BED BUGS

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

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

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

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

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

bed bug

how fast moving bed bug

fuck that video

hopefully these ones were happy where they were

so gross

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

cool dog sniffing bedbugs

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is that paranoid enough?

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

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

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

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

xp

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(you don't normally notice)

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

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

fuck just typing this shit is making me itch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The latter.

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

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

Have you seen the Bed Bug Registry?

No, will check out!

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

do it.

ok.

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

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

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

did it.

xxxp

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

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

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

(itches anyway, just from the power of suggestion)

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

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

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

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

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