As we pulled into the hotel carport, a barely clad, exceedingly drunk woman came staggering out of the restaurant and slurred, “I’m not staying in this place. There’s rats here.” My youngest looked at me, eyes full of question marks and implored my husband to get back in the car and keep driving. I wish we had heeded his impulse.
Our family had been on the road for ten hours, heading east after dropping our eldest son at college. Though it was a 3.5 star hotel, the inebriated customer did gave us sufficient pause. Fatigue and desire to not be swayed by fear ruled and we headed up to the 16th floor. It was an uneventful night. While packing up our belongings the following morning, I pulled back the blanket to make sure we were not leaving anything behind. A small, brown object moved quickly across the bed. Instinctively, I grabbed it and popped it into the Ziploc bag. My heart dropped as the photo of Cimex lectularius, common name, bed bug, loaded on my iPhone.
I have travelled extensively. I’ve slept under freeway overpasses (Ask me to fill in the details sometime.), refugee camps, and countless half-star hotels. It became routine for me to examine my surrounding, checking for the tell-tale spots which indicate bedbugs. The night we arrived at the hotel was no exception. I looked for the insects between the mattresses and saw nothing. What I didn’t know, was that the critters tend to congregate along the piping of a mattress, behind photos or artwork on the wall above beds, in outlets behind the beds, or inside of the small joints of bed frames.
That morning began our seven weeks of hell.
My husband took the captured bug down to management. They promptly pulled him into a private room and cheerfully refunded our money and asked if we could leave quietly by way of the service elevator. Kidding. They did offer to launder all of our clothing. We refused, as my husband had to be at work that night and we were eight hours from home. Mistake number one.
I asked for large plastic bags for all of our belongings. As we drove down I90, I read every on-line article I could find. Bed bugs are mostly nocturnal and prefer the 3:00 to 4:00 AM time frame to accomplish their work. They suck human blood for three to five minutes and then happily return to their caves. Cimex lectularius can go an entire year without feeding but generally feed every three to five days. Worth noting; they lay three to twelve eggs per day. Adults are brown and 1/4 to 1/2 inch in length.
Once we arrived home, we all striped naked in the garage (one at a time of course), left our clothes in a pile, and immediately showered. I brought the bags inside separately, and washed and dried the contents. Exposure to temperatures over 115 degrees for approximately ten minutes will kill them. I dried everything to a crisp. The articles of clothing that we could not dry (ie. shoes), we were told to put into the freezer for two days. I did it for five. Mistake number two: temperatures need to drop below minus 30 for the bugs to die by freezing.
Because peculiar things trigger my near neurotic behavior, we, meaning me, washed and dried our bedding every day for the next two weeks. We scrupulously checked the sheets, watched for bites (small, round, red spots, often in a line of three), and prayed that we might dodge the bullet. Two weeks in, GianCarlo came in our bedroom with a bug pinched between his fingers and innocently asked, “What’s this?” I almost went into cardiac arrest.
The following morning, we called the hotel and asked to speak to the manager. While sympathetic, he assured us they had never previously seen bed bugs in the hotel. He did offer to let us stay another night for free. We immediately booked a room for the next night. NOT! My husband assured him, what we were after was compensation towards the $5,000 estimate we had just received to treat the house.
Just for kicks, put bedbugs and your zip code into a search engine. More than twenty establishments pop-up here in the greater Boston area. This gives you some idea of how prevalent the problem is. Like cockroaches, they have been around since ancient cultures and like cockroaches, they are resistant to many forms of chemicals. Prior to 1940, they were a non-issue in developed countries. But once DDT was banned, they began their slow and steady resurgence.
If you do not have strong visual evidence of the bugs, you can pay a day’s salary (or an hour’s if you happen to be a surgeon or lawyer) and hire a trained dog to come and determine if the bugs are present. We decided to go this rout. Marty was a bouncy, border terrier who promptly “hit” (meaning detected) bugs in both bedrooms. This information gave us concrete options for how we could treat the house. While some folks harbor deep skepticism of a dog’s ability to sniff out the bugs, Bed Bug Beagle’s accuracy rate claims 97%.
If you become infested, you have two options: chemical or heat treatment (well, three, if you include putting the house on the market and moving). The former costs less up-front but requires you to remove all clothing, bedding, and food from your house (or to hermetically seal it for six months). You must leave the premises for the day. And—you will have to repeat this two more times. (Check out this link for another idea should you happen to have access to green bean leaves.)
The heat treatment is much more expensive but reportedly more efficient. We hired Eric from Ecosystems who was one of the only companies willing to treat just the areas that the dog pinpointed. Everyone else warned us that if we did not treat the entire house, we would undoubtedly be calling them back in a few months. Mistake #3? Time will tell.
Prep was slightly less daunting; remove, launder and dry at a commercial laundromat every item made of fiber (curtains, area rugs, every towel, sock, etc.). That may not sound like a big deal but this meant approximately twenty loads of laundry. And in case you have not spent time in a laundromat recently (count your blessings), it costs $5 a load to wash. Books need to be removed from shelves and all papers placed in a laundry basket or something which will allow the hot air to circulate around it.
Eric arrived with an enormous generator and three massive heating units. Each one sat in the middle of the room, connected to a computer which informed Eric of the room’s internal temperature. After an hour, the gauge read 138. Every half hour, he would re-enter the rooms and turn everything inside out and upside down. Call to mind images of tornado damage. He suggested that we purchase bed bug proof mattress and pillow covers. These need to be kept in place for a year. Add another $250 dollars to the cost.
All told, we spent the equivalent of a down-payment for a car to treat the house. This does not take into account the three days of work missed prepping for the treatment. The hotel (Raddison, Rochester, NY, FYI) refused to compensate us, flatly stating that there was no compelling evidence that we actually got the bugs at their establishment. Travel at your own risk.
What you need to know—A bed bug primer
- Leave your zipped suitcases, pocketbooks, etc. in the bathtub. (Preferably removing them when you shower.)
- Pull back the bed linens to check for small, brownish-red stains.
- Examine the piping along the mattress.
- Pull back any artwork to check for bugs or eggs.
- Bring along large Ziploc bags for your computer or objects which should not be in the tub.
- Bites are very small and for many folks, do not itch. Therefore, they are easy to overlook.
- If you encounter any evidence of the bugs, immediately go to the management and ask for a room change or get the hell back in your car and keep driving.
- Think twice (or ten times) about buying or brining used furniture into your home.
- If you want to be completely grossed out or if you have boys, watch this National Geographic video. Did they train this bug?? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfKCcSPCOQo