my recent graduation from college, and my hopeless search for steady employment that is now stretching into six months. M invited him over for dinner, and I was nervous because I did not tell him about Bugged Out or about my past bed bug infestation.

My friend C came in and my eyebrows shot upwards as he casually dumped his knapsack on my floor. I immediately picked it up and placed it on a chair, saying I didn't want it to get dusty. He stayed for about six hours, and the three of us enjoyed the dinner. Since he and M are both into cooking and are Food Network addicts, they had lots to talk about. M made antipasto salad, steak in a honey barbecue marinade, yellow rice and corn on the cob. We had hazelnut coffee and Stella D'oro cookies for dessert.

We had a good time, but bed bugs were always in the back of my mind, wondering if C would find one in my home, or worse, take home a souvenir. As much as I enjoyed his company, I was glad to see him go. I'm not sure how he would react if he found out instead of me telling him. Would he feel I was hiding it from him? Would C suspect I was trying to intentionally pass bed bugs on to him?

The problem with telling people I have bed bugs (and I've told very, very few people), the revelation must be accompanied by the drawn-out back story of how I got them, how I lost all my furniture as a result, how I struggled to get rid of them and how I have them under control without actual proof of complete eradication. I know C is a pretty cool guy, and we've known each other for about 8 or 9 years, so he would understand, but might be apprehensive to return. M invited him over for my birthday next month. Maybe I'll tell him before then, at least before he finds out about Bugged Out.

Watch Your Wires!

2008-05-28T02:03:00.006-04:00

For those of you in New York City, you know the temperature went up to the 70s this week. I had a standing fan that I had put away during the winter months, and this week I took it back out to make up for the fact that I have no air conditioning. The area of my bedroom where I usually put this fan is too far away from any outlet, so I used a heavy duty extension cord to solve the problem.

But instead of unplugging the extension cord from the outlet back in November when I put away the fan, I simply left the extension cord on the floor, splayed out along the wall and still plugged into the outlet, without giving it a second thought.

Fast forward back to two days ago: I put the fan in place and get on my knees to plug it into the extension cord, except...

...there are bed bugs in the extension cord.

The extension cord itself is covered with little dots of bed bug feces, and live bugs are crawling out of it, and some dead bugs fall out of the cord as I pick it up. My eyes follow the length of the cord back to the outlet (actually it's one of those box adapters that turn two outlets into six), where I can see a few specks of bed bug feces. Long story short, I replace the infested cord as M mops the area and carefully wipes down the outlet with rubbing alcohol.

I have no idea if the bugs that ventured inside the old extension cord sensed heat from the live electrical currents, mistaking it for body heat. If anyone knows if there's any connection between bed bugs and electricity, it would be great if they could sare with the rest of the class.

I usually have a no picture policy at Bugged Out, but I thought it was necessary to show these photos. Let this be a lesson: watch your wires!

Report From Councilwoman Gale Brewer

2008-05-12T18:39:00.002-04:00

New Yorkers have long been disappointed by our City Council to effectively address the bed bug epidemic in their city. In January 2006, Councilwoman Gale Brewer, who represents Manhattan's Upper East Side, announced plans to introduce a bill which if approved would request the City ban the sale reconditioned mattresses and ban new mattresses from from being transported next to new ones and establish a Bed Bug Task Force. Her plans were to introduce this into the Council's Consumer Affairs Committee, which she does by mid-February, where it sits in the Committee for months. A spokeperson for Brewer, who promised to put me on a bed bug bill e-mail list, stated that her office wanted to hold a public hearing on the issue before introducing the bill into the Health Committee to gather public testimony that will help her case when she tries to convince Committee members to vote for it. The whole January announcement got her face in the paper, but she sure didn't do anything for New Yorkers suffering from bed bugs.

The Consumer Affairs Committee finally holds a hearing in September 2006. The hearing got a lot of press, especially for Brewer, but it didn't get much more else done for those New Yorkers living with bed bugs and those yet to have them in their homes. In fact, the Bed Bug bill died in committee.

Last week I received an update e-mail from Brewer's office, informing me of her latest move to boldly stand for nothing: On April 29, Councilwoman Brewer wrote a letter to the New York State Department of State to create regulations on how businesses can sanitize used mattresses before reselling them. Here's the letter in its entirety.

***

April 29, 2008

Ms. Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez

Secretary of State

Department of State
41 State Street
Albany, NY 12231-0001

Dear Secretary Cortés-Vázquez:

New York City is trying to find a way to eradicate the bed bug epidemic, and as part of this effort, I would like to obtain more information about rules regarding reconditioned mattresses. Specifically, I would like to be informed about state guidelines for the sterilization process for used bedding. In 1996, the State Legislature passed State Law Article 25A, Section 385, but it seems that rules were not promulgated regarding enforcement of that law by the Department of State or the Department of Health. The law stipulates that these standards are to be used to deem mattresses acceptable for re-sale throughout the state.

We are drafting a Resolution in the Council to request that the Department of State pass such regulations. Many reconditioned mattresses are currently sold without much "reconditioning"; they are simply covered with a new layer of cloth. As this does not sanitize them, bedbugs can continue to live within the newly purchased mattresses. Any guidance on the rules would be helpful, especially any mandatory processes for sanitization before selling the reconditioned mattress.

A female bed bug can lay five eggs a day, and over five hundred in her lifetime. These insects bite people as they sleep, causing inflammation to the skin, welts, and itching. They also spread into wall crevices, window and doorframes, electrical boxes, floor cracks, baseboards, furniture, and wall-to-wall carpeting.

People who buy or use second hand mattresses, including families, the elderly and managers of low cost hotels, could end up sleeping on a mattress that is contaminated. Commercial retailers who sell reconditioned mattresses inadvertently victimize these individuals, who then find themselves with the additional economic hardship of hiring professional exterminating services. These mattresses act as nesting places, and are conduits for bedbugs to live and grow. The rising cost of fighting bed bugs impacts all sectors of New York City’s social and commercial life.

If you have any questions, please contact me, or my Chief of Staff, Shula Warren, at (212) 788-6975. I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Gale A. Brewer

***

She then included a link from Dateline NBC's latest show, "Bed bugs living in new or refurbished mattress".

People who are familiar with my other blog know I am a libertarian and do not want government interfering in private affairs, especially in dealing with local business. This is a fine example of why the government should really not get involved in this and many other issues. The politicians pretend to care, hold meetings that go nowhere and lead to nothing. They take forever to address local issues, especially something as serious as bed bugs.

I think the private sector has done far more than the government to help the public. I give credit to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for creating their bed bug pamphlet to better inform New Yorkers about bed bugs, but it really didn't contain any information that most of us weren't already aware of. Information we already got from non-government sources like the pest control industry and various universities and media outlets. Some retailers have solved the problem by selling only used mattresses and completely sealing new mattresses in tough plastic wrapping.

So I really do think the private sector did more to help consumers than the government. Perhaps they did it in self-interest (the pest control industry informed New Yorkers to make them realize how badly they need to hire an exterminator, and retailers like Sleepy's refused to sell used mattresses at all in order to win customers over from those retailers who sell refurbished mattresses.), but they got the job done, without any help at all from our lame-duck City Council and local government. Unfortunately, the only thing New York City government excels at is arresting people for marijuana; according to the New York City Bar Association, for every white person arrested on marijuana charges, nine people of color are arrested for the same charges.

I believe that if this bed bug problem is ever solved, it will only be done by the private sector, and not by the government. If the government really gave a damn about eradicating bed bugs the only helpful it could ever do is repeal the ban on DDT and at the very least allow it be be researched in an unbiased manner to test its effectiveness of bed bugs and look for any serious side effects of DDT exposure to plants, animals and humans.

For the Record...

2008-05-10T03:15:00.002-04:00

I will be deleting the long-defunct bed bug poll on my sidebar, "What have you parted with in the last 12 months due to bed bugs?"

But before I remove the poll from the sidebar and sending it to poll hell, I figured I'd record the results of this poll, which closed Dec 31, 2007.

What have you parted with in the last 12 months due to bed bugs?

Couch...34% (32 responses)

Bed Frame (including headboard)...37% (35 responses)

Mattress...48% (45 responses)

Other Furniture...38% (36 responses)

Apartment...17% (16 responses)

Sanity...71% (76 responses)

Significant Other...8% (8 responses)

For those of you who tuned in after 2008, don't feel left out! I will be resurrecting this survey from poll hell next week. It's not scientific, but it sure is fun!

One More Reason to Stand In the Subway

2008-05-09T19:54:00.004-04:00

According to the New York Post, New York Daily News and one City agency, among other sources, bed bugs have exploded in population in our subway system, finding a comfortable home in the wooden benches on the subway platforms.

Bed bug sighting have been confirmed at the following subway stations:

Fordham Road, Bronx
Union Square, Manhattan
Hoyt-Schermerhorn, Brooklyn

While only three out of the dozens of subway stations in New York City have had confirmed sightings, there's no doubt in my mind that the others are just as contaminated.

Apparently, a bed bug workshop held in Greenpoint, Brooklyn last Thursday by the Department of Housing and Preservation Development slipped my radar; sorry about that. It's detailed in most of the news articles and it seems this declaration by media is based on what was discussed at that workshop. Fortunately, a blogger in Greenpoint attended the event and provided details.

Just for fun I thought I'd start another poll asking readers to tell us which borough's subway stations they have encountered bed bugs, if they have done so at all. Please, join in on the fun.

Out of the Mouths of Children

2008-05-08T19:00:00.000-04:00

I got this comment the other day from a frightened teeny bopper who just found bed bugs, presumably near her Hannah Montana pillowcase.

I am 15 and ive found bed bugs. at first i saw little brown& red bugs and thought nothin of it. then when i saw the blood fed ones crawling around i freaked.then more of them start comming and finaly i threw the bed out and got a new one.i was vaccumin like crazy,washing the comferter and sheets threw the pillows out and sprayed! and it didnt even affect em.i sprayed one constantly that i found,a blood fed one,and it keep crawling.and the sad part is the we also shampood the carpet and i found one last night at 3:00am and i flipped.my mom saw them and saw that one last night and dont believe me and she thinks it ants or just bugs.which is crazy.so is it possible that the bugs came back with a new bed?
-BIANCA

Dear Bianca,

I'm so sorry you found bed bugs in your room, but I'm even sorrier your mom doesn't believe you. Did she see the blood stains or the bites on your body? Roaches and ants simply do not do that. Do NOT tell anyone at school about this because kids can be cruel. I got teased in high school and I was just fat. Don't even tell your friends.

Also, you should never replace furniture when you haven't even gotten rid of the bed bugs. Your mom totally wasted a bunch of money because that new bed will become infested. I'm broke; she could've sent the money to me. This is something your mom should really be worrying about, not you. Tell mom to come to Bugged Out for more info, tips and to keep us updated on your own bed bug experience. If she acts soon enough, she can prevent these bed bugs from spreading, because bed bugs can lay about 500 eggs at a time, and that's a lot.

Besides, you should not be reading Bugged Out because it is full of foul language, descriptions of various body parts and explicit descriptions of sexual activity between myself and my fiancee M, whose sister-in law is also named Bianca. And some awful people on this site have even advocated the use of alcohol and-gasp!-illegal street drugs to make themselves feel better about their bed bug problems. No, Bugged Out is no place for children.

Also, I think it's cute that you posted anonymously yet left your name at the foot of your comment. Did I say cute? I meant amusing.

Good luck Bianca, and try to pull your mom out of denial.

A Condition Like No Other...

2008-05-05T16:27:00.004-04:00

...that's the best way I could describe living with bed bugs.

In a previous post, I related my own struggle with diabetes and attempted to draw parallels between that and my ordeal with bed bugs. I said that in both situations, the affected party must drastically alter their lifestyle, implement a routine of corrective as well as preventative measures, and that in both cases the idea of giving up crosses one's mind at times.

One anonymous commenter stated the following, to which I feel I must respond:

Ok. I totally understand where you are coming from. Really I do. The "Don't give up" speech. I would trade bbs for a disease anyday. Yes I would. Why. 'Cause then my kids can have their character decorative pillows that they want. So my kids do not hafta live outta fu.kin' plastic bags and ugly, stupid platic bins. So my kids can have their toys and go to school normally. Disease affects that one person only. Sure, family members get sad about the disease, but family members do not hafta be quarantined like some freak or deadly virus. You can have a beautiful home with a disease. I have, really have thought about suicide from this bb bullshit. I even wrote 2 suicide notes. I feel like an unfit parent for doing too little about the bbs in my home. I'm doing the best I can and yet I feel I cannot protect my kids and I feel overwhelmed and outta control. If it was just me living by myself, I really wouldn't give a crap. Really. I would have no furniture except the basics like bed, tv, chair, that's it. But, when you hafta raise kids and seeing what they hafta go through just breaks my heart. I want my kids to have a nice plushy couch to sit on and watch tv and beds, etc. I don't even have their beautiful school pictures on the walls. This sucks!! How do families in other countries do this? I didn't end it because when I wrote goodbye to my kids in my note I just cry and cry. I LOVE my kids. But the pressure from this bb bullshit has pushed me over the edge. I live in NY. Yes, I know NY is infested. But, I feel so alone.

Don't tell me to see a therapist because I am.

Oh yeah, I don't wanna read any comments from people saying that they've been there and that this can't go on forever, etc. and that they understand. If you have bbs no more, then you do NOT know what I'm going through. Your ordeal is over, mine is not. You can move on, I cannot.

I understand where you're coming from, lady. Seriously, I do. I know that's exactly what you didn't want to hear, but it's my blog and I'm saying it. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone contemplating suicide because of bed bugs, though. Tell me you're not seeing a therapist because of the bed bugs! Not that I'm making fun of your reaction or your situation, mind you. There were many times when I too considered looking for a therapist due to my bed bug problem, but my fiancee M was my rock. We really relied on each other for emotional support.

I don't think you're overreacting at all, but I do think you're downplaying the impact a disease can have on a person and their loved ones. If, God forbid, one of your children was suddenly diagnosed with leukemia, would you be just "sad about it", as you stated in your comment, or would it absolutely devastate you as you watched your child's hair fall out and grow weaker each day, with little hope of recovery? I can't even imagine how my life would be destroyed if M, God forbid, suddenly was diagnosed with a terminal illness.

My analysis is that you and your family have had a relatively easy life up until now, and this infestation is probably the only devastating event you've had in your life. If you grew up in poverty, if you were abused as a child, if you have a disease or have recovered from one, you'd have some perspective, something to which you can compare your current infestation, and realize that as bad as things are, they could be far worse and you've endured situations that were almost as bad as your infestation.

In your comment you asked how families in other countries deal with bed bugs, and they deal with it because their lives were probably a lot harder than yours even before they had bed bugs. I love my country, but Americans only read international news when it involves the United States. Right now, there are people in Colombia enduring a 30-year civil war, and in Congo and Darfur, people are being shot or chopped into pieces due to tribal genocide. In Sub-Saharan Africa two out of three adults and 90 percent of children live with HIV, according to the United Nations. In Somalia people were rioting over food prices. In the city of Odessa in Russia, 1 out of 4 men have HIV. And in Iraq...well, we all know what's going on in Iraq. According to USAID, 2.7 million people worldwide die from malaria (with 90 percent of those deaths occurring in Africa), a disease that was wiped out in the U.S. and Europe in the early 20th Century, thanks in part to DDT-the same pesticide that was used to nearly wipe out bed bugs 50 years ago.

So how do people in other countries deal with bed bugs? At the risk of sounding arrogant, Americans on the whole live better lives than most of the other people on this planet. I'm a poor person in the wealthiest country on earth, and I'm a Latino in a country run by Anglos. I wouldn't want to be poor anywhere else but America, and I certainly wouldn't want to be an ethnic minority in any other country, either. I consider myself very lucky that I live in a country where so many people of different, races, ethnicities, religions and political beliefs get up in the morning and want to work together rather than slaughter each other. The people in other countries are surrounded by so much turmoil, when they do have bed bug infestations they have something to compare it to.

And please, don't hate on the plastic bags and bins; they're what's keeping your lives somewhat more livable with the bed bugs while you try to completely eradicate those little vampires. That's why I can't sign on to this whole environmentalism movement. These limousine liberals all declare war on plastic, but plastic has basically saved my life simply because bed bugs do not like it. My books are on my shelves in plastic bins; I have plastic dressers, plastic hampers, and milk crates for extra storage. I just replaced my cloth curtains with vinyl ones and I sleep on a mattress that is completely covered in thick plastic and on pillows that are covered in plastic and covered again with pillow cases. The tree-huggers don't understand what plastic means to poor people, and the way this economy's going, a lot more Americans are going to be joining the lower classes. Besides, the idea that the earth needs to be saved by humans, or that humans could ever hurt the earth is ridiculous and arrogant. If the earth ever feels threatened by our species, it will get rid of us like it has to 99 percent of the other species which once inhabited this planet (mind you, millions of years before our primate ancestors even learned how to walk upright 200,000 years ago).

I also can't get with the environmentalist movement because of their success in banning DDT, a chemical which lead to the near-extinction of bed bugs 50 years ago. Despite the fact that there was no unbiased research conducted on the environmental effects of DDT, one dead bitch wrote one book and it convinced the EPA to ban DDT in 1972. As a spokesman for the U.S. chemical industry famously said when the Carson's book, Silent Spring, was published,

"If man were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth."

Perhaps those days are upon us right now.

I don't have kids, so I'm not even going to begin to pretend I understand what you're going through. I do however, invite any bed bug sufferers who are parents to share their experiences and maybe even tips to help out a fellow parent in the same tragic situation.

As for my ordeal being over, you're dead wrong. The problem with one's home being infested once is the knowledge that it could very well happen again, either by accidental introduction of new bugs from the outside or a resurgence of bed bugs previously thought to have been successfully eradicated from one's home. I'm not going to bother to buy any wooden furniture or try to revert my home to what it used to look like before my bed bug infestation, not until DDT is legalized in the U.S. It's like fighting crime; the police know they will never keep their city crime free, but they do what they must to keep it as under control as possible and never allow it to get completely out of control. Just because crime is low doesn't mean you leave your doors unlocked, and just because you don't see bed bugs doesn't mean you go back to the kind of environment bed bugs crave.

But I do appreciate your comment nonetheless, because I know there are many New Yorkers living with bed bugs who feel the same way you do. And I think your comment offers them some small consolation that they are not alone in this. If Bugged Out accomplishes nothing else, it should be to let New Yorkers and everyone else dealing with bed bugs that they are not alone. When I first launched this blog in January 2006 I certainly felt alone, and I don't feel that way any more.

Keep the comments coming, and try to keep a positive attitude about all this, as impossible as it may seem. Might I suggest alcohol, or a less legal alternative?

Don't Mind The Ads

2008-05-05T16:22:00.000-04:00

For those of you who have cared to follow, I’ve been looking for steady work for the last four months. I recently joined the CBS News blog ad network and that’s why you see all those long vertical ads on the sidebar. Right now I’m basically surviving on my tax refund because the money from a job I did last month has run out.

Unlike Google Ad, which allows you to place their links anywhere on the site, MSNBC requires they be near the top of the page. It just means you have to scroll down a bit farther to see the categories, posts, comments, blogroll and all the other fun sidebar features on INTOO.
For those readers who may find all of these display ads to be visually offensive, just bear in mind that unlike myself, you probably have a job. This is me surviving. I am so sick of filling out applications and going on job interviews that go nowhere. I’m also going to expand my writing hustle and my array of services.

I’ve lost faith in finding steady employment for now. I’ll still keep filling out job applications and pouring through classified ads, but I will be doing so as if I am buying a lottery ticket: I know I probably won’t hit the jackpot but I also know I have no chance of winning if I don’t play.

My new plan is simply to do what I can to get by and wait for the economy to eventually bounce back. This New Yotk Times article at least gives me some consolation:

“But the number of jobs reported lost by the Labor Department on Friday was significantly smaller than most analysts had predicted, and the unemployment rate nudged down to 5 percent, raising hopes that the economy may not suffer as severely as once feared.

“It strongly argues that this downturn will be mild and short- lived,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “As long as businesses hold the line on their layoffs, the economy will weaken, but it won’t unravel.”

I was considering applying for the New York Police Department and the New York City Department of Corrections, and the exams are in May and June, but the Mayor has said that due to a decrease in federal funding, fewer officers will be hired this year, so my chances of being hired are not that great. The only government agencies that seem to be hiring en masse are law enforcement and the Armed Forces, and I figured while policing the mean streets of New York aren’t much safer than policing Iraq, at least I get to go home every night.

The City’s public school system is hiring teachers too, with a fellowship program that provides new hires with a free Masters in Education as long as they agree to teach in the public schools for five years. I’ve had a few friends who graduated from college and not only couldn’t find work in the field for which they studied or trained, but couldn’t find anywhere else and began teaching during the day as they attended graduate classes at night, so by the time they earn the Masters, they only have two or three years left under their contract. I wonder how many people have opted to become a poorly paid New York City public school teacher solely because they couldn’t find any other form of steady employment.

The next application season begins in August. Unfortunately, I missed the February application deadline because I was so confident I’d find a media job. That was stupid of me, because I could be teaching right now and earning a steady paycheck.

This post is a lot longer than I originally intended it to be, so I’m just going to end now. Again, don’t mind the display ads, and if you’re feeling charitable without having to donate any money, please click on a few of them.

Is It Worth It?

2008-04-27T12:22:00.000-04:00

If you're like me, you've either spent a significant amount of time, money and effort to rid your home of bed bugs. Time from time, you've probably asked yourself, "Is it worth it?" Is it worth all the time, effort and money to rid your home of bed bugs? It seems like a losing battle at times, with only brief, sporadic victories, and just when it seems like you've won, you find you have to fight some more.

I can imagine some people contemplating surrender to their bed bug infestation, wondering just how bad it would really be to stop vigorously cleaning their home, keep their infested furniture, literally swim in bed bugs, endure the constant biting and simply adapt to life plus bed bugs.

How can I imagine this? Because I'm diabetic.

With diabetes, every morning I have to check my blood glucose (sugar in my blood) level by pricking one of my fingers with a stainless steel lancet and literally bleeding onto an electronic glucose meter. Depending how high or low my blood sugar level is that morning from a normally healthy blood sugar level, I inject myself with anywhere from 25 to 45 units of insulin and swallow three pills. I have to watch what I eat, or eat less of it, and in the evening I take one more pill. I work out three or four times a week, and I'm supposed to go to my physician for diabetes management once a month, although I don't always do that.

In addition, because diabetes symptoms always show first in the feet, I'm supposed to visit a podiatrist monthly. One of those symptoms is that the skin on the soles of my feet have died, and I have calluses on top of calluses, and I must spread moisturizer on the soles of my feet to keep the skin from cracking, which could lead to a small open wound and infections, which for diabetics are big trouble.

It's a big hassle to do all this on a daily basis, and despite all these measures, a diabetic can still suffer any acute symptom of diabetes, which while are not as life threatening as severe symptoms, can still make life harder. Severe symptoms? The nerves in your foot can die, which means that unless you carefully inspect your feet everyday for things like infections, sores or ulcers, you'll never know about it until it's too late.

Like diabetes, fighting a bed bug infestation also consists of a constant routine. You will find yourself cleaning every day and deep cleaning at least once a week, or if you have the money, routinely hiring an exterminator to apply industrial-strength insecticide at the tune of $300 a room. Fighting bed bugs is a big hassle, too.

Because of diabetes, I've had to severely alter my diet and make a lot of other lifestyle changes (the moisturizer, the pills, the blood monitoring, the working out, etc.) and I still have diabetes complications.

I'll be the first to admit, in terms of combating diabetes and bed bugs, that I don't always take every precautionary measure every day. Seriously, who the hell has the time? People have to go to work, to school, run errands and have some semblance of a social life. Add the fact that I have two blogs, and yeah, sometimes a day will go by without doing a regular cleaning, or a week will go by that I don't do deep cleaning. Sometimes I won't check my blood in the morning (especially if I'm running late) and I just take my meds and hope I don't get sick.

Fighting diabetes is like having a part-time job, as is fighting bed bugs. And when you factor in the job you have that actually pays money and all the other shit you have to do during the day, you barely have a life to live.

So in the back of your mind, giving up actually sounds like a good idea.

One thing I've learned (the hard way) from both diabetes and bed bugs is that if you don't address a problem early, it will only get worse. And the longer you take to address the problem, the worse it will get. I was kind of in denial when I first saw a bed bug in my bedroom. I killed it and thought nothing more of it. By the time I finally convinced myself I had an infestation, I no longer felt safe sleeping with the lights off. Check out some of my earliest posts from 2006, when I had just awaken and smelled the proverbial coffee and began to tell my own tale of bed buggery. As a result of my inaction and denial, I ended having to throw out almost all of my furniture because numerous bed bug colonies had materialized within my bed, headboard and of course mattress.

I also had to learn the hard way about diabetes in 2005 on a trip to Florida. I was going through a stage where I felt if I didn't eat a whole lot, I wouldn't have to bother taking medication. FYI, the normal blood sugar level is anywhere from 100 to 150, depending on who you ask. While in Florida, I suddenly became very, very cold, shivering uncontrollably while sweating profusely. Anything I ate came right back up, and I was sleeping about 20 hours a day, too weak to even walk for more than a few minutes. My family drove me to the emergency room at a hospital in Daytona. My blood sugar was about 500, and the doctors said they were shocked I didn't slip into a coma.

The whole time I was freaking out because I had no insurance and was horrified that I'd have to pay $2,000 or $3,000 for the hospital stay. Three days and two nights later I was released only because I swore to the doctors that I'd visit my own physician upon my return to New York. Florida state health insurance refused to pay my hospital bill because I was not a resident of Florida, and New York state health insurance refused to pay because I was not enrolled in the New York state health insurance plan at the time I became ill.

Six months later I received a bill from the Florida hospital for $12,000. I have yet to pay it since I was a college student up until last December, steady employment was hard to find, and the jobs I did find did not pay enough for survival and debt repayment. Needless to say, my credit rating is fucked.

As hard as it may be to believe, I still didn't learn my lesson about diabetes. In 2007, I was working, not watching what I ate, not moisturizing my feet and racking up sugar levels of about 300 or so. Twice at work (I was working as a cashier) I threw up at the register and was asked to go home. M took me to the emergency room at New York Hospital Queens to find out what was wrong with me. I changed into the hospital gown and the nurse noticed a reddish-purple blister on my right foot near my little toe about the size of my fist. A podiatrist cut the blister open to find my foot had become infected. Long story short, x-rays determined that the infection has indeed reached the bone of my little toe and the only way to keep the infection from spreading to the rest of my foot was to amputate my toe.

I've learned my lessons, and am serious about taking all preventative measures (as numerous as they are) with regards to my diabetes as well as fighting a bed bug infestation. What troubles me, however, is the knowledge that I will always have problems with diabetes despite my greatest preventative efforts and that, unless I die an unnatural death, diabetes will most likely kill me. It also troubles me to know that despite my greatest preventative efforts, I can never really be sure my home is 100 percent bed bug-free and that my home will never suffer a re-infestation. But what keeps me going is knowing that the alternative, giving up, is far worse than doing what I routinely do to maintain a normal blood sugar level and suppress if not eradicate the bed bug population in my home.

Obviously, suicide is the most extreme and truest form of giving up. According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Protection, 32,439 Americans committed suicide in 2005. These are people who saw the predicament they were in and felt so overwhelmed, out of control and defeated that suicide appeared, at least to them, to be the only way out of it and the only thing in their life they truly had control over. I've met a few people who had diseases like HIV. cancer and MS, who had either seriously contemplated suicide or had attempted it. I even interviewed one young female basketball player for a high school sports article, who a week later, wrote a note stating she could no longer live as a Muslim and a closet lesbian before inserting her father's gun into her mouth and blowing her brains out.

I'm not sure how to end this post, except to tell all of you, no matter how hopeless, out of control or overwhelming your bed bug problems may seem, no matter how unsympathetic the rest of the world may seem to your plight, don't procrastinate in resolving your infestation, and for God's sake, never give up!

Working With Bedbugs

2008-04-19T19:28:00.004-04:00

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while...

I've been dedicating most of my time to job hunting, a daunting task given the current state of the U.S. economy. The bulk of my work experience has been journalism, clerical work and retail, in order of years of experience. I've been out of work since January, with little to no help from the help wanted ads in the newspaper or the New York State Department of Labor, who told me to try Craigslist, Monster.com, Yahoo! Hotjobs, and a slew of other employment-related web sites of whose existence I was already aware.

Why do I pay taxes? Oh yeah, because the government forces me to.

Lately, I've been perusing ads on Mediabistro.com, a classified ads website dedicated to media-related jobs. I found an awesome ad for a reporter/blogger for the online version of a major New York newspaper. I basically met all the qualifications, but I did have one problem.

I have two blogs, Bugged Out and I'm Not The Only One, which focuses more on politics and social commentary. That blog is a year and four months old, and Bugged Out is 2 years and four months long.

When I wrote about my blogging experience in my cover letter and resume, I only wrote that I'd been blogging for a little over a year. I was afraid that if my prospective employer knew that I was the blogger of a bed bug blog, they'd know I have, or have had a bed bug infestation and may be likely to not hire me. Workplaces can become infested just as easily as homes. As a matter of fact, I believe the Fox newsroom in New York City had become infested a while back. But having more blogging experience makes more qualified for the gig, so only claiming to have 1 year of experience instead of two put me at a disadvantage as well.

People talk about the stigma that comes with bed bugs, but no one ever talks about how it can affect someone's career. Would you tell your boss or co-workers that you have a bed bug problem at home? Would you even tell them you've had one in the past? I'd be afraid my supervisors would try to get rid of me.

If you've ever had colleagues find out about your bed bug problems, I'd love to hear your stories, and especially know what happened as a result of their discovery. I have had like four jobs in the last two years, and no one at work has ever found out my dirty little secret. I honestly don't know what I'd do if anyone found out. If anyone can offer some friendly advice on what to do in such a situation, I'd appreciate it.

Luckily, I have a job interview tomorrow at a music store in the Bronx, in M's mother's neighborhood. Keep me in your prayers, ok?

Thanks.

How Do I Do It?

2008-04-03T12:48:00.000-04:00

In my most recent post, an anonymous commenter said the following:

Wow! You do not own a vacuum? I've read that 2 of the most important things to do to rid one's home of an infestation is to vacuum, vacuum, vacuum and hire a pco to put down chemicals. Those 2 you are not doing. So how is it that your bb population is going down? Are you spraying chemicals yourself? Maybe you can let us know what you do so as to help others who are also poor and who cannot afford pcos.

This problem is getting worse, not better. You can get rid of everything you own to get rid of bbs and then go to a movie, ride a subway or sit on a subway bench, etc. and get reinfested all over again. But, we must live our lives, as you said. Heck, you can even get them from your job. FoxNews has them and so does lawfirm Cravath on 2 floors.

I hope you keep this blog going for bb sufferers. I know that the other anonymous poster sounded ignorant, but do not let that stop you from keeping this blog going. Yes, this blog has been around for awhile and yes, you still have bbs. That doesn't mean that you are not helping out people who are suffering w/bbs. You are being honest with your situation. There are a lotta people out there who hire pco's and go through the bagging and purging and other stuff and get rid of their bbs in a few months. Well, I feel that there should be no "time limit" on how long a person should have bbs or try to get rid of them. You and everyone else is trying their best and that's all anyone can do in this situation.

How am I getting rid of bed bugs?

Since I do not own a vacuum cleaner, M and I do a lot of sweeping and mopping. We have bare linoleum floors and we do not own have carpets or rugs. I would have to imagine that carpets and/or rugs would have to be great hiding places for bed bugs. We mop about twice a month. The experts who say you have to vacuum rigorously and religiously say so because they can't imagine an American who doesn't own a vacuum cleaner.

I also purchased Suspend AC, a pesticide specifically made to kill bed bugs that I bought from www.domyownpestcontrol.com and it does seem to work; it claims to be a residual pesticide, which kills bed bugs long after the solution dries. The label does claim that even inhaling fumes from the concentrated pesticide may be fatal, so I have to dilute it with water before applying it as directed. I also have a gallon hand-operated pressure pump which I also bought from the abovementioned website. It kind of works like a Super Soaker, where you have to manually pump pressure into the jug so its hose attachment can spray the watered-down pesticide. I'm not too comfortable spraying chemicals in my home whose fumes alone can be fatal to humans, so I spray every other month or so.

I also got rid of a lot of wooden furniture (which were doubling as bed bug colonies), often using crates to hold up my TV, stereo, DVD player and other items. I bought plastic dressers from target.com and plastic laundry hampers from a 99 cent store (I have two, one for colored clothes and one for white clothes). I've become increasingly concerned about my heavy window curtains becoming ground zero for the next great bed bug population explosion. I was actually considering trashing the cloth curtains and replacing them with shower curtains, but that's way too tacky, don't you think? Plus it probably wouldn't keep light out that well.

Eradicating bed bugs when your funds are limited is like any other aspect of life; you have to get creative and find alternatives for the things you can't afford. To me, if an expensive exterminator who charges $300+ per room can't even guarantee 100 percent bed bug eradication, you might as well do your own deep cleaning, furniture replacement and overall lifestyle changes and save a few hundred bucks, considering you even have a few hundred bucks to save!

Killing bed bugs directly can be quite enjoyable if you're down for playing Bed Bug Barbecue (hint: it requires a barbecue lighter!) and you have a linoleum floor. Each charred bed bug equals one point, and the game ends either when you've scored one million points or have not seen a bed bug in two months.

The whole lifestyle change and deep cleaning routine helps in case your home becomes re-infested. You'll be ready, your home will be ready and the bugs won't be alive in your home for very long.

Yeah, that anonymous commenter was kind of a douche, suggesting among other things that I advocate just settling for getting bit less and not working towards the lofty goal of total bed bug eradication. For the record, eradication is possible and it should definitely be attempted over and over again. I agree with you that there should be no time limit on how long it should take a person to rid their home of bed bugs. It's a long and arduous goal, but it's one that a person should strive for no matter how long it takes. I mean, if you don't get rid of your bed bug infestation in say, six months, should you just give up and let the bed bugs take over? Just spend the rest of your life with hundreds of little red bites on your body and just have bed bugs everywhere? Would that whacky Aussie commenter say that bullshit to a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy? "Dude, if the cancer doesn't go into remission by November, you should, uh, just give up."

And yes, I'd gladly have cancer if I knew I'd never have to see another bed bug again! I'll move to Canada, do the chemo, puke my brains out and smoke all the medical marijuana I want. At least cancer sufferers don't have to be afraid their friends, family and co-workers will find out they have cancer, or worse, that they'll spread cancer by going to someone else's house or other people coming over to theirs.

If you read enough of this blog, you'll see there have been sporadic surges of bed bug sightings after weeks of seeing very few. I often wonder if I've unknowingly re-introduced bed bugs into my home.

This post has become waaayyyyy longer than I initially expected it to be, so I'll wrap up now!

Thanks for all the kind words, and I'm glad to know that Bugged Out is still helping people cope a but easier with their bed bug problems, even though one commenter apparently feels my time is up! I appreciate all the feedback you guys send me, and I'm sure a lot of other people feel the same way. Your comments really compliment Bugged Out and are just as full of insight, news, tips, stories and information as this blog.

Later.

Yes, I Still Have Bed Bugs

2008-03-22T04:06:00.000-04:00

I see there's been a bit of a debate as to whether or not I still have bed bugs in my apartment. To respond to one slightly rude anonymous commenter:

The answer to the question "do you have bedbugs?" isn't yes and no. It's yes. I'm sorry, but if what you describe is true, then yes, you still have bedbugs.

There's been a reduction in the population in your apt. But you're still finding live bedbugs. Only some of the ones you find are dead. You either have bedbugs or you don't.

You're still getting bitten. You probably don't react anymore, but your girlfriend still reacts.

Since you're doing regular deep cleaning anyway, try steam on all your furniture and home crevices. Get a decent steamer. Read Australia's Code of Practices re: bedbugs. Deep steaming kills bedbugs.

Your blog's been around for a while. It might give people the wrong impression that it's acceptable to "live with bedbugs." This has gone on so long, you guys have probably spread them to school, work, public transit etc.

I know this sounds harsh, but wake up!

To second anonymous: your goal should be eradicating the bugs from your home. Don't settle for just getting bit less.-Anonymous commenter

Do I still have bed bugs? Yes. Is it a full-blown infestation? No. Even though it's been over a year since I had a full-blown bed bug infestation, I've found the experience to be so traumatizing that I clean and inspect my home as I were waiting for another large infestation to appear. When most people say they have bed bugs, they pretty much mean a full-blown infestation where they only feel uncomfortable sleeping with all the lights on wearing socks and sweatpants and long-sleeved shirts. That's also the mental image that I have when people tell me they have bed bugs.

Also, having this blog for so long is in no way a message that it is "acceptable" to live with bed bugs. This ignorant commenter obviously has never had bed bugs in their home, at least not for very long. Anyone who has ever had bed bugs will tell you that is a never ending ordeal and eradicating bed bugs is a long-term task that requires a significant amount of time, money and effort. If the commenter bothered to read the header at the top of the website, they will plainly see that Bugged Out was created to facilitate an online community for New Yorkers who are suffering or know someone who is suffering from bed bugs, not solely to chronicle my personal ordeal with bed bugs. I have no problem with non-New Yorkers or non-Americans relating their experiences, fears, tips, triumphs, etc., in regards to bed bugs. Perhaps I should create an FAQ page for people like the Australian commenter.

Anyone who thinks this blog or any bed bug blog that is as old as Bugged Out promotes the idea that it is acceptable to live with bed bugs is an idiot, and I suppose that includes the commenter who suggested such a ridiculous notion. I am by no means a bed bug advocate. It is not acceptable, ever, to live with bed bugs. When I say I live with bed bugs, I do not mean humans and bed bugs should live in peace and harmony. When I say I live with bed bugs, it is to me, like saying "I live with HIV or cancer". I do see bed bugs as a communicable disease that affects millions, and the only difference between living with bed bugs and living with HIV or cancer is that with cancer, at least you get sympathy. Is it acceptable to live with cancer? Of course not.

"Since you're doing regular deep cleaning anyway, try steam on all your furniture and home crevices. Get a decent steamer. Read Australia's Code of Practices re: bedbugs. Deep steaming kills bedbugs."-Anonymous commenter

Since the commenter seems to be quoting from Australia's Code of Practices (I thought you Australians spell it as "practise", or is that just the British?) I'm guessing they are from Australia. Perhaps the American use of passive-sounding language (i.e., "living with cancer" as opposed to "suffering from cancer") is confusing to foreigners. Yes, I am suffering from bed bugs, but I am still living nonetheless. Funny how Americans employ such passive-sounding language when you consider how warlike our government is. Perhaps like most non-Americans, the commenter thinks all Americans are outrageously wealthy. Yanks, when we're not gun-slinging and adjusting our cowboy hats, actually do make ourselves aware of the power of steam cleaners. I just can't afford one. I don't even own a vacuum cleaner.

As for spreading bed bugs around to work, school, etc., I am happy to say that this is no longer true for me. One of the other reasons I said yes and no as to whether or not I still have bed bugs is that I no longer spread them wherever I go. I know it sounds impossible, but I've always conducted a thorough inspection of my backpack before going out, always finding one or two bed bugs hiding under a flap or something, but in the last few months my inspections of my clothes, jacket and backpack have shown nothing.

What's more, M and I have been apartment-sitting my future mother-in-law's home for a few weeks last month. If I was spreading bed bugs, I would've seen one there after a few weeks. We're talking about a species of insect that can breed a few generations within one week. The absence of bed bugs in her home after four weeks, to myself and any other rationally-thinking human being, is clear evidence that I am no longer spreading any bed bugs from my home. M's mother is back home and she can be somewhat critical of me (and everyone else), so I'm sure if she finds any bed bugs, she'll have no problem letting me know. The fact that I don't seem to be spreading bed bugs anymore is another reason I said yes and no as to whether or not I still have bed bugs.

So do I have bed bugs? Yes. Am I still experiencing the typical symptoms that almost all people suffering from bed bugs endure? No. I thought I made that clear in my last post. Please don't take my little backlash as hostility towards Australians or any other nationality, for that matter, but rather my response to a single, anonymous and ignorant comment .

Bed Bug Sniffing Dogs

2008-03-10T12:55:00.003-04:00

Many of you may have read or seen on TV stories about dogs that have been trained to sniff bed bugs. Now, Advanced K9 Detectives, a company that boasts a pack of bed bug sniffing dogs that can quickly, cheaply-and most importantly, effectively-sniff a room for bed bugs following an exterminator's visit.

It amazes me how dogs' powerful sense of smell-which can be as much as 2,000 times stronger than that of a human-can be capitalized on to detect so many different things. There are even dogs who can sniff out bootleg DVDs!

But I am not interested in hiring Advanced K9 or any other similar company; I want to know how a dog can be properly trained to detect bed bugs. I would love to buy a beagle or any other breed that could accurately pinpoint the secret locations of the bed bugs in my home, because although I haven't been bitten in a long time, I do occasionally come across a dead bed bug or two, which makes me believe they're still out there, like Al-Qaeda, silently waiting to execute their next great attack.

Would anyone know if this is possible for a civilian to own a detection dog? M loves dogs and I know a trained bed bug sniffing dog would be an incredible bonus to having a dog living with us.

Do I Still Have Bed Bugs?

2008-02-22T10:51:00.005-05:00

I felt the urge to respond to this anonymous commenter who inquired:

Hey, are you actually living with bed bugs? I mean, are you doing anything to keep them from, like, taking over your place 'cause I read that they multiply very quickly. And, what about you and M's body and face? Don't you guys get a lotta bites from these suckers?

Respond when you can. Thanks

Well, anonymous commenter,

First off, thanks for keeping up with the ongoing saga between M and I. To be honest I've been deliberately vague about the actual current status of our bed bug situation, mostly because more and more people are becoming aware of this blog, and my other blog in which I am not so anonymous. What's more, M also has her own blog in an effort to promote her cooking career and we're being invited to more and more public events, and quite frankly, I don't want anyone to think we're cooking with bed bugs in the food or our home is overrun with bed bugs or we're walking around with some whacky "bed bug disease". You'd be surprised how many people still think that bed bugs carry disease.

To answer your question, do we actually have bed bugs? Yes and no. We still have them, but we're not actually suffering from them anymore, and we've kept them under control. We see maybe two or three bed bugs a month, and rarely are they still alive. I don't get bitten anymore, but M does, which makes me believe that females are more susceptible than males to bed bugs. Even then, the bites are just as rare as bed bug sightings.

But this peaceful scenario did not occur overnight. Yes, my apartment was once overrun with bed bugs, to the point where I was sleeping on the floor with the lights on and hatchlings were being born by the thousands only inches from my sleeping head. To wake up in the middle of the night and the first thing you see is scores and scores of tiny brown bed bug eggs and babies just inches from your retina is worse than any nightmare you've ever had. It's an image you never really forget, and I always remind myself of that image whenever I feel like slacking off from keeping my home clean.

I had a lot of wooden furniture, which served as the perfect haven for colonies upon colonies of bed bugs. I've had to throw out almost all of my furniture and replace it with plastic and steel furniture, which was not easy since I was broke and had to spend a few months in a relatively empty living space until new non-wooden furniture entered my home piece by piece. In short, I had to go through a dramatic lifestyle change in order to rid my home of bed bugs. And even then, the eradication is never 100%. No exterminator can guarantee 100% bed bug annihilation, which didn't matter to me anyway since I couldn't afford one. Most exterminators highly recommend their bed bug-infested clientele take the same drastic steps I've taken. Also, I don't like the idea of unknown chemicals (especially industrial-strength chemicals which are illegal for non-exterminators to purchase) being sprayed in a space in which I eat and sleep.

As I've discussed before, I use an eco-friendly approach to killing roaches (because roach sprays and foggers causes bed bugs to scatter and hide, making it harder to kill them all) and I advise people to do the same with bed bugs. The most eco-friendly method I've found of getting rid of bed bugs is to simply get rid of your wooden furniture (if you have a full-blown infestation, chances are good that you will find small colonies of bed bugs already living in your furniture). The other step is to replace that wooden furniture with furniture made of plastic or metal. The other step is to adopt a lifestyle of serious routine cleaning. I mean, cleaning your home has to become like a religion for you if you want to get rid of bed bugs. That includes clutter. Throw away any old newspapers or magazines you may have lying around. Store your books in plastic food containers. It may look weird to have shelves full of books sealed in Tupperware but a full-blown bed bug infestation and a body full of bug bites look even worse. M and I have a financial goal of making enough money that we can someday hire someone to do all the routine cleaning.

Everyone tells me to tell my landlord to take care of the problem or to call 311 or to sue my landlord, but this is wayyyy easier said than done, especially when the assholes giving me all this helpful advice don't actually have to do any of this themselves. As I had discussed in earlier posts, holding landlords responsible for a bed bug infestation can be tricky, and if the landlord has a lawyer and you don't (which is my case) they can convince the city that not only are they not responsible for your infestation, but that you may be held liable for introducing bed bugs onto the property. It's also difficult to expect the government to do anything about a bed bug infestation because bed bugs do not carry disease and therefore do not pose any kind of public health threat. However, you can argue that a bed bug infestation and their biting can cause mental anguish, but this is obviously much harder to prove than a physical injury.
I simply don't have the time or money to travel to and from court over and over, fill out forms, take photos of my apartment, etc. What's more, the landlord may retaliate by trying to find you in violation of your lease. And in New York City, the hometown of over-regulation, some leases have so many terms most tenants are unknowingly in violation of them in some tiny superficial way.

As for multiplying quickly, bed bugs can lay about 500 eggs in their lifetime. And those 500 bed bugs, upon reaching adulthood can each lay their own 500 eggs. So yeah, they can multiply quickly in a very short time.

I hope I answered your questions. For more details on my personal bed bug experience, I suggest you browse the rest of this blog.

Later.

Lavender Oil?

2008-02-13T05:33:00.000-05:00

Could something as simple and common as lavender oil help ward off bed bugs while you sleep? I've heard stranger things. An article from last July in the First Post, a British online magazine included a personal testimony from a Briton who encountered bed bugs while on holiday in Germany and recommended lavender oil spray, although he didn't specify whether to spray it on yourself or in your room or bed.

Don't think that booking into a five-star hotel will offer you protection. Earlier this year, a US lawyer sued a luxury hotel in London after he and his wife had been badly bitten. A better - and cheaper - alternative is never to go anywhere without a lavender oil spray: apparently, it's the one thing the little bastards can't stand.-unknown bloke

How did this guy know to use lavender spray? Was this discovery simply the result of dumb luck, as was the case with the invention of the microwave ovens and silly putty? Perhaps his wife was burning lavender oil candles (you know how women love that aromatherapy stuff) from an oil lamp or something and they noticed how the bed bugs in their hotel room reacted to the scent. It has been well documented that bed bugs can smell each other's pheromones, fecal matter and even dried human blood; they very well could have smelled the lavender oil as well.

I will try burning lavender oil in my own oil lamp (it's actually M's oil lamp) to see exactly how well this works. However, I don't have nearly as many bed bugs as I used to (I see maybe one or two live ones a month these days) so if anyone else could conduct this little experiment in their own bed bug-infested homes and share the findings with the rest of the class, I would very much appreciate it.

By the way, I did receive my new mattress from Sleepy's the day after ordering it, and to my surprise I did not have to wrap it in a plastic drop cloth. The mattress came sealed (with a small air pocket, unfortunately) in a tough plastic whose durability is similar if not superior to that of a plastic drop cloth. They really are the mattress professionals! However, I do remember the salesman telling me that all mattresses sold by Sleepy's have a 10-year warranty; I suspect that 10-year warranty is considered void if that protective plastic seal is broken.

I really did like the inflatable mattresses, but it's much nicer to have worry-free sex on a conventional mattress secure in the knowledge that the mattress won't spring a leak and break down.

Happy Valentine's Day, by the way!

The Hell With Air Mattresses!

2008-01-22T22:38:00.000-05:00

I've had it. I'm through with inflatable air mattresses.

The tenth or eleventh air mattress I've bought in almost two years just sprung another leak. Ever since I threw out my bed bug-infested mattress, bed and headboard two springs ago, I've placed my faith in inflatable mattresses in the fear that if I bought a new conventional mattress would only become infested and promptly thrown away. Besides, buying all that laundry detergent and fabric softener to wash my entire wardrobe and ammonia to mop and scrub my home got rather expensive, making the purchase of even the cheapest conventional mattress even more of a pipe dream.

Air mattresses (especially the ones that are under $50) are basically camping equipment and only meant for occasional sleeping and not everyday use to be slept on day after day for weeks on end. And they're definitely not built to withstand a regular routine of vigorous sexual activity. Not to be terribly explicit, but M and I are both around 200 lbs. (she's gonna crucify me when she finds I out I blabbed about her weight!), we're in our 20s and we're horny and in love. I think what we do in that bed has probably led to the many, many sprung leaks which have appeared in the many air mattresses we've bought.

The air mattresses I've bought range from $20 to $45 and are either made by Greatland or Coleman, the latter being a much weaker brand of bed. I really don't have the money for an Aerobed or one of those fancy Eddie Bauer air mattresses and the widest variety is only available during the summer. During the winter, at least in New York, most stores don't sell air mattresses, and those that do barely sell any at all. Since August I think I've bought about five air mattresses, all of which have sprung leaks. These mattresses do come with patch-up kits, but even these don't hold for very long, and if they do hold another leak appears elsewhere. The mattresses are almost as much of a nuisance as the bed bugs themselves.

I finally broke down and decided to buy a conventional mattress on Sunday when M, after unsuccessfully trying to patch up a leak in our air mattress, declared that we've spent enough money on air mattresses to buy a conventional mattress. I couldn't agree more. So I went to Sleepy's yesterday and ordered a regular full-sized mattress for about $400. I cringed as the salesman kept pressuring me to lay down on the more expensive mattresses, afraid that a lone bed bug would somehow crawl out of my pants leg or something and onto the bed. And then he'd see it and make me pay like a million dollars for the bed. I cringed even more when he told me horror tales of buying mattresses from other retailers, who he claimed often pick up discarded mattresses from the curb, slap a new cover on them and then sell them as "new" mattresses. "Sometimes these discarded mattresses have bed bugs in them," he warned in his spookiest tone. "And then you bring them into your home!"

If only he knew, he wouldn't have even let me in the damn store.

Damn, I forgot how much money conventional mattresses sell for! Some of the more expensive ones (just the mattress, mind you. No frame or box spring) sold for $1,500 and even $2,500. I cut the salesman off in the middle of his pitch and told him I was looking to spend no more than $400 and he led me straight to the cheaper mattresses.

I really liked the inflatable mattresses, but I really need something that's going to last more than a month or two. I plan to cover and seal the mattress with a heavy plastic drop cloth, the kind painters use to protect the floor and furniture from dripping paint. Not to perpetuate stereotypes about Latinos and the tendency to work as day laborers, but in my apartment, we have a six-foot steel ladder, various work gloves, safety goggles, a tool belt and of course, a 100-foot roll of heavy plastic drop cloth. When my mother purchased a new mattress (her old one became infested with bed bugs) last August, we covered it with the plastic and closed it shut with duct tape. Obviously, there is a crinkling sound that comes from the mattress whenever someone climbs onto the bed but to me it is a small price to pay to sleep bed bug-free. And when you consider that a mattress these days can cost $400 and up, it makes sense to do whatever needs to be done in order to keep bed bugs out of it.

I sincerely recommend that anyone buying a new mattress do the same. The drop cloth is not that expensive, and is a rather smart investment considering how expensive mattresses can be.

Save Your Books

2008-01-15T21:44:00.000-05:00

Been out of work for a few weeks, so I decided to take a break from the job hunt to do some cleaning up. I'm a writer and a reporter (although I haven't written for any real newspapers in about year) so I have a lot of news clips that I immediately put into plastic bags and stored in a large Tupperware-like plastic container to keep bed bugs from finding their way inside the papers. For those who haven't figured it out yet, bed bugs love paper. Newspaper, magazines and books make great hiding and nesting places for bed bugs.

Long story short, I was scanning my old news clippings onto my computer so I could still have the clips long after the original paper turns yellow and crumbles. I already have some clips from 2000 that are turning yellow. I think sealing them in plastic helps slow the degradation process but it doesn't stop it completely. As a writer, I am also a reader and I have a lot of books. Unfortunately, I ended up having to get rid of about half of my books when I discovered bed bugs inside them. This weekend, as I was scanning my old news clips, it occurred
to me that I should also store my books in plastic containers to keep any more from becoming infested.

So I went to the 99 cent store and bought several containers for the books. I made sure they were see-through so that I could see the spines of the books without opening the containers. I still have the books on the shelves, but they're in the containers now.

I figured I'd share this little tip for anyone who owns books, so that they won't have to toss half or all of their book collection in the trash. Sure, the containers may look a bit tacky on the bookshelves. But if they're worth saving, you won't hesitate to do the same.

Later.

Hillarious!

2008-01-10T03:56:00.000-05:00

I could not make this up.

Occasionally I receive a comment from one of those automated comment spammer programs which makes a Google-like attempt to capture the essence of a particular post based on one or two words in it and then form a comment that offers a product or service related to my post (or what the software thinks is related to my post). Today I received a gut-busting laugh-out-loud comment from such spam software on a 2006 entry in which I complain about how the strange-looking bed bug bites on my arm are often mistaken for some sort of skin infection or herpes.

Got Herpes? Do not despair. You are not alone. 1 in 5 men and 1 in 4 women are living with herpes. Don't Let Genital Herpes Run or Ruin Your Life. Dating and relationship help for people with genital herpes now http://www.****************

Only a computer could do something this stupid.

I'll try to post again this weekend.

On the Bright Side of Bed Bugs, Part 2

2008-01-06T16:33:00.000-05:00

I found another reason to be happy to live with bedbugs. At least they're not the Chagas, a South American insect whose bites induce a parasitic infection which feeds on the host's heart muscle and intestines and kills 50,000 people every year. According to the Times Colonist in western Canada, the infection caused by a bite from a Chagas, also known as the "blood-sucking assassin" can also be transmitted from one human to another via blood transfusion. The symptoms take 10 to 20 years to develop and are usually fatal.

Did I also mention that they can fly?

So be happy that bed bugs is all you have, because there is a far greater menace out there that make bed bugs seem like Girl Scouts in comparison.

Bed Bug Sunday News Spread

2008-01-01T20:07:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year, everyone!

I did a lot of drinking, dancing and eating for New Year's Eve and was too busy preparing for the festivities to read last Sunday's New York Daily News, despite the fact that I had bought it. I finally got a chance to go through it today and in it was a two-page spread about bed bugs in New York City. Obviously it's too late to buy the Sunday Daily News if you haven't already, but you can still read the online version of that story. The article includes two personal accounts from New Yorkers living with bed bugs, including that of Caitlin Heller, a fellow bed bug blogger who has been reading my blog since its inception two years ago. Caitlin is also the founder and moderator of the Yahoo! bed bug support group, Bedbugger. Here's a brief excerpt of her bed bug woes:

"I was getting 15 to 20 bites a night, and it was driving me crazy," said Heller, who runs Yahoo's Bedbug Support Group where sufferers commiserate. "I suffered mentally. I couldn't sleep at night, and I couldn't focus during the day because I had itchy, painful welts all over my body."

Scary.

The article emphasizes the fact that New York City's poorest and wealthiest dwellings are equally vulnerable to bed bugs, listing recent breakouts of bed bug infestations in such locales as Ralph Lauren's design studio, the Thomas Jefferson Housing Projects, the Helmsley Park Lane Hotel, and the Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft law firm.

Check it out; it's a pretty good read, and check out Bedbugger as well.

Later.

"Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite"

2007-12-31T00:15:00.000-05:00

Hoo boy. If you're like me and have perused the web endlessly for news on bed bugs, you've no doubt read "Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite" ad nauseam by clueless reporters who no doubt assume they are the first to ever use this adage in an article involving bed bugs. I am quite sick of hearing this saying in news stories about bed bugs, and I have no doubt in my mind that 2008 will be full of news stories that contain "Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite" in the lead paragraph if not the headline.

I came upon a news story about colonial America that actually tells from where this notorious adage originates. It's from the Norwell Mariner/Patriot Ledger in Marshfield, Massachusetts. The article focuses on MA state Senator Robert Hedlund, who accompanied a class of fifth graders on their field trip to a New England colonial museum. Apparently Marshfield is a microscopically sleepy town or this article was the byproduct of an extraordinarily slow news day. In any case, the origin of the phrase is revealed in the following quote:

It was later learned that colonists often had to cope with bed bugs because mattresses were made of straw; bed supports were tightened with a special device: hence the expression, “sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite.”-Mary Ford, "Oldest Fifth-grader Joins School Field Trip"

The fact offers some perspective when you consider all the technological advancements made since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620, and despite all these advancements we still itch for the same reason the Pilgrims did. The bed bugs must've annoyed the hell out of the Native Americans.

Happy New Year, by the way. Next month will be the second birthday of Bugged Out.

Speaking of New Year, do any native New Yorkers actually go to Times Square anymore to watch the ball drop? It was all the rage when I was a kid, and by the time I was old enough to go by myself (since no adult I knew was interested in going), the whole hanging out at Times Square got real lame, especially after 9/11 when security was beefed up and everything from liquid containers (no booze?!?) to backpacks were banned from the area during the New Year's Party.

As far as I know, most New Yorkers attend private New Year's parties where they are free to eat, drink, smoke, snort, inject and swallow whatever the hell they want without being hassled by the fuzz. Times Square at New Year's is for squares, a.k.a. tourists. Let them be herded like cattle into a potential terrorist target area.

So be sure to stock on the alcohol tomorrow, especially if you have bed bugs. And for those who don't have bed bugs, you are cordially invited to my house for a slumber party! Then you can go home and watch your furniture and your sanity disappear.

Cheers.

On the Bright Side of Bedbugs

2007-12-24T23:30:00.000-05:00

My mother always told me to look on the bright side of things, especially when those things aren't so great. Well, bed bugs aren't so great, are they? But here's some reasons to be thankful for bed bugs. I know I'm grasping at straws here, but play along.

For those ladies living with their man, bed bugs will make him think twice about leaving his socks or underwear on the floor.
For those men not living with their significant other, bed bugs like to bite women more, as discussed in a past post, so this should encourage you to invite your girlfriend to sleep over more often.
If you're really into the minimalist thing, bed bugs should not be that much of a problem for you. In fact, if you really believe less is more, than watch your living space grow and grow exponentially as your over infested bed and other furniture disappear.
With bed bugs seeming to explode in numbers in cities across the world, I can't imagine that homeless people are feeling as bad about their living situation as they used to.

Not too many good things to say about bed bugs, are there? I believe that if you don't have anything nice to say about bed bugs, then pour yourself, a stiff drink. If you can think of some offbeat positive results of living with bed bugs, please drop me a comment so you can share with the rest of the class.

Merry Christmas!

It's Been A While...

2007-12-21T23:24:00.000-05:00

About a month to be exact.

I do apologize for the unexplained delay. I have the unbelievably bad luck of becoming physically ill around finals time. For those of you who have been paying attention, I am in my last semester of college and am completing my undergrad degree.

In the first week of December I developed a severe pain in my right lower wisdom tooth and it had to be extracted. The pain was so unbearable I lost sleep, and my personal self-prescription consisting on Tylenol and herbal anesthesia was simply not strong enough to dull the pain. At the same time I had acquired the flu (despite the fact that I had received a flu shot October 25) and was basically sick in bed with a sore throat hocking up my body weight in phlegm and sleeping for about 12-14 hours a day. This was of course on days when I didn’t have to show up for my new job or class.

A week later my left lower wisdom tooth began giving me a similar pain and I had to wait four days for my dentist to be able to take it out. I'm over the flu but still have a sore throat
and just finished my finals. I promise I will post something soon.

Sniff, Sniff

2007-11-24T04:19:00.000-05:00

Hi,

I must be really desensitized to the disgusting concept of bed bugs as I am blogging while eating a sandwich of leftover turkey. Are bed bugs a good source of protein?

Came across this article in the Knox News Sentinel in Tennessee that describes the odor that bed bugs emit as smelling like coriander. For those who don't know what coriander is, it is an herb more commonly (at least in the U.S.) as cilantro. The article claims to have gotten this and other bed bug factoids from bedbugresource.com and the University of Tennessee, but I couldn't find any mention of a coriander-scented odor coming from bed bugs on either website.

I personally think the odor that bed bugs emit are like a musk, the scent created by an animal's (deer musk is used in many fragrances) stink gland between their stomach and their genitals.

My question is, if the smell is in fact a musk, and deer musk and pig pheromones have been used in perfumes for thousands of years, could the bed bug odor be bottled as a perfume? Could those of us living with bed bugs be sitting on a gold mine?

Probably not.

My other question is, what do you think the bed bugs' distinctive odors smells like? Please participate in the new poll located in the sidebar. I've already asked six friends and family members and no one has given the same answer. Their responses as well as mine are listed as poll responses, but feel free to select "Other" on the poll if you don't agree with any of us and then write in the comment area of this post what you think the bed bug odor smells like to you.

Happy Thanksgiving by the way.

Later.

Time For a Stiff Drink

2007-11-20T05:11:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the delay. Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and all my professors felt that loading me down with pointless busywork to complete over the four-day weekend was a great idea. Spent much of the past weekend working on it while looking for more work. Thank God I'm graduating this semester. Man, I hate college. Finals are coming up and I am not my usual cheerful self. If things weren't depressing enough, check out the crap I scooped up off the Web.

The first item of discussion is an article from 7 Online New Jersey's Department of Health investigating a bed bug infestation in an apartment complex. The story itself isn't that noteworthy, but here comes the kicker. One tenant's infestation in her family's bedrooms was so bad she moved their mattresses out to the hallway (presumably a hall in the apartment and not the hallway on the other side of her apartment door) because they were too scared to sleep in their bedrooms.

Is this lady a complete idiot, or am I losing my mind? What part of BED bug does she not understand? They're not called bedroom bugs; they're called bed bugs, and for a pretty damn good reason. It's because they love beds, and if you have a bed bug infestation, chances are the bugs have first settled inside the bed, namely the mattress. So this mental midget basically dragged her mattress and the mattresses of her two children out to the hallway, along with all the bed bugs inside the mattresses. Soon, the hallway will be full of bed bugs and so will the living room with its comfy sofas. Smooth move, ex-lax.

Speaking of stupid, 7 Online made two embarrassing grammatical errors in their article. I understand this was probably a script that ran off a teleprompter for the on-air people (a.k.a., news puppets) to read aloud on camera, so maybe I'm just nitpicking.

I also want to rant about a good number of the insecticides out there on the market (mostly in aerosol spray form) that are allegedly good to use on bed bugs. These spray cans are never exclusively intended for killing bed bugs, but rather for a host of insects as well such as mites, roaches, spiders, water bugs, termites, etc. I, like many of you, have purchased one or two of these bug sprays if for no other reason than to satisfy my personal curiosity. These sprays usually offer mixed results, which make me wonder if they're effective against bed bugs at all.

What really bothers me about these sprays is their inclusiveness, the fact that their labels claim they can be used to kill an array of pests including bed bugs. But we've been told over and over and over again (and some of us have learned through trial and error) that the pesticides that kill other insects do not really work on bed bugs. Therefore, the claim made by these sprays are an outright lie to me and gives me the impression that the spray was originally intended for those other pests but the spray's manufacturer added bed bugs to the label regardless of whether or not the spray is effective in killing bed bugs. It's 5am, so I'm not sure if what I'm saying is 100% coherent. Maybe the spray's claims do make sense, and I'm the one who's lost touch with reality.

Belated Warmup Wednesday

2007-11-15T12:20:00.000-05:00

Hi all,

This weekend I will be blogging about one New Jersey woman who has literally been driven out of her bedroom by bed bug and the infestation in the building in which she lives. I'll also express my myriad disappointments of the pest control industry. If I don't think that's enough, I'll add something else.

Happy belated Veterans' Day, for my American readers.

later.

Bugged Out on MySpace

2007-11-13T02:49:00.000-05:00

In an effort to further promote Bugged Out, I decided to create a MySpace page. All the Presidential candidates have a MySpace page, and so do various companies and organizations to compliment their primary web sites. I figured, why the hell not? It won’t cost me anything to try.

So if you have your own MySpace page, or are considering creating a MySpace account, feel free to add Bugged Out to your friends list.

http://www.myspace.com/buggedoutnyc

In The News

2007-11-10T18:09:00.000-05:00

Hi,

I couldn't decide which news item to write about, so I figured I'd write about both. First up, a New York Times article from November 2005. It illustrates the dramatic increase of numbers of bedbug reports in New York City.

Last year (2004) the city logged 377 bedbug violations, up from just 2 in 2002 and 16 in 2003. Since July (2005), there have been 449. "It's definitely a fast-emerging problem," said Carol Abrams, spokeswoman for the city housing agency.

wow is all I can say.

In other news, Cincinnati, Ohio's Department of Health has accomplished something New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) could not, despite all the token gestures made and lame duck hearings held by the New York City Council last year: form a bed bug task force.

According to WLWT Cincinnati and WCPO Cincinnati, the Ohio State Legislature formed the Bed Bug Task Force after Cincinnati's Council On Aging logged 500 different clients in one month who had complained about a bed bug infestation in their homes. The task force held their first public meeting last Monday with residents, politicians and exterminators to discuss the city's bed bug problem. The task force has already lobbied members of the Ohio state legislature for stricter guidelines in a bed bug eradication strategy.

So Cincinnati has their act together, but what about New York? Well, there's this quote from the 2005 New York Times article to keep our spirits up:

"People come in here and cry on my shoulder," said Andy Linares, the owner of Bug Off Pest Control, in Washington Heights. "They feel ashamed, even traumatized, to have these invisible vampires living in their home. Rats, even V.D., is more socially acceptable than bedbugs."

Warmup Wednesday 11/7

2007-11-07T19:43:00.000-05:00

I can't really decide whether to blog about a 2005 New York Times article that illustrates the lightning-quick emergence of bed bugs or a public initiative to address bed bugs in Ohio which should've been implemented in New York a long time ago.

Maybe I'll blog about both. Who knows.

How the Mighty Have Fallen

2007-11-03T20:57:00.000-04:00

I recently saw a blog post from Gothamist detailing the demise of the famous Hotel Pennsylvania. For those of you either new to New York City or not from New York City, the Hotel Pennsylvania is one of the most extravagant hotels in a city known for extravagant hotels.

My brother, father, uncle, and both grandfathers found steady employment within Manhattan's hospitality industry, and although none of them were ever lucky enough to work at the Hotel Pennsylvania, I grew up hearing how grand and high-class this famous hotel was.

The Hotel Pennsylvania's glamorous history, however, has become just that as law suits from guests being bitten by bed bugs have forged a new reputation for the 88-year old hotel. Check out this lead (of what should've been the lead!) from the New York Observer:

ONCE A GLAMOROUS DESTINATION where jazz standouts Count Basie and Duke Ellington performed in the grand ballroom—a place immortalized (along with its phone number) by the Glenn Miller tune “Pennsylvania 6-5000”—the 1,700-room hotel has since devolved into a cheap, decrepit tourist trap more commonly associated with reported bedbug attacks than big-band nostalgia.

The company who owns the Hotel Pennsylvania is preparing to tear down the historic hotel and replace it with a skyscraper. Obviously the pending law suits and the hotel's tarnished reputation have proved to be too much to merit the continued existence of the hotel. Some preservationists are trying to make the City declare the hotel a landmark, which would outlaw its demolition, but I think this movement is too little, too late.

I stated back in April 2006 and to two reporters who interviewed me that this bed bug problem, and the city's unwillingness to adequately address the epidemic would ultimately affect the hospitality and real estate industries, which are huge in New York City. The City Council has chosen to do nothing aside from token gestures about this problem and now this city is losing one of its most historic venues.

Bed Bug Haikus, Part Two

2007-11-03T00:19:00.000-04:00

I've only received seven bed bug haikus thus far and was waiting, waiting, waiting for the tenth so I could post my next barrage of haikus. Then I thought, what the hell, seven is good enough. For those first-time visitors, I wrote ten bed bug-related haikus about a month ago and promised to release my next ten provided that I receive ten bed bug haikus from visitors dropping comments. I've decided to ignore my old promise and put up my best eight bed bug haikus anyway.

But before I release my own poetry, I'd like to share with everyone the very amusing and creative bed bug haikus that are too good to not share. Unfortunately, the poster was anonymous and the poems were submitted within several different comments , so I have no way of knowing if these seven haikus were written by one anonymous poster or several. In any case, here they are...

******

Bugs have given me
Obsessive Compulsive Order
Mess harbors vampires

***

Bugs! I have become:
Carpenter, maid, repairman,
Entomologist

***

When I find a bug
I tape it to white paper
My only revenge

***

My cat has become
Both best friend and enemy
Potential bug bus

***

My feet are so cold
But the alternative's worse
Socks could carry eggs

***

My clothes are in bags
My dignity is missing
Where did my pants go?

***

Red welts on my skin
Either stress hives or bed bugs
I think a mixture

******

and, without further ado, are my ten haikus.

******

Exterminators
$400 a room
My kidney's for sale

***

Bed Bugs?!? Why me, God?
Oh yeah, I forgot
That thing I did with donkeys

***

Bed bugs in New York
Pay no rent and eat for free!
Freeloading assholes

***

Unwelcome bed bugs
Go back to 1950
Nobody likes you

***

My blood is too sweet
I should cut down on Starbucks
That's why they bite me

***

Spray here and spray there
Wash your clothes and scratch your legs
I sure miss roaches

***

The next guy who says
"Hey, don't let the bed bugs bite!"
I will throw rocks at

***

Through pain springs forth art
Bug bites replace my bed frame
Bed bugs are my muse

Enjoy!

Warmup Wednesday!

2007-10-31T01:26:00.000-04:00

I recently employed the use of a web site tracking service to get a better idea of how many hits Bugged Out gets. I was very surprised to discover how many people visit Bugged Out. I guess my big mistake is basing the number of visitors upon the number of comments, which as I've found is not very accurate at all.

For example, yesterday 120 people visited Bugged Out, and 90 the day before. I was also shocked to find how many non-New Yorkers visited Bugged Out, considering I tried to niche myself away from other bed bug blogs by gearing the content towards bed bug issues in New York City. In the last two days, people from over 15 different countries have visited Bugged Out. From the comments I've read I knew Canadians and Britons were reading Bugged Out as well as Americans, but I was surprised to find so many visitors from the United Arab Emirates (Salam!), Australia (G'day!), India (Namaste!), Turkey (Merhaba!), Germany (Guten tag!), Kuwait (Salam!), Israel (Shalom!), and Malaysia (Selamat sejahtera!).

But let me get to the point.

Since so many people are visiting Bugged Out, I thought I'd offer a preview of what's ahead for my regular weekend post called Warmup Wednesday.

This weekend I'll finally publish my next round of bed bug-related haikus as well as share some of the haikus I've received from creative viewers. Get ready to laugh.

Update 11/01: Really ticked off with Blogger and my own oafish clumsiness, as Part Two of the haikus was written yesterday but was accidentally published that same day instead of Saturday, as I has intended. Instead, this weekend's post will focus on how bed bugs have contributed to the demise of one historic New York venue.

Bed Bug Tortilla/Pest Control Orgy

2007-10-27T21:11:00.000-04:00

I came across this old CBS story from New York City in which a woman living in a Brooklyn slum complains to her super of, among other things, a bed bug infestation. Check this out:

As for her complaint to the super about the bedbugs? "What you can do with the bed bugs is put them in a tortilla and feed them to your family and then get rid of the bedbugs," she said the super told her.

Yikes. Seems like bed bugs are just one more complaint for slumlords to ignore.

In other news, PCT Online had a very interesting article exhibiting just what it took to destroy a full-scale bed bug infestation in one New Jersey apartment building. People often drop comments on Bugged Out asking how to effectively get rid of bed bugs from their apartments or apartment buildings, and the answer is never a simple one. Because apartments are attached to each other, simply fumigating the affected apartment doesn't help, as bed bugs can escape to adjacent apartments and return when the coast is clear.

Royal Fumigation, however, has devised a fumigation strategy even more comprehensive than President Bush's invasion of Iraq. Keeping constant communication with local police precincts, fire departments and New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection, Royal had the property manager evacuate all tenants from the building for the duration of the bed bug fumigation, arranging temporary housing for the displaced tenants. Royal then spent the next 12 hours sealing off, I presume, every nook and cranny in the building.

After that, a pesticide called Vikane was sprayed in the building for about 24 hours. A consultant from Dow Agrosciences, the manufacturer of Vikane, was on hand to help Royal with the proper application of the pesticide. The actual fumigation period was followed by a nine-hour aeration of the entire building using fans. Though the aeration was over by 9 pm, Royal didn't want anyone re-entering the building until the next morning. The next day the property manager brought in a cleaning crew to make the building ready for the tenants to move back in.

I found this to be the most coordinated and thorough bed bug fumigation I've ever heard of. I can't even imagine how much this all cost. The article itself leaves out several facts that I and others would love to know, including:

How many people were actually involved in the fumigation?
How much did this all cost, and was the cost covered by the landlord or by the tenants?
How many apartment units were in the building?
How much time did Royal spend preparing this very thorough operation?
What logistical issues, if any, did the crew face while planning this operation?
Were the apartments unlocked in order for Royal to properly fumigate them?

I certainly wish these questions were answered in the article, but the story had enough information to keep me interested. Wouldn't it be an absolute bitch if the bed bugs still survived in that building after all that?

Have a good weekend.

The Bug Man Strikes Again!

2007-10-12T12:24:00.000-04:00

Stumbled on an old (March 2007) San Francisco Gate article featuring some pretty good advice from the Bugman, who I mentioned in a previous post.

Here's an excerpt:

Q:I have a pest control company spray our house every month, and we don't see any bugs. They claim they can kill all crawling insects. Is anything wrong with this?
A: Besides spraying pesticides without having a target pest, there are a number of other reasons why I would never recommend such a service.
First, any insect, spider or other arthropod can occasionally wander into your home. It happens to everyone and shouldn't be a concern. You can dispose of the occasional invader however you like. However, occasionally you may see a few insects of the same species, and it may be important to know what they are. Never hire a pest control company that "kills all crawling insects"; hire one that can identify all crawling and flying insects and will make recommendations and treat accordingly.

I checked out his web site and found these bizarre bed bug facts:

Crushed bed bugs, mixed with salt and human milk make a fine eye ointment. In powdered form they were thought to cure all fevers and for hysteria they were given internally, and just the smell of them was considered sufficient to relieve those under hysterical suffocation. In some parts of Ohio, eating seven bed bugs mixed with beans is considered a cure for chills and fever.

And check out this tidbit on the "insectxuality" of bed bugs.

Bed bugs also have an interesting sex life. The males have large, sex organs with which they pierce the females body wall not bothering to use her sex organs. They fill the female's body with semen, some it which makes it to her reproductive organs. The rest is absorbed as protein by the female and used as nourishment. When feeding, bed bugs have been observed climbing on top of another bed bug which is feeding on a human and piercing that bed bug with its beak and sucking the blood from it, thus getting the blood second hand. This body piercing of the females by males while feeding seems to have no effect on the bed bug getting pierced.

Doesn't make me feel any better that two bed bugs may be getting it on while perched on my body sucking my blood. These creatures certainly are multi-taskers.

I highly recommend the Bugman's interesting website, which I should add, advocates the treatment of insect infestations without the use of chemicals or pesticides.

Burn, Baby, Burn!

2007-10-09T14:33:00.000-04:00

I came up with a new sport you might want to try. It's ever so much fun.

There's no league to join, no official rules, it can be played at home, and you can do all the steroids you want.

The sport? Bed bug burning!

Here's what you need:
1) A live bed bug
2) A long barbecue lighter
3) A linoleum floor or other fire-resistant surface

I'm not going to insult your intelligence by telling you how the game is played, except that each charred bed bug equals one point.

My brother tried burning bed bugs, and he says they scream when they catch fire. I keep trying to position my ear close to the action to hear anything that remotely resembles a scream. So far nothing. Let me know if you hear any screams if you so feel inclined to try out this fun sport.

By the way, I have collected nine bed bug-related haikus from anonymous posters so far. As I previously promised, I would only unleash my next ten bed bug haikus when I recieve ten from you. So please, stir up those creative juices and drop that last haiku in the comment area!

New York, the Perfect Scapegoat

2007-09-30T12:37:00.000-04:00

Even in a post-9/11 world, Americans love to talk trash about New York City. This LA Times article on bed bugs is no different. While I didn't find anything of significance in the article that I haven't already blogged about, I did find this particular passage interesting:

They used to be associated with cramped and dirty living quarters, grimy motels and high-rise living in places like New York.-Los Angeles Times

Because cramped and dirty living quarters and grimy motels can only be found in New York, right? Right.

If you click on the second page of the article, you will find some interesting bed bug trivia to share with your friends when you're up at three in the morning because you're too paranoid to go to sleep. But if you don't feel like making that extra click, I copied and pasted the factoids below:

Bedbugs are established members of the global community. Archaeologists in Europe have found bedbug fossils dating back 3,500 years, the University of Kentucky's Potter said, "and they go way back before that." They arrived in the New World with the first colonists and were plentiful until about the 1940s, when DDT seemed to do away with them.-Los Angeles Times

By the way, someone has already posted in the comment area four bed bug haikus. They're really good, but as promised, I would only post my next ten bed bug haikus when you guys submitted ten of your own. So try and send in six more, and only then will I unleash to the world my next ten bed bug haikus.

Later.

Who Wants To Laugh?

2007-09-22T17:03:00.000-04:00

With all the crying many of you are doing as you throw out your beloved bed bug-ridden furniture, I'm sure you can all use a good laugh.

The following is an article I found in The Spoof!, a publication featuring outrageously made-up news, kind of the British version of The Onion. This particular article showcases a new strain of bed bug that resembles a lobster.

Here's one hilarious quote:

These super-bugs thrive on crisps and of course the lower orders are always eating food in bed, and as they always buy shite for their kids and that, then it's no surprise that this plague is getting totally out of hand."

In case you're wondering, "crisps" are what English people call potato chips because "chips" are what they call french fries. "Feckers" is, well, replace the first e with a u and you'll figure it out. "Shite"? Remove the e and you will have the American translation. "Council estates" I imagine refers to public housing, and the "lower orders" means lower-class people.

Enjoy!

Bed Bug Haikus, Part One

2007-09-10T17:10:00.000-04:00

Some of you may not know that I am a writer. In addition to the blogging, I worked for a few years as a reporter and editor. I've done some unpublished fiction and am currently writing a book. I thought about how art develops through suffering and emotion and loss, three things I've encountered since I first saw bed bugs in my room.

Long story short, I sat down and began writing bed bug haikus. For those unfamiliar with the term, haiku is a Japanese form of nonrhyming poetry. The first line contains five syllables, the second line contains seven and the final line contains five. There are a few variations to this rule but 5, 7, and 5 are the standard. Without further ado, I give you ten haikus I wrote in the last hour.

******

My blood is their food

I itch yet they are not there

I miss my mattress

***

"Don't let bed bugs bite"

Much easier said than done

Bring back DDT

***

Please, legalize it

DDT, I mean. Not weed

No, wait...yes to both

***

I live with bed bugs

If you can call it living

Ow, my arm itches

***

Are bed bugs a dream

For minimalist people?

Bare rooms confuse bugs

***

Die, Rachel Carson!

Say, now that she's dead, can we

Bring back DDT?

***

I live with bed bugs

I sleep on an air mattress

You come here often?

***

It's hard to get laid

With bug bites on your body

They look like herpes

***

Comment on Bugged Out

If you don't do so tonight

More bed bugs will bite

***

My bedroom is bare

These bed bugs are everywhere

Do you even care?

***

After I wrote these I thought, why should I have all the fun? If these goofy haikus inspired you in any way to write your own bed bug-related haiku, please do so in lieu of a comment on this post. If you have writer's block, just remember your little buddies waiting at home for you to come back to bed! Remember the pain and suffering! The itching! The humiliation! The stigma! Oh, the humanity!

I've actually written ten more, but you won't see them until I see at least ten haikus from my dear, dear readers. They must be bed bug-related. If you need any more inspiration, peruse the many many posts here on Bugged Out.

Note: Non-haiku poetry also accepted.

Why I Do This

2007-09-08T23:31:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I received an anonymous comment that I have literally read over and over because it makes me feel great. It's from someone living with bedbugs who is a regular reader who welcomes Bugged Out as an oasis of support in a desert of loneliness and hopelessness.

To her I say, thank you. You are the reason why Bugged Out was created, and I'm glad that Bugged Out and many other bed bug-related blogs out there to serve the simple purpose of letting those people living with bed bugs know that even though they feel alone, they are anything but. Your parents may not understand your problem, your friends may look at you like you're a leper and you may go through various episodes of bed bug paranoia, but understand that we've all been there before, everyone who has a bed bug blog or has read or commented on a bed bug blog, we've all been there.

Don't give up hope.

Without further ado, I will now paste that inspirational comment.

****************

Though I have never commented, I read your blog religiously. As you might have guessed...I have bed bugs too. And I need to thank you, profusely.

I'm a nineteen year old college student. After my first year at a big university in a small town, I decided to take control of my life and start following my biggest dream--to live in the city. I changed schools, friends, and locations to live in beautiful apartment in downtown Denver. I bought all new furniture and decorated my apartment with care (and all of my student budget). I even bought myself a cat and--presto!--insta-home. I woke up one morning about 6 weeks ago with some strange bug bites on my stomach. I am very allergic to mosquitoes, so I passed the blame to that and went on with my day. As time went on, I kept getting bites. Of course, my boyfriend never recieved one. I must have tasty blood. After research, I realized my true problem--bedbugs. As no one here seems to understand the problem, my boyfriend and I took it upon ourselves to rid my apartment. We isolated my bed and for two blissful weeks, I was bite free! Then I woke up a week and a half ago with 23 bites in a circle on my thigh, a line of them on my ribcage and my back...I'd been practically eaten alive. And that brings me to where I am now. I got out of my lease (after much arguing with my landlord who STILL doesn't believe there are any bugs..) and have signed a new lease in a fully-furnished (YES!) building. This is REALLY nice considering my new bedroom set and living room sets are in a junkyard somewhere. My new community doesn't allow pets so my cat has found a new home. I'm washing every item of clothing I own.

It doesn't matter though. At the moment I can feel them on me. Crawling. Biting. Sucking away my blood. I wish I could explain rationally to those darn bugs that I'm anemic! I need my blood more than they do! I don't sleep much, and when I do, I have vivid nightmares. Last night when I was eating sushi, I became convinced that a sesame seed was a bug that had brazenly followed me to dinner. My family thinks I am crazy---they are probably right. I saw a commercial for that new movie Bug. I burst into tears. I cannot wait until I think back on this and it's been years since I saw one or felt one.

Anyway, the purpose of this disgusting long comment was to say thank you. Your blog made me feel less alone. No one I know really understands and I don't like to share. Some people act like I have a communicable disease when I try to explain it.

On Saturday morning I will cart away the last of my belongings. Hopefully that will be a start to the end of the nightmares, the paranoia, the crazed searches in the middle of the night. I'll continue to read this blog...makes me feel like not such a freak.

See-Oh Too

2007-08-23T15:47:00.000-04:00

I apologize for not blogging sooner. Between looking for work and the start of my final semester in college, I've been more than busy these last two weeks.

Al Gore may be on to something after all.

From what I've read online about bed bugs, almost every source I've read states that bed bugs are attracted to us by the CO2 a.k.a. Carbon dioxide from our breath. But the London-based Times has examined the great mystery as to, why are the bed bugs suddenly coming back after being near-extinction almost half a century ago. Obviously humans have been exhaling CO2 from our mouths and nostrils for the last 50 years, so what was it that brought these insects back to our world?

They are attracted to the very thing that has caused the US, and the rest of the world, so much grief lately: carbon dioxide. While historically it is the carbon dioxide in human breath that has brought them out to feed, experts speculate that rising levels in the air could be behind their renaissance. Every day seems to bring a new tale of infestation - and, in the land that spawned the compensation culture, a new lawsuit.

Though it is, for now, only a theory, CO1 or carbon monoxide emissions from vehicles may have been what jump started this bed bug resurgence in the last few years. Perhaps it is just carbon itself which attracts these bugs, whether it's from an exhaust pipe, from a smoke stack or our own lungs. Could the massive amount of CO emissions have been what attracted the few bed bugs remaining on this planet to return from wherever they were hiding to feed once more? Even if this was the case, reducing carbon emissions won't get rid of them.

Hopefully, the same experts who ponder why the bed bugs have returned will focus their time and energy on making sure this world is bed bug-free.

Feeling Depressed?

2007-08-11T07:20:00.000-04:00

Well, for those of you living with bed bugs, get ready to feel further depressed.

The Village Voice's blog, Running Scared wrote about a Bedbug Control Seminar held by Pest Control Technology Magazine this month at the Park Central Hotel. According to the blog, the unofficial theme of the seminar was, the bed bug problem's getting worse and we don't really know how to deal with it. A note of warning: the entry features a disgusting YouTube video of a bed bug feeding on an arm.

Here's a few excerpts from the blog entry:

“We have to be in an absolute bed bug state of mind,” warned Dr. Michael Potter, an entomologist at the University of Kentucky and leading expert in the now global bed bug war, with no apologies to Billy Joel. “This problem is not going to go away. I don’t see how the problem is going to get better. It’s going to get chaotic.”

...it appears that even the exterminators' deadly pesticides are no match for bedbugs...

More horrifying was Potter’s assertion that these tiny vampires are growing increasingly resistant to the arsenal of mostly pyrethroid-based compounds currently approved by the EPA. “We’ve had cases where we’re spraying 200 to 300 times the label dose of toxins and we can’t kill ‘em,” Potter said.

The only solution offered to affected New Yorkers were mattress covers, which to me are not only disgusting but do not put up a substantial defense in your bed bug infestation if the bed bugs are not in your bed, or are in your bed and in other areas of your home. The name bed bug is misleading, because beds are only one of the only many, many places in a person's home these insects can live.

Notice that the blog mentions "currently approved by the EPA", hinting that, as many bed bug bloggers have, the long-banned DDT just might be the only hope in combating bed bugs, just as it did half a century ago.

While effective solutions were non-existent at the seminar, one exceptional idea to decrease the spreading of bed bugs was discussed: a hotline that New Yorkers can call to pick up their bug-infested mattresses rather than have them lying around on the sidewalks, or worse, in an apartment hallway.

Long story short: bed bugs growing epidemic, nothing in sight that can stop them, give up hope, find a nice corner to sit in (corners should be easy to find once you throw out your furniture) and cry silently. Or howl like a banchee, whatever works for you.

Bed Bugs Just Won't Co-op Erate!

2007-07-28T00:47:00.000-04:00

I’m always happy to write about bed bug-related info that’s relevant to New York City as opposed to writing about bed bugs in general. I came across an article this afternoon in The Cooperator, a New York City-based trade publication for “the co-op and condo community” (not exactly sure if that refers to building management, individual owners, or both) about bed bugs, aptly referring to them as “domestic terrorists”.

I was pleased to found some myths dispelled that have previously flourished among the general public, a sign that as time has passed, our knowledge of bed bugs and how to deal with them have been better researched and documented, resulting in a higher quality of information concerning the subject. I found the article to contain some very interesting facts, such as:

According to the National Pest Management Association, complaints of bed bug infestation increased by 71 percent between 2000 and 2005, and the city's exterminators are reporting record numbers of calls about the problem.

...and..

Bed bugs get the signal to forage when they taste the scent of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the dark. Nighttime typically means increased production of CO2 while we sleep, and that's when the pests emerge to sip drops of blood from their host.

