What's eating me?
November 5, 2018 9:15 AM Subscribe
Most of the past few nights I've gotten bug bites, apparently while sleeping. I washed all my bedding and inspected my furniture yesterday and I got another cluster of bites last night. I have a friend flying in to visit on Friday, and I want them not to be eaten. I want to not be eaten. Help.
I have bites on my lower back around where a waistband hits, on my mid-thigh, and on my hip below where my underwear elastic sits. The bites appear to be paired, but I'm not totally sure about that. They are in clusters of 4 or 6. I tend to react badly to insect bites, but these aren't super swollen - a little worse than a typical flea bite. I sleep in a t-shirt and long pants, so most of the bite areas are covered when I sleep. I'm pretty sure this is happening while I'm sleeping. I think the first bites were Friday? At first I thought my skin was irritated from something else.
I haven't been handling animals besides incidental scritches of neighbor cats. I haven't been sleeping other places or even sitting on other people's couches. I washed all my bedding, towels, and clothes yesterday (on hot, dried hot) and inspected my mattress, bedframe, nightstand, other upholstered furniture in my apartment, and baseboards - no bugs, no bug feces, nothing. I got the hip bites last night. :( I live in Oregon, and it's the time of year when outside bugs are finding their way inside.
Friend gets in on Friday, and will be sleeping in their own room with no rugs / upholstery on an air mattress with bedding I don't use regularly.
So, what is this and what do I do? Should I get some horrible bug bomb thing and try to nuke this from orbit? Do I call my (responsive, