Is this a bedbug?

May 27, 2016 7:28 AM

I found this little monster crawling on the wall of a short-term rental apartment I'm staying in. HALP
posted by homodachi to Home & Garden (12 answers total)

Yeah, looks like a bedbug. Same general body shape and color (can't tell size in the pictures), same number of segments on the abdomen, same antennae shape, same number of segments on the antennae. The tips of the feet look the same. Probably not just something that looks kinda like a bedbug, probably an actual bedbug. The photos you posted don't have a lot of detail, but everything I can see matches up. Sorry.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:32 AM on May 27, 2016

Yes, very sorry to say.

Here's what I'd do, not that you asked: Buy one of these and bake all your luggage before you leave the place. Wear your cheapest clothes out of there. Buy new clothes, change somewhere else before you go in your house, throw out the old clothes.

You DO NOT want to let even one of those puppies hitchhike into your home. And it would be kind do to this before you leave your place if you're going somewhere else before you go home.
posted by fingersandtoes at 7:42 AM on May 27, 2016

It definitely looks like it. I don't know where you are staying, but I would contact the owner of the apartment or the landlord immediately. In some cities, like New York, the landlord is responsible for getting rid of them.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:08 AM on May 27, 2016

Thanks for the quick ID, all. I reported it and they're working on it. Looks like I'll be spending the 3-day weekend sanitizing. If you have a favorite link describing how to deal with cleaning stuff before moving to a new locale, please meMail me.
posted by homodachi at 8:10 AM on May 27, 2016

My condolences. Go wayyyyy over the top to get rid of them. As fingersandtoes notes, bake all your clothes, and I'd do so multiple times. I had them 4 years ago and my brain still hasn't recovered, and is still in hypervigilant mode.
posted by jpe at 8:25 AM on May 27, 2016

Yep, that's a bedbug. So the next thing you have to think about is how not to take them with you to your next place since this is a short term rental.

When you pack up to move put everything in plastic bags and tie them up tight.
Give your clothes a good shake before putting them on.
When you get to your new place, don't bring your suitcase in. Take the clothes you've packed in plastic and put them right into a hot, hot dryer and run it for an hour or so (don't need to wash first, but you can if the clothes can take hot water).
Shake out any books and belongings outside.
Vacuum out your suitcase then take the vacuum bag out of the vacuum, seal it in a plastic bag and throw it away.
Then you can bring your suitcase inside the new place.

And tell the landlord or property manager ASAP that they have bedbugs. Do it in writing. They should be calling in an exterminator right away.
posted by brookeb at 10:39 AM on May 27, 2016

How short-term is this rental? How much stuff do you have to transport out of this place?

If you can get enormous Ziploc bags, those are the best for transporting potentially buggy clothes until you can get them to the laundry.

If you have a ton of things, a Packtite device (basically a special bedbug-sanitizing oven that is essentially a giant duffel bag with a hot air blower inside it) can help you sanitize shoes, suitcases, books and so forth -- but that's only an economical and reasonable solution if you have a ton of stuff and are staying longer than the week.

If you're staying for a while, the extermination process done right takes a few weeks (poison doesn't kill bb eggs, so they put the poison around the perimeter of the property and it kills the adults, then come back a few weeks later to kill the newly hatched ones). Unless they heat treat the whole building, which is fast and effective but maybe expensive.

Sorry! Good luck!
posted by hungrytiger at 11:22 AM on May 27, 2016

Hey all, here's what's happened so far:

• We put on our crappiest outfits, then put the rest of our clothes into bags and had a bedbug laundry service pick them up
• I put my suitcase & backpack into a sealed garbage bag and threw them away
• I kept only expensive/hard-to-replace cosmetics and meds, wiped them down with clorox wipes, and sealed them in ziploc bags. Same with the contents of my purse
• I put all the ziplock bags into a new, heavy-duty plastic shopping bag. While I was loading the bag, I kept it in the bathtub

So now, wearing my crappiest clothes and with my shopping bag full of ziplocked toiletries and credit cards, here's my plan:

• go to old navy and buy a cheap outfit for the next couple days. change into the new outfit and throw away the clothes I'm wearing (into a sealed garbage bag)
• check into my hotel, go right into the shower, store my ziplock bags in the bathtub
• wait for the bedbug laundry service to bring my clothes back
• eventually on this trip, buy a new suitcase

Did I miss anything?
posted by homodachi at 12:50 PM on May 27, 2016

(to be clear, we have left the apartment and have a hotel for the rest of the trip. I'm taking the steps above to avoid bringing bedbugs to the hotel (and later, to my house).)
posted by homodachi at 12:52 PM on May 27, 2016

Check the hotel, too.
posted by Don Pepino at 1:34 PM on May 27, 2016

Can you throw away the purse?

(It cost me $2500 to tent my house for bedbugs that I somehow brought home from a trip. Does that change your answer on whether you can throw away the purse?)

If you really cannot throw away your purse, at least put it in a ziploc and into the freezer for several hours when you get home.
posted by fingersandtoes at 9:13 PM on May 27, 2016

Thanks @fingersandtoes and @heyho. I can definitely throw away the purse. I also took photos of all the pages of my notebook and threw it away. Then I bought a new temporary notebook for the next week, and will photograph it/throw it away before I go home.

I sincerely appreciate any and all paranoid-seeming tips; I'm willing to go over the top to ensure I don't take them home.
posted by homodachi at 10:17 AM on May 31, 2016