...and even tips on hiring exterminators that I’ve never read before…

"If [an exterminator's] pre-treatment checklist is detail-oriented, you probably have a good exterminator," says Pearlman. "If he doesn't have a checklist, don't hire him. If the bugs aren't exterminated, you will be bitten again within three or four days."

My only complaint about this particular piece is that one exterminator interviewed in the article claims that bed bug bites do not itch. Anybody out there think bed bug bites don’t itch? I sure think they do.

The article is an interesting read, so feel free to check it out if the above excerpts seem interesting. And if you find any helpful information out there about bed bugs, please, share it with the rest of the class, okay?

School Daze

2007-07-21T20:45:00.000-04:00

Finally, the NYC Department of Education (DOE) has adopted a policy to curb the spread of bed bugs in city schools. According to Fox 5, principals must notify parents in writing if bed bugs have been found in their school.

Check out this scary statistic:

Last January and February, there were 72 reports of bugs at 43 schools, according to the Department of Education.

Schools are a great place for bed bugs to spread especially elementary and junior high schools, where students have to keep their coats together in a large closet all day long, the perfect place for bed bugs to jump from one garment to another. The only question I have is what the principal or the more appropriately, the DOE plans to do when once bed bugs have been found in one of their schools.

Success!!

2007-07-07T23:04:00.000-04:00

To those of you who followed the instructions I offered in a previous post for a non-chemical approach to killing roaches in your home, I hope you were as successful as I was! The majority of the roaches in my apartment have died as a result of the recipe I used (mushed up hardboiled egg sprinkled with boric acid).

This method was far more effective than the roach fogger, especially since I did not need to vacate my home for several hours for my own safety, as I would have with the fogger. Also, roach fogger has the negative side effect of irritating, not killing bed bugs, and causing them to scatter throughout the home and laying eggs in multiple, sometimes far-flung areas of your home as a result.

Although bed bugs are far more bothersome than roaches, nobody likes to have roaches in their home. And I'm glad I found a more effective and safer roach killing alternative to any spray fogger out there on the market.

To those of you who haven't tried the aforementioned recipe to kill roaches, I seriously suggest you do so and share the results on Bugged Out.

Good luck!

The Battle Continues…

2007-06-23T15:08:00.000-04:00

M recently found a tiny cluster of bed bugs in a black plastic bag that had fallen into a space between my solid wood armoire.

Three weeks ago we already got5 rid of a very nice wooden dresser because we found bed bugs living upside down in the underbelly of the dresser’s drawers themselves. This week we determined that our other wooden dresser needs to go as well, as we have spotted bed bugs crawling in and around the dresser.

Our solution? Plastic dressers. We already purchased a three-draw plastic dresser for about $30 at BJ’s Wholesale Club, but because they are smaller than the two wooden ones we need two more to replace the old dressers. Currently, our washed clothes are lying in stacks on the living room coffee table because there is literally no place to put them away in our bedroom.

The clusters of bugs we found in the dressers were tiny, and could hardly be compared to the teeming colonies I discovered more than a year ago and chose to throw out my mattress, bed and headboard. But I learned my lesson: take care of a small problem before it grows into a bigger one. Perhaps if I had followed that advice a year ago, I might still have my bed furniture today.

So continues the war between bed bugs and the urban dwellers seeking to drive them out of their home.

Until next time…

Roaches and Bed Bugs

2007-06-20T12:42:00.000-04:00

A neighbor told me what she does to rid her apartment of roaches, and I decided to try it. As one exterminator opined in a previous post, those of us who have roaches as well as bed bugs have found that foggers designed to kill roaches end up irritating bed bugs and scattering them further throughout your home. This does not kill or even harm the bed bugs, but instead makes it that much harder to ensure that you've killed all the bed bugs in your home when you do go after them.

Obviously, an effective roach-killing method that won't affect bed bugs in any way (until I'm ready to kill them) interested me, as I do have both roaches as well as bed bugs. So here is what my neighbor told me to do:

Boil some eggs, then remove the shell and mash up the insides (yolk and white) with a fork. Then add a generous amount of boric acid onto the mashed egg. Using the same fork, lay a few pieces of this mixture onto the kitchen sink, behind the toilet bowl or anywhere else in your home you've seen roaches.

The beauty of this, of course, is that it effectively kills the roaches (and it does, I tried it out last week) without disturbing the bed bugs. That way the bed bug will never see it coming when you actually do go after them.

I advise anyone to try this hard-boiled egg/boric acid mixture in their homes as an alternative to roach fogger which, as I've witnessed firsthand and many people have told me, will only irritate and scatter the bed bugs.

Good luck, and happy hunting!

Crunch, Crunch, Crunch...

2007-06-16T12:20:00.000-04:00

Hi all,

I'm sifting through my bed bug-related Google alerts, looking for blogging material for Bugged Out and I'm eating Tostitos with salsa. It suddenly occurs to me that I must truly be desensitized to the "eewww factor" of bed bugs if I'm eating while reading about bed bugs and browsing through magnified images of the multi-legged creatures.

I'm not sure when exactly I stopped being creeped out by bed bugs. I remember this time a year ago, just thinking about them made me lose my appetite. I remember when I first saw a picture of bed bugs and started gagging at the notion that these tiny, disgusting things were crawling all over me and sucking my blood while I slept. But now? I'm blogging about them, and I'm still eating my chips and salsa. Yum!

Anyone else out these desensitized? If so, what are you eating as you read this?

Remember folks, when it comes to bed bugs, don't be grossed out. Don't be scared. Don't be paranoid. Just be prepared.

Later.

Time Management!

2007-06-04T03:50:00.000-04:00

I just finished my finals for the semester and am looking forward to my fall semester, after which I will have finally earned my undergrad degree. With all the obligations of work, school, a relationship and fighting another bed bug infestation, it hasn’t been easy to allocate adequate time and energy for everything. Keeping one’s home bed bug-free is like a part-time job, if not a full-time one.

I was considering going to graduate school, but began thinking about how much of a hassle college has been so far, especially the aspect of having to be at a certain place at a certain time or it will affect your grades. I’m notoriously tardy for my classes, usually commuting to college straight from my job. My professors make an attempt to sympathize, since it is the City University of New York (CUNY) and many of the students here have to support themselves, and in some cases, their families.

Which comes to the concept of online college, which makes things a lot easier on those of us who have to commit to an hour plus commute to our schools. I know CUNY offers an online undergrad degree, but they are still stuck in the 20th Century when it comes to a Masters degree.

I’m thinking of studying a field that looks good on a resume. Any suggestions?

Gender, Not Race?

2007-06-01T20:19:00.000-04:00

In a previous post I theorized that people with fairer skin have more severe reactions to bed bug bites than people with darker skin. I based this theory on the fact that M who has very fair skin has had a far more severe reaction to bed bug bites than I, who is a shade or two darker. I also gave the example of my black neighbor who had his own infestation and had almost no visible sign of any bites, although he did complain about the itching.

In the Comments area for this post, Nobugs suggested that it may very well be gender, and not race or more specifically, one's presence of pigmentation in their skin. It changed my view and made me consider that females may indeed have a more severe reaction to bed bug bites than males.

Interesting--I don't have any data about race, but that's partly because most of the sufferers I know are known to me on the internet so I have no idea of their race :-)

My hunch is that men are less likely to react to bites, or be allergic to bites (and possibly even less likely to be bitten) than women. Of the people who come on Bedbugger, women often say the men they live with aren't bitten. Men are more likely to say they aren't reacting to bites and their female partners/relatives are. -NoBugs

Other posters stepped in to offer their own stories to support Nobugs' theory.

I would agree with Nobugs.

I am darker skinned than my boyfriend. I have visible bites but he doesn't.

I think he's being bitten but isn't reacting. -Anonymous
Could anyone lend any additional personal accounts to support this theory? It sounds far more plausible than the one I supported in my previous post.

White (Wo)Man's Burden?

2007-05-19T12:30:00.000-04:00

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while, finals and two days in the hospital will do that to ya...

But I've been itching to address a topic that has been on my mind for a while. It is my belief that white people (or people with fairer skin) have more severe reactions to bed bug bites than people with darker skin. Example?

M is very light-skinned, and almost all of her ancestors came from Europe, causing her to be occasionally mistaken for someone of Northern European descent, even though her mother is Sicilian and her father is Puerto Rican. We had a tiny re-emergence of bed bugs in the last two weeks, and her bites are more profound (redder, more protruding) than mine.

Also, remember the news reports of all those European tourists who stayed at those fancy Manhattan hotels and sued them because they were bitten by bed bugs? I remember seeing that report on Dateline NBC, and the footage of the tourists' white thighs, literally riddled with ugly red bites. I mean, they looked like they had a disease!

I've never had such a bad reaction to bed bug bites. Not as bad as M and defintely not as bad as those European tourists. Like almost all other persons of Puerto Rican heritage, I have black, white and Native American ancestors, which contribute to my light tan complexion. While I have suffered from bed bug bites, the physical reaction my skin gives to the bites have never been as bad as anything I've seen on M's body.

The other example is my neighbor, who is a dark-skinned Jamaican. He had an infestation in his apartment and complained of the constant itching, but the bite marks he's shown me on his arms are almost invisible.

I understand that a few examples do not equal legitimate research. But I wonder if there is a connection between one's level of melanin (skin pigment) in their body and how bad a reaction their skin gives to a bed bug bite. Could melanin cause a person to have an increased indifference or even an imunity to bed bug bites? I think it's a question worth researching.

Later

A Word on Air Mattresses

2007-04-28T01:35:00.000-04:00

An anonymous poster recently asked a question about air mattresses and how exactly they help people who are living with bed bugs.

Okay, so just trying to confirm, as I am also living in New York with bedbugs - getting an air mattress will stop it? Like, really?

Trying to figure out what to do...

Air mattresses don’t exactly get rid of bed bugs, but they do make life a bit easier for those trying to get rid of them. In my case, as I had explained in an earlier entry, the bugs had made a comfortable little colony for themselves in my wooden bed base, pillow, mattress and headboard. While I remained in denial for a few months (because I did not want to get rid of the bed) ultimately I had to get rid of the whole damn thing in order to destroy about 90 percent of the bed bugs in my apartment.

Air mattresses are a great solution for people living with bed bugs because the bugs are famous for cutting into conventional mattresses and burrowing themselves into the fabric of the mattress, waiting for you to go to sleep or even lie down. Remember, bed bugs love fabric, paper and wood simply because they make great hiding and nesting places to quietly hide and even launch a small colony. Air mattresses have none of these. Even when you put a fitted sheet over the air mattress, the rubber mattress cannot accommodate bed bugs. The best they can do is crawl onto the blanket, sheet or fitted sheet, but even this environment is not as bed bug-friendly, as the sheet is obviously not as thick or deep as a mattress.

I’ve had a lot of satisfaction with my air mattress. My queen-sized sheets fit perfectly over the bed. They do require some routine maintenance, though. Depending on the temperature of the room, air mattresses will require to be re-inflated twice a week to once every other week. Remember science class? Well, in hot weather air expands, keeping the air mattress firm for much longer than in colder weather, where the air will become thinner, requiring the mattress to be inflated more often.

A word of warning: make sure the air mattress you’re buying comes with an air pump. I made that mistake and discovered there was no way to inflate my new mattress. I had to go back to Target the next day and buy the pump. Make sure the pump you’re buying (usually ranges around $10 to $15) has a power cord and is not the battery-operated kind.

Also I guess you’re probably wondering how to clean an air mattress, like if you spill something on it or if it’s just dirty from constant contact with the floor. Any damp cloth with water or diluted pine will do; it's much easier than cleaning up a spill from a conventional mattress, since the whole thing is made of rubber.

Where to buy air mattresses: I bought my queen-sized mattress for $25 at Target. I trust the Coleman brand simply because they have quality camping products. But other brands are also well made and long-lasting. In February M’s mother threw out her bed bug-ridden mattress and was basically sleeping on a table. I gave her a $10 twin-sized air mattress from Walgreens and it is still in fine condition.

Let’s move to a subject that I’m sure is on the minds of everyone who is considering replacing their bed bug-ridden mattress with an air mattress. Obviously sleeping is not the only thing we do in bed, and I’m sure some of you are afraid your sexual activities just might pop the mattress like a party balloon. I too was concerned about this. My advice would be to check the maximum weight capacity on the air mattress, which should be printed somewhere on the packaging. Simply combine your own weight with the weight of your partner, if you’re single, the average weight of whoever you bring home and add 50 pounds more for all the bouncing up and down that will take place on the mattress. Take that magic number and compare it to the maximum weight capacity listed on the box.

The best time to buy an air mattress is right now as the stores are stocking up their outdoor merchandise. Air beds are widely regarded as camping equipment (so don’t look for them in a furniture store like my dumb ass did!), and since summer is coming many stores will be stocking up on these beds and probably have them on sale. Some are affordable, others are expensive. Some are self-inflating with the air pumps built into the bed; some have three-foot high frames to give the illusion of a traditional bed. In short, there are many different kinds of air beds to choose from, so use the Internet to shop around for one that suits your tastes.

Well, I can’t think of any more tips to offer on buying a mattress, but if you can come up with some questions, I’d be happy to answer them.

My Bad!

2007-04-17T14:42:00.000-04:00

I know I failed to post on Saturday, like I said I would every Saturday from now on.

How about every other Saturday? I got one coming up for April 21, I promise.

Later!

Saturday Night's All Right (For Blogging)

2007-04-07T22:55:00.000-04:00

Just popped in to announce that since I've decided to commit to adding a new entry every Saturday for my other blog, it's only right I do the same for Bugged Out. I've been a professional writer for several years, so the notion of sticking to deadlines is nothing new to me. It's simply a matter of making my own and sticking to it.

Later.

Bed Bug Paranoia 2

2007-03-29T11:16:00.000-04:00

It's funny how my July 7 entry on Bed Bug Paranoia has been the most popular post in Bugged Out, totalling 13 comments, including a new one that was just made this week. I can't believe eight months after writing that entry, that people are still reading and commenting on it.

Given its popularity I felt I should give bed bug paranoia the attention it deserves.

I did see a bed bug last night, crawling on my sheets. M pointed it out and cried, "Get the tissue!" It was still flat and black, so it hadn't eaten from us yet. I grabbed the little @#%*er with a wad of toilet paper (we find keeping a loose roll of two-ply toilet paper in our bedroom is more convenient than a box of tissues) and run to the bathroom to give him a burial at sea.

Of course, all night long we felt little pinches and and we scratched various body parts as our skin periodically crawled. Falling asleep and staying that way was certainly not easy after seeing the little bug.

Check out the latest comment...it's hillarious...because it's true and we've all been there.

<<<<

Anonymous said...: this makes me think either we are all crazy or just i am. but i cant see bites, eggs, or bugs. i am just constantly ichy all over. is this just a case of dry skin i must ask myself. i always wonder if im this uncofortable do others around me feel this way too? goin on 6 or so years with this constant feeling (15 years old up to now.) my mind plays games on me? the eyes do they see my thoughts? can i see what they think? im must be CRAZY! so where do i go from here?

>>>>

I don't have any cure for paranoia, I don't know what to tell people when they relate to me their accounts of bed bug paranoia. The only thing we can do that helps is tell each other these stories so we can have some comfort in knowing we are not alone in having these paranoid feelings.

New Address!

2007-03-22T19:09:00.000-04:00

Just bought a new domain name for Bugged Out.

http://buggedout.org

Peace!

...It's Been A While...

2007-03-20T22:39:00.000-04:00

I know it's been over a month since I last blogged, and I apologize.

A new job, another new side gig, classes and a badass flu have taken up all of my time since my last post.

On the bed bug front, I really haven't seen any bed bugs in my home since February. M, however says she did kill a live adult bed bug she saw crawling on our bedroom door yesterday. I just asked M right now if she saw any bed bugs lately, and she said yes. When I asked her if she killed the bug, she replied in her usual New York sarcasm, "Of course I killed it. What the hell was I supposed to do, save it and eat it?!?"

hahaha. I like 'em feisty.

Later.

Twelve Months Later...

2007-02-04T20:12:00.000-05:00

Okay, I know I missed it by a week or so, but January 24 was the date I launched Bugged Out back in 2006, marking this blog's one-year anniversary. Allow me to write what I had meant to write almost two weeks ago.

As I've said before, Bugged Out was created to create an online community for New Yorkers suffering from bed bugs where people could gather and exchange news, information, tips and personal experiences. Now that January has come and gone and Bugged Out is now a year old, I would like to know, from the people who visit this blog, if I've actually achieved this goal. I know this blog has a reasonable amount of visitors, and that there is a handful of people who have been reading Bugged Out from the beginnin. I'd like to know if you feel I've accomplished what Bugged Out was meant to do, and if not, where I can improve.

I look forward to reading your comments.

In Defense of Rachel Carson

2007-01-14T23:02:00.000-05:00

As you may have read about in other blogs, this blog and other bed bug-related sources, DDT has been credited to have killed off bed bugs in the 1950s, short of a few survivors of the species, apparently. It is widely believe that if DDT use was legalized in the United States, we would be able to eradicate the total bed bug population as we had done a half century ago.

I've come in suppport of the repeal of the ban on DDT before, and have read many articles defending DDT and damning Rachel Carson's 1962 book, Silent Spring in which Carson claims that DDT causes cancer in humans and thins the shells of bird eggs. She also stressed this concept of environmental connectedness, which basically states that although a pesticide is designed to kill one organism, its effects are absorbed into the food chain, until it ultimately poisons humans. It appears that Silent Spring jumpstarted the Environmentalism Movement in the U.S., the federal government was pressured to to ban it completely by 1972. To date, I have not found any legitimate research backing up the claims in Carson's book.

Here's an article I found from Melbourne Indymedia in Melbourne, Austrailia defending the DDT ban and even going so far to claim that DDT would have no effect on today's higher evolved species of bed bug. Here's an excerpt from the article:

"If you read the bed bug blogs you will find lots of angry villification of
Rachel Carson, who wrote the book 'Silent Spring', which then led to the banning
of DDT, for the theory is that because DDT was banned, now we have bed bugs, a
theory which makes no sense whatsoever since DDT was banned half a century ago,
and we are only experiencing a plague of bed bugs in the last couple of years.
People are also unaware that bed bugs became resistant to DDT back in the 1940s,
which is one of the reasons why the pest control industry turned away from DDT
and began using alternative chemicals in the last part of the century. DDT is
constantly being promoted as the bed bug panacea, but the truth of the matter is
that bed bugs are amazing creatures showing an ability to adapt to any form of
pesticide, and that includes DDT, which bed bugs long ago defeated in the 1940s,
and which they will defeat again should DDT be brought back onto the market
because now we have bed bugs."

I couldn't help but notice that there is no scientific research to back up the author's claims in this article, which is why DDT should be legalized, if for nothing else, than to conduct legitimate, LEGAL research as to how dangerous DDT could be to humans, animals and plantlife and how effective it would actually be in eradicating bed bugs.

Later.

New Year's Resolutions

2007-01-04T23:13:00.000-05:00

Like many people, I too have made my New Year's resolutions. For 2007, I resolve to:

Buy a domain name for Bugged Out (www.buggedout.com?)
Launch my newest blog, something I've been planning for several weeks
Do more to promote Bugged Out
Share more accounts of my own personal struggles with bedbugs

Hope everyone has made their own meaningful resolutions and will do their best ot stick to them!

Reflecting on 2006

2007-01-03T22:06:00.000-05:00

2006 was quite the life-altering year for me. This time in January 2006, I was working for AM New York, handing out free newspapers in Washington Heights from 6 to 10 am, and coming home to blood sucking bed bugs. I still had my bed, mattress, headboard and pillows, all appealing real estate for the tiny insects which would soon irrevocably change my life. At the time I kept telling myself the problem would go away, that the right amount of roach spray and fogger would take care of everything.

I remember searching the web for information about bed bugs, only to find deals on fumigation tents for detached houses. I still remember grumbling to myself, “I live in a 10-story apartment building; you’re gonna throw a tent over that?” I remember the hopelessness I felt as I continued to peruse the Web, looking for that magic answer that would make the bugs go away. I remember being thankful that the weather was still cold so I could wear clothing that would cover my bite-riddled forearms. It was the lack of resources and support for New Yorkers that prompted me to launch Bugged Out.

By spring, the bugs had fully established themselves in my bed and were now visible in our sofa and love seat. They went out along with my bed, only to be replaced with a series of $10 beach chairs. Thankfully, we inherited a couch and love seat from a relative in December.

In February, there was the City Councilmember who made headlines by proposing to draft laws protecting New Yorkers from bed bugs. The Councilmember’s press people made sure to paint her as some kind of Consumer Affairs superhero, but her proposal didn’t even get an official hearing until half a year later. Even then, the hearing was lackluster with a bill that has been laid over in committee only to be revived next year. Unfortunately, this bill is most likely not to be reviewed, have a hearing scheduled on it before September 2007, as the City Council usually spends February to June drafting and revising and bickering over the City’s 2008 budget in order to approve it into law by its July 1 deadline. What do City Councilmembers do during July and August, while they're still recieving their paychecks? E-mail them and ask them just that!

Perhaps embarrassed by its inability to get any meaningful law passed that would help New Yorkers suffering from bed bugs, the City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) published pamphlets regarding bed bug awareness, detection and treatment for both homeowners and the hospitality industry. Definitely a step in the right direction for the DOHMH.

My blog roll has grown as more and more individuals launch web sites related to bed bugs, including projects attempting to provide a comprehensive map of infestations in the five boroughs.

The highlight of 2006 was definitely meeting M, who is now my fiancé. What were the chances of meeting another person (through MySpace, of all places) who had also lost their furniture to bed bugs? Someone I got along with, someone I grew to love, someone with whom I share a deep spiritual connection. I remember that first date when I went up to the Bronx to meet her, when I pulled her close to me and we shared a full, passionate kiss under a big tree under the rain in Van Cortland Park. I remember in the pizzeria when she showed me the bug bites on her arm, and I took her arm, gently caressed the bite marks with my fingers and then leaned forward to kiss them.

I would not have been able to clean out my home strike a winning blow to the bed bug infestation without her and my brother. My brother who eventually lost his own mattress to bed bugs (thankfully his bed is a metal spring-loaded frame!) and now sleeps on a much thinner sofa bed mattress wrapped in plastic. He says he can feel every spring with this cheap mattress, but I asked him if he’d rather feel the itch of bed bug bites instead. For months, the bed bugs lingered within my pillow, the last remaining remnant of the sleeping environment I’d known almost all my life which I refused to throw out. By fall, that too was trashed, and for several months my folded arms were my pillow.

Bugged Out earned its share of notoriety in the national spotlight, the local beat and from fellow bloggers who were cool enough to swap links (A big thanks to Caitlin for being a faithful blogger and reader from the start!). Then there was the controversial DDT ban issue, an argument which has supporters on both ends (including myself) debating on Bugged Out whether or not the chemical should remain illegal.

Like I said before, I started this blog to create an online community for New York City residents suffering from bed bugs, a place where they could exchange personal accounts, advice and sympathy for those in the early stages of infestation. A year later, I am happy to say that more and more ventures in cyberspace have materialized to inform and support New Yorkers suffering from bed bugs. I hope 2007 will see even more steps in the right direction, with fewer and fewer New Yorkers suffering from bed bugs, until the days comes when no human being ever has to, in sheer paranoia, scan their sheets, pillows, mattresses or furniture for any sign of these despicable little monsters.

Happy New Year!

One "Expert" Opinion on Foggers

2006-12-31T02:34:00.000-05:00

By now it is fairly well known that foggers, or "bug bombs" as they are often called, do little to get rid of bed bugs. It is often said that foggers not only do not kill bed bugs but simply disturb them and cause them to scatter, only to return once the fogger has worn off. But many people use these anyway to kill roaches in their homes whether or not they have bed bugs. An anonymous poster who claimed to be a pest control technician and recently commented on my June 23 post had the following to say:

As a pest control tech of 11 years I wish you good luck. A warning though....use
the wrong product (repellents) and it's all over for you. You will push those
bedbugs up into the walls and they can lay dormant a lot longer than the active
in most pesticides.

If you've ever used foggers before (like I have) to kill roaches and you have this comment can especially be applied to bug bombs.

After reading this comment, it dawned on me that the bed bugs, holed up within your walls waiting for the fogger's spray to disappear, could easily spend this quiet time breeding and laying eggs. Long story short, if you have bed bugs AND roaches in your home, consider using a non-repellent (like a direct insecticide) to deal with your roach problem.

Merry Christmas, by the way, and Happy New Year!

Bugged Out in the News!

2006-12-23T00:28:00.000-05:00

Last month a reporter from the Queens Tribune left a comment on Bugged Out saying she wanted to interview me for a story about bed bugs in Queens (where I live) and left her number. So I called her, did the interview and yesterday picked up this week's copy of the Tribune and found the article.

Check out the article. It's pretty good.

Bedbug or Bed Bug?

2006-12-15T22:59:00.000-05:00

I've often wondered, as I write this blog, is the proper spelling bed bug or bedbug? Sure, it's a minor concern in the face of all the crap we must worry about, but it's still a question to which few have the answer.

Well, I came across an article in the Village Voice by Mara Altman that seemed to clear things up. Here's a quote from that feature article, which by the way is an interesting read if you have the time (you know how long those Voice feature articles can be, and this is no exception). And if you don't have the time, you can read the fun excerpts below:

"Sorkin went to the Bug Off convention the next day as part of his ongoing
efforts to ensure that his information is the latest. As Branscome strode up,
the male exterminators whistled and clapped as if she were their favorite
comic-book hero come to life. The first issue she addressed is one that has
mystified us all: Is it bedbugs, or bed bugs? According to this expert, it's two
words in the United States and one word in Europe (in direct opposition to
Village Voice style). With information like that, the $100 entrance fee has
already paid for itself. "

Here the article focuses on the stigma caused by bed bugs:

"In a city where people already depend on Ambien for a good night's sleep, the
thought of bedbugs has wreaked havoc on circadian rhythms from homeless shelters
to $2 million loft apartments. The thought of them is making people itch—not the
bedbugs themselves, whose numbers don't even quite live up to the media hype.
What has yet to be quantified—but what has become an urban infestation of its
own—is the paranoia that the bedbug craze has produced. It turns out, perhaps no
surprise in a city as neurotically obsessed as New York, that something as small
as a bedbug can grow colossal in the minds of millions.
The stigma alone is enough to make hardened city dwellers cringe and cry on Eisenberg's shoulder. He begins each office visit by walking new clients over to a sliver of mirror around the corner from his desk. "Repeat after me," he says as he forces the victims to study their reflection. "I'm not a dirty person." Then he offers them a shot of scotch from a bottle he keeps in his filing cabinet. It's an equal-opportunity bug, he explains. The bugs find a 40-year-old pediatric neurosurgeon on the Lower East Side equally appetizing as a 27-year-old comedian in midtown. In the world of bedbugs, a big-time entrepreneur on the Upper East Side has nothing on a twentysomething unemployed actor. A successful movie director on the Upper West Side shares equal ground with a 22-year-old starving grad student. All the bugs are looking for is a drop of blood, and each of us has about five liters. In a city of 8 million, that's 10,566,882 gallons of bedbug food. Is it any wonder we're terrified?"

The article also covered an exterminator's convention where among the topics discussed there was creative, chemical methods of rendering bed bugs unable to mate and therefore reproduce.

"Anti-Viagra: That's what Linares calls one of his most promising bedbug-fighting pesticides. The pesticide was originally used for cockroaches; it freezes them in an adolescent phase so they never could mate. But Linares found the substance does something different to bedbugs. It shrinks their appendages, making them unable to harden up and penetrate. I didn't ask what the substance does to bipedal mammals."

Enjoy!

Karma's A Bitch

2006-12-11T01:10:00.000-05:00

Hey all,

A friend of mine who does not have bed bugs recently asked me if she could collect a few live bugs and put them in a baggie. When I asked why, she explained that she and her new ex-boyfriend were going to meet one last time at his place to exchange possessions they had left at each other's homes, and she wanted to plant a few bugs underneath his pillow to ruin any chances of having sex with any women he brings back home.

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." - William Congreve

Hahahaha.

I said, "Look honey. Karma's a bitch. You pull some underhanded shit like that and I guarantee God will make sure one of those buggies escape and end up under your pillow." I also said that when people break up, there's always the chance they may get back together for one night just to have sex. What if his infestation becomes full blown? She's not going to have sex at his place, and then she'll have to explain why. And if he goes to her place or to a motel, there's a chance a bed bug might be clinging on to his clothing and jump on to hers. You know how a spontaneous or even a planned sexual encounter can be. No one ever neatly folds their clothes. They just peel off every stitch of clothing and fling it all over the room. Then you spend 20 minutes afterward looking for your left sock.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2006-11-23T12:52:00.000-05:00

Hi all,

Hope you can stop scratching bedbug bites and supress your bedbug paranoia long enough to enjoy this holiday.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Bedbugs in Russia

2006-11-13T21:46:00.000-05:00

Someone told me that bedbugs have run rampant in Russia, and that Russian women (well, the ones who are homemakers, I suppose) have become experts in killing bedbugs. So when they come over to the U.S., this whole infestation thing is old hat for them. They track them, they kill the bugs, they even set up makeshift bed bug traps. Can anyone verify this? If this is true, maybe some Americans should be sending out for those Russian mail-order brides.

Busy, Busy, Busy

2006-11-09T13:00:00.000-05:00

Haven't seen any bugs in a few days, which is great because with our midterms going on the last few weeks, M and I wouldn't have had the time to take care of them, or un-clutter the room. Our books, sylabi and papers are all over the place, a real bed bug magnet. Plus I haven't even had time to try out the Suspend insecticide.

Speaking of school, has anyone tried those online colleges? Because I am always late to class and it affects my grade and the commute is a hassle. and with all the technology available these days, it seems kind of archaic and unecessary to have everyone meet at the same place and at the same time and punish those who fail to do so. I did a search of online schools, and found a distance learning college that piqued my interest, Capella University. It's accredited and has a lot of graduate degree programs. It's too late to do my undergrad there, (I'm a senior) but it's a definite candidate school to consider when I start looking for a graduate degree.*

*Don't mind my babbling. I'm in school right now and the professor lectured me in front of everybody about the importance of coming in on time today. That's why I'm searchng for a better alternative at the school computer lab.

Crinkle, Crinkle

2006-11-09T12:30:00.000-05:00

M and I just bought two pillows at a 99 cent store to replace the ones I threw out in July which were full of bed bugs. These pillows came in a kind of cellophane bag, so we decided to tape up the opening of each bag with the pillow still inside to keep the bugs from crawling inside. Then we just stuff the whole thing in a pillowcase. So far we've had the pillows for a week and we haven't seen any bed bugs on them yet. The only drawback is that M and I are both notorious chronic tossers and turners, so the cellophane bag goes "crinkle crinkle" everytime we change positions or basically anytime we touch them.

oh well.

crinkle crinkle.

Bed Bug Map & City Pamphlets

2006-11-05T23:27:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to inform everyone about Bedbug City, a new mapping project that shows where in New York City and Boston bed bugs have struck, right down to street addresses. The map even allows participants to tell how intense their particular infestation has been. The only downside is that the reporting is done in complete anonymity, so there's no way to gauge if reports are real, or just submitted falsely. But I think most people will behave honestly when submitting bed bug infestation. I encourage everyone to go to Bedbug City and report their infestations, if for no other reason than to let people know just how much of a problem this is.

Also, I wanted to add to a comment a person made about the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's bed bug pamphlets I wrote about in my last entry. The poster grumbled that the general one was kind of lame as opposed to the one for hotels. Unfortunately, I have to agree with this poster's opinion. I didn't want to give a critique of the pamphlets because I didn't want to discourage anyone from viewing them.

In any case, if you haven't already viewed these pamphlets paid for by your tax dollars, feel free to do so and offer your own opinion.

Later.

Bed Bug ID and NYC Bed Bugs Pamphlet

2006-10-20T13:11:00.000-04:00

Two quick updates:

Back in August I wrote about how to more accurately identify if the insects in your home are in fact bed bugs by using glue traps to catch them and then calling 311 to find out how to send them to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) laboratory.

I came across this web site yesterday owned by entomologist Richard Fagerlund, who calls himself "the Bugman". He seems to be offering to identify bed bugs and other insects so long as you're willing to pay the postage to mail them to him and a small donation. Here's the text from his site if you don't like clicking on links.

I will be happy to identify insects or other arthropods (bugs) from anywhere in
the country. If you want a bug or bugs identified, please put them in
alcohol, pack them securely in a box and mail them to me at PO Box 2427,
Edgewood, NM 87015. The only exception to the alcohol would be
moths. They need to be shipped dry, placed in cotton and packed in a film
canister or something similar so they will arrive intact.
Please include $10
(Cash, check or M.O.) for any bugs you want identified. If you send more
than one species of bug for identification, include $10 per species. All
the proceeds from this service will go to animal welfare.

He'll probably do a faster and better job of identifying bed bugs than the City will.

The other update is that the DOHMH has released two bed bug pamphlets, a general one and one for those in the hospitality industry. Both publications are available only in PDF format.

Later.

Bed Bugs: Beware the Wrath of Charlie!

2006-10-15T15:14:00.000-04:00

I figured I'd give you guys a break from all the hard news (bugs sprays, City Council hearings, etc.) and give you somethng a bit more light-hearted. Meet my family's pet turtle, Charlie.
He eats broccoli and meatballs, but one day I discovered my 13-year old nephew was catching cockroaches and feeding them to him.

From then on, whenever I'd spot a bed bug anywhere in the apartment, I'd bring it right to Charlie, whose appetite made sure that bug would never bother me again. So far I've fed about a dozen or so bed bugs to him over the last two weeks.

I guess you could call Charlie a form of organic insecticide. Watch out, bed bugs!

Council Hearing Testimony

2006-10-07T14:23:00.000-04:00

I contacted Councilwoman Brewer's office and asked for copies of written testimony given at the hearing. They haven't gotten back to me but I was able to find excerpts from one bed bug expert (An expert excerpt? Say that five times fast!), Gilbert Bloom of the New York State Pest Management Association in Pest Control Technology magazine. Below are some excerpts from the excerpts. Here, Mr. Bloom bluntly states that if a bed bug task force is formed by this bed bug bill, exactly what the task force should do.

"If a committee is to be formed, it must not only gain accurate field
information but it must be able to evaluate it and turn it into an effective
multi cultural information and educational program. And of this program, an
important target group must be children, as they are the bridge to many parents,
they tend to see things on a micro- managed level and finally they have the
patience and interest to look for bed bugs as they themselves are all too often
the victims of these vampires of the night.”

The article can be read in its entirety here.

Bed Bug Hearing News Search

2006-09-30T20:06:00.000-04:00

As promised, I have done a quickie search of local news sources for stories about last week's hearing. So here I have links to each story along with what I found to be that story's strongest passage.

Also, I received an eyewitness report from fellow bed bug blogger and faithful reader The Caitlinator. Apparently City agencies are trying to pass the buck (as usual) as to whose responsibility it should be to deal with bed bugs in New York.

I went to the hearing. There were a lot of experts talking about bedbugs, but
probably the height of the debate centered around whether or not bedbugs pose a
health concern. The Department of Health wants to pass the buck to Housing,
claiming that bedbugs pose no health threats. Of course, anyone who has had
bedbugs would disagree, since mental health is certainly health, and it causes
severe mental distress to discover and then live with bedbugs over any period of
time.Many experts spoke, an entomologist from the Museum of Natural History as
well as another from Harvard University, a representative from some council on
mattress sellers, lawyers and representatives from the Housing Department,
exterminators, the Department of Health, and members of the public who are
dealing with bedbugs. All in all, there was a lot of repetitive information and
the bill itself wasn't discussed in much detail. What was clear is that bedbugs
are a problem that the city has to address in some way or another, either
through education or licensing exterminators for bedbugs, or legal means to
protect both homeowners and tenants. Hope this helps.

The Caitlinator also provided her own list of links to news stories covering the hearing.

"City Council Working To Stomp Out Growing Bed Bug Problem" - NY1

Councilwoman Gale Brewer introduced the bill and says they can affect any
New Yorker. "I have received calls from personal experiences from friends living
in brownstones on the West Side of Manhattan, and we have received calls from
individuals living in single room occupancies in residential hotels," she said.
"It does seem very clear to me that bed bugs do not discriminate based on
socio-economics."

"Losing sleep over boom in bedbugs" - Newsday

After hundreds of complaints, the City Council held a public hearing yesterday
during which a Harvard University entomologist, pest-control experts and
officials with the Bloomberg administration agreed the bedbug population is
exploding across the city and throughout North America, Europe and
Australia. Apartments, hotel rooms, private homes - nowhere is safe.
"City takes aim at exploding bed bugs problem" – Newsday
After hundreds of complaints, the City Council held a public hearing Monday during which a Harvard University entomologist, pest-control experts and officials with the Bloomberg administration agreed the bed-bug population is exploding across the city and throughout North America, Europe and Australia.

DDT Debate

2006-09-29T00:59:00.000-04:00

I'm pleased to see that a small debate has erupted (is there such a thing as a small eruption?) over the legalization of DDT. Already one reader have agreed with my previous DDT post while another has criticized me. The heart of the debate seems to be a 1960s book by Rachel Carson called Silent Spring. In the book, Carson claims that DDT causes cancer in humans and thins the shells of bird eggs. She also stressed this concept of environmental connectedness, which basically states that although a pesticide is designed to kill one organism, its effects are absorbed into the food chain, until it ultimately poisons humans.

Unfortunately for the late Rachel Carson, there has never been any substantial evidence of DDT and other pesticides killing or even hurting humans, and even the impact on widlife is not directly fatal.

Personally, I believe that DDT should be legalized, for two purposes:
1) To use in eradicating bed bugs
2) To do legitimate research on this chemical to verify just how harmful DDT may or may not be

I am a libertarian, which means I don't trust the government to make decisions about what I can do on my property, what I can do with or put in my body, and other personal decisions I make about my life. I believe the government, especially on the federal level, is highly unaccountable and does whatever it wants, including criminalizing things for political reasons rather than concern for the safety and well-being of Americans. I am an advocate for the legalization of marijuana, and not because I'm some huge pothead (I'm not) but because I feel the punishments associated with marijuana possession, trafficking and sales are far more harmful than the narcotic itself. Still, more and more people (especially Baby Boomers) claim that marijuana possesses certain medicinal benefits. Republicans say we must continue our War on Drugs and keep increasing the prison population by cracking down on marijuana. Democrats complain that they can't advocate for the decriminalization of marijuana because there isn't enough legitimate research.

Well, how can you conduct legitimate research on an illegal substance? The current research being done in the U.S. on marijuana is really very little compared to research conducted on the same substance in European universities and laboratories. This is because the U.S. has a War on Drugs and a slew of authoritarian rules and penalties for marijuana possession, trafficking and sales. There are many restrictions on how much research an American laboratory can do on marijuana, plus research can often take years and years for concrete results to emerge.

This is the same problem with DDT. How can research be done on an illegal pesticide? From what I've read so far on the DDT ban, it seems that Silent Spring jumpstarted the Environmentalism Movement in the U.S., some tree huggers formed special interest groups and forced the federal government to ban it completely by 1972. There is no mention of any attempt to research DDT in the 1960s or 70s to determine how true Carson's claims are. All I hear is Silent Spring + angry environmentalists = DDT ban.

Where do you stand on this issue?

Bed Bug Hearing

2006-09-25T22:24:00.000-04:00

First off, let me apologize for not keeping you up to date on the September 18 City Council bed bug hearing. I know it was more than a week ago, but work, school and my home life have me swamped and I promise I will get more information on what went on this week. If anyone attended that hearing and would like to give a report or commentary on hwo the hearing went, please leave a comment.

Though I haven't been able to thoroughly find out what took place at the hearing, I did visit the New York City Council web site and find out more about this bill. And yes, it is a bill, not a toothless resolution. As I explained before, a bill is a piece of legislation that if approved, becomes a law whereas a resolution, if approved is simply an official declaration (like declaring Black History Month or Breast Cancer Awareness Day or demanding George W. Bush withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq) which has no actual power behind it.

I'm in a bit of a rush right now, so I don't have time to break down everything I've seen on the Council web site about this bill, but I will be happy to provide the site's many links to this legislation. Let me know if any of these links are faulty.

The Official Terms of the Bill Known as Intro. 57-2006

The History of Intro. 57-2006

Report on Intro. 57-2006 from the Council Committee on Consumer Affairs

For those unfamiliar with government jargon and legalese, I promise to provide an adequate translation in my next post.

Bed Bug City Council Hearing

2006-09-15T16:25:00.000-04:00

For those of you who read Bugged Out back in February, you know that I reported that City Councilmember Gale Brewer announced plans to hold a hearing on the bed bug problem in New York City in hopes of finding a solution to the problem.

Well, I just recieved a heads up from her people about the hearing, scheduled to be held this Monday, September 18 at 1 pm. I strongly encourage everybody who can show up to this hearing to do so. Here is the message I receieved.

***MEDIA ADVISORY***
BREWER BROACHES BED BUG BILL
Legislation Bans Bed Bug Breeding Grounds

Contact: Shula Warren Office: (212) 788-6975 Mobile: (347) 668-9576

WHAT: Public Hearing on Int. 57: “ The Bed Bug Bill”

WHO: Council Member Gale A. Brewer, Entomologist Dr. Louis Sorkin of the American Museum of Natural History, Dr. Richard Pollack of the Harvard School of Public Health, Steven DeCastro, Esq., Jeffrey Eisenberg of Pest Away Exterminating, and others

WHEN: 1 p.m., Monday, September 18, 2006

WHERE: Council Chambers, City Hall

Council Member Gale A. Brewer (D-Manhattan) will join Council Member Leroy Comrie, Chair of the Committee on Consumer Affairs at a public hearing on Intro 57-2006 ("The Bed Bug Bill") on Monday, September 18, 2006 from 1pm-4pm in the Council Chambers, located on the second floor of City Hall. Intro 57, as introduced by Council Member Gale A. Brewer (District 6: Upper West Side, Manhattan), bans the sale of reconditioned mattresses and establishes a Bed Bug Task Force to explore solutions to this problem and look at ways to educate the public about bed bugs. City agency officials, entomologists, and exterminators have been invited to testify. Members of the public are also encouraged to testify on their personal experiences with bed bugs. Bed bug infestations have reached epidemic levels throughout the City, affecting New Yorkers in households of all economic levels, hotels, and even police precincts.

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Unfortunately, I have class on Monday until 2:30 and I wont be able to get to City Hall before 4 pm. I will be calling the Council Press Corps to gather testimonies given by the four aforementioned seakers and anyone else who shows up to provide testimony. If anyone wants to speak at the hearing and shock the audience with your own bed bug horror story, go for it.

FYI: City Hall is right next to the City Hall/Brooklyn Bridge station on the 4 train. I don't recommend driving there, as parking in lower Manhattan is a bitch. Once you get out of the train station City Hall will be easy to find as it is surrounded by cops. Prepare for the metal detector; what I do is just remove my coat and run it through the conveyor rather than have the cop wave that stupid metal detector wand up and down my body 10,000 times. Bring ID as the NYPD will not let you enter City Hall without it.

Once you're inside the Council Chambers, please do not make any outbursts or applause as the Council security guards act like nightclub bouncers and will promptly throw you out of City Hall altogether. Most of the more prominent speakers will provide written copies of their testimony a minute or two before they say it to the Council and the audience. The copies that the speaker gives to the guard will be stacked onto the press table. If you don't have a press ID, the guards may not let you take a copy. The best thing to do in this situation is to approah the speaker (after they've given testimony and have returned to their seat) and ask them for a hard copy or to send you a copy via e-mail.

If whatever you have to say sounds smilar or identical to testimony given by someone before you, the best thing to do is simply state your name, state that you agree with the previous speaker and state your support for any legislation that can help rid New Yorkers of bed bugs. Repeating what was just said makes the speaker look stupid and wastes everyone's time. Understand that everything you say when you step up to the podium will be recorded by the Council and any

Chances are there will be significant media coverage of this hearing, so I will provide links to any articles I find on this event.

The DDT Link

2006-09-14T20:14:00.000-04:00

I came across this seemingly mundane article from this web site for a news station in Ohio. It read the same as a hundred other stories I'd seen: bed bugs unseen in U.S. for fifty years, they hide in beds and headboards, bites and welts, etc.

But then I saw something rather interesting, dare I say, fascinating.

But 50 years after DDT basically eradicated bed bugs in this country, they're back.
DDT is banned now, so getting rid of the quarter-inch little buggers isn't easy. . . but getting them is.

I had seen a correlation months ago between the period of time that bed bugs seemed to have been (almost) driven to extinction in the U.S. (1950s-1960s) and 1972, the year DDT was banned by the EPA. Some web sites and news reports I've read have alluded to the connection between bed bugs and DDT, but this is the first time I've seen a news report clearly link the two together.

I quickly Googled "DDT and bed bugs" and found a lot of interesting links, which I will share with you now.

From what I've read so far, the main reason for the demand for the legalization of DDT is the rise of malaria in third-world countries. Apparently, DDT was used primarily to kill the mosquitoes which carried malaria. In The DDT Ban Myth, it states the following passage from a book titled Trashing the Planet:

Public health statistics from Sri Lanka testify to the effectiveness of the
spraying program. In 1948, before the use of DDT, there were 2.8 million
cases of malaria. By 1963, there were only 17. Low levels of
infection continued until the late 1960s, when the attacks on DDT in the U.S.
convinced officials to suspend spraying. In 1968, there were one million
cases of malaria. In 1969, the number reached 2.5 million, back to the
pre-DDT levels. Moreover, by 1972, the largely unsubstantiated charges
against DDT in the United States had a worldwide effect. In 1970, of two
billion people living in malaria regions, 79 percent were protected and the
expectation was that malaria would be eradicated. Six years after the
United States banned DDT, there were 800 million cases of malaria and 8.2
million deaths per year. Even worse, because eradication programs were
halted at a critical time, resistant malaria is now widespread and travelers
could take it home.

From what I've read, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that alleged DDT as being harmful to humans, even in trace amounts. The main concern is that a few humans have experienced some non-fatal side effects of DDT ingestion and that birds are affected by laying eggs with thinner eggs, increasing the chances for baby birds to die before hatching.

A small price to pay for the legalization of DDT, I think.

I think now is the time to contact our Congressmembers and demand for the legalization of DDT. When they ask why, you can tell them how your heart goes out to all the little African and South Asian children who lost their mommies and daddies to malaria. Of course, you can also remind them that millions of Americans are suffering psychologically from bed bugs, real estate values are plummeting from properties infested with bed bugs and our nation's hospitality industry will suffer with a drecrease in foreign visitors--and all the money they bring with them.

Of course, Congress will drag its ass to get this done, so in the meantime (I hope this isn't too irresponsible to propose). why don't we smuggle it in? Every day, cocaine, marijuana, firearms, Cuban cigars, people, and all other sorts of contraband that find its way past our country's borders and into our homes. So why not DDT?

For anyone reading this who regularly purchases illegal drugs, please tell your friendly neighborhood drug dealer you'd like to know just how much it would cost to get your hands on some DDT. Trust me, this is basic economics: create the demand, and the supply will create itself. There must be some part of the world where DDT is still legal. And that part of the world is about to get a lot of American dollars.

Or maybe we could manufacture DDT in the garages and tool sheds of those cute little suburban homes they way they do with the meth labs. We could be proud because like crystal meth, DDT is also MADE IN AMERICA!!!!

(waving the Stars and Stripes)

God, I hope this entry doesn't get me arrested.

Later

Has It Really Been A Month?

2006-09-14T13:52:00.000-04:00

Hey everybody. I have to apologize for taking so long to post.

Thanks to a summer job I took working on a political campaign, I've been working 12 to 15-hour days, six to seven days a week. Thankfully, the Democratic Primary was last Tuesday, and the sweatshop has closed down. I'm back to working a few hours a day and juggling school, allowing me to return to the rest of my life, and of course, this blog.

For thsoe of you who have been reading the previous entries, I did recieve the Suspend AC in the mail. but due to the busy work schedule between August and this week, I didn't have time to mix and apply it! Thankfully, there have been only two or three bed bug sightings since August.

Expect to see a new post tomorrow, or perhaps even today.

And again, sorry to leave you hanging for so long.

Bed Bug Detection Tip

2006-08-13T02:52:00.000-04:00

I just got a really good tip on what to do if you think you have an infestation in your home, but aren't sure if the perpetrators are bed bugs because you haven't actually seen them.

Set glue traps on the floor, the really sticky kind used for rats. Make sure you place them in a part of the floor where you won't be likely to step in it, like under your bed or under furniture. By morning you should have some insect trapped on it. If you can't identify the trapped bug from the many, many, MANY photos of bed bugs floating around the Web, or if you want a second opinion from a professional, stuff the insect(s) along with the trap (don't try to touch the trap) into a large Ziploc bag and call 311 to find a Department of Health laboratory who can analyze the specimen and confirm whether the insect is a bed bug or not. I understand this is a free service, I'm not completely sure of that.

Good luck!

Mutant Bed Bugs?

2006-08-10T04:26:00.000-04:00

Someone told me about a new species of bed bug that has wings and buzzes about like a fly. It can only fly short distances, but its power of flight allows it to fly onto humans rather than simply crawling.

This person said he heard about it from someone else, so I'm taking this piece of news with a grain of salt.

Evolution usually occurs within a species as a survival mechanism. I'm thinking (if this is true!)the bed bugs evolved and grew wings in order to have easier access to their prey and to avoid any residual pesticides which may be on the floor or furniture.

Can anyone verify the existence of this mutant species? I really hope this is just some rumor.

Update: I don't feel comfortable sleeping in my room tonight. I've seen about a dozen bed bugs in one hour, plus I can smell their musky scent, something I haven't smelled in a long, long time.

Survey #1: How Do YOU Sleep?

2006-08-08T13:34:00.000-04:00

FYI, blood and gut stains have reappeared on my sheets and pillows. And I have been itching a bit. But I digress.

In talking to people who also heave dealt with bed bugs, different people seem to have employed different methods of having a full-night's sleep despite the itching, the paranoia and the biting stings that come with living with bed bugs. Some people drink to lull themselves to relax and sleep, others take sleepiing pills, some do sit-ups in bed with the lights out until theyre too tired to move. A few people have begun smoking pot to put themselves to sleep, even people who quit smoking it years ago.

So here's my survey question: what do you do to relax yourself (or tire yourself out) in order to fall asleep desite the bed bugs which will most likely bite you during the night?

You can find my response in the Comments window. I look forward to reading the answers people leave.

Oooh-oooh, aaah-aaah

2006-07-31T21:36:00.000-04:00

Of all the places to be bitten by a bed bug, why my underarms?

The bugs are acting really stealthy (is that a word?), like ninjas. I don't see them, I don't see any stains on my sheets or pilow of their droppings or guts. The only way I know they're still here is the few bites. I got the underarm bites a few days ago, causing me to scratch my underarms when I think no one's watching. Already today five people have caught me and asked, "Are you a monkey? Ha ha ha ha!"

Yeah, real funny. They don't believe me when I tell them mosquitoes bit my underarm. I'm surprised no one has asked me if I caught crabs. A real bad case of crabs.

Waitin' for my paycheck to clear so I can order that Suspend from where????

www.doMYownpestcontrol.com

Spread The Word!

2006-07-28T20:11:00.000-04:00

As an anonymous commenter so thoughtfully posted, there is a company that will mail Suspend to New York! www.doMYownpestcontrol.com

I checked out the site and found nothing claiming that Suspend could not be shipped to New York. Mysteriously enough, DoMYownpestcontrol is in Georgia, just like Doyourownpestcontrol, which does not ship Suspend to New York. In any case the wonderful commenter said that he has successfully recieved Suspend in the mail.

I'm just glad I didn't have to make some out-of-state arrangement to have a shipment of Suspend delivered somewhere and then smuggled into New York like it was heroin. I have a sister in Philly was agreed to have it delivered to her apartment and she would either mail it via DHL.

To be honest, I was almost kinda looking forward to meeting her in Penn Station (She takes the SEPTA to NJ Transit to get here from Philly) and looking around cautiously before muttering, "You got the product?" and she hands me the package like it's a big coke deal going down. Hahahaha!

My sister's partner has family in Brooklyn, so she and my sister make frequent trips between Philly and Brooklyn. They usually bring Philly cheesesteaks (I tried them for the first time when I visited them in Philly and God, were they delicious! The ones in New York are okay, but they nust can't compare.) and they could've brought the pesticide, too. Oh, well.

I'm just waiting for my next paycheck so I can order some.

Remember, www.doMYownpestcontrol.com