The bed bugs are back - and worse than ever. Somehow, in one of his dumpster diving expeditions, Kevin managed to bring home some hitchhikers. The manager was clearly at her wits end. Would I be willing to come back out and do the bed bug cleaning thing again?
I can't tell you how badly I wanted to say, "No."
But that damn rocking chair spoke to me, and the answer that came out of my mouth was, "Yes, I'll be there tomorrow." The exterminators had been there the day before, doing a heat treatment, so I THOUGHT my only job was to clean up dead critters; a distasteful, but doable task.
I arrived on schedule the next morning, gathered up the clothing from the bottom of his closet, and set off for some chill time at the local laundromat. I washed and dried everything (per instructions), folded it (as a bonus), and took the clothes back to the apartment. I then gritted my teeth, and started vacuuming up dead bugs.
There were a LOT of them, but I cleaned and swiped and kept at it anyways. Eventually, I got to the closet. I moved a bag, and saw a group of live bugs; at least fifty of the things! Eeek! I am proud of myself - instead of running away, I kept vacuuming, sucking up all the critters I could get to before a few managed to escape behind the baseboard.
Sigh. I finished the job of cleaning up the dead bugs, then went to report the live nest to the building manager.
She is going to schedule another treatment. Then, she, the building's social worker, and I are going to sit down to draft a special set of Kevin rules, to keep this from happening again. I am not in the rescue people from themselves business. He will either follow the rules or find himself another place to live.
Exhausted, mentally and physically, I went to the bathroom and stripped down, swiped off with a dry towel just in case one had decided to cling to me, put on a fresh set of clothes, and headed home. Once there, I brought my bed bug interceptor traps (that I'd bought the first time this happened) up from the basement, and made an island out of my bed, just in case.
The next morning, I woke up to a set of bedbug bites across my mid-section. One of those buggers had crawled up my pant leg the day before to find a bit of accessible skin. And I began to wonder, reflecting back on my actions of the previous day. I hadn't been quite as careful as I usually was around live bedbugs; until I found the nest, I'd been under the impression that all the bugs in the apartment were dead. Had I managed to bring one home with me??
Weirded out, I promptly tore my bed apart to look for bugs. I didn't find any, but cleaned and swiped, then went out and bought some bed bug covers for the mattress and box spring. That night, I slept soundly, figuring I'd done what I could do, only to wake the next morning to a trail of bites along my arm. They ITCHED!
As soon as I had a few minutes, I returned to my bedroom to look for strays. I pulled the mattress off the bed, carefully inspecting the seams of the cover for bugs. I heaved the box spring off its slats, and there, clinging to one of the slats, trying to be invisible, was a bug. (I'm not sure how it managed to avoid the interceptors, but think my blankets must have trailed to the floor at some point during the night.)
I had come prepared for this moment - I had a plastic bag and alcohol spray (kills on contact) ready to capture any specimens I found, so I could study them to see what stage of life they were at. In the moment, however, that scientific bent was buried beneath the impulse to make it BE GONE! Before I mustered any conscious thought, I'd smashed the critter with my rag so completely it was hard to tell it had once had legs.
I wiped down every inch of the mattress, box spring, and bed frame. I got out a flashlight to inspect screw holes and joints. I found just the one bug.
I started to extend my cleaning to the rest of the room, but logic stopped me. I didn't have to find any bugs that weren't on the bed (which, given their habits, was unlikely anyways - they like to live real close to the restaurant). They would come to me when they got hungry. I'd just have to steel my nerves and be the bait in the trap.
It's been a week, and I've gotten no more bites. *whew* Chances are good that I've found all the bugs I brought home. (Or, they're encased in the mattress covers, where they can stay. They can't get to me from there.)
Surprisingly, I've not been as freaked out as I once would have been. My hard decade taught me some lasting lessons about how to separate things that are real trouble from those that are just annoyances.
Bed bugs don't carry disease. And God knows I've had itchy skin before, and will again. The good news is, given my body's reaction to the bites, I will never have a bug in my bed and not know it. And if I do find another one, well, it's an uneven war. The bed is still an island. I am armed with flashlights, cleaning implements, and the best knowledge of the internet. If all that fails, I have the ability to hire a professional exterminator to come kill them. The bugs just have their desire to eat.
I'm still waiting to hear back from the building manager about the state of Kevin's apartment - I've already told her I'm not going back in until they've done another heat treatment. But when they do, I'll do a weekly check until I'm sure the bugs are once again banished from his home.
Of course, I will do everything in my power not to bring more bugs home. I know they are out there. My isolate EVERYTHING I bring near him, and strip down at the back door method worked last time, I have no reason to believe it won't work again.
This, too, shall pass.
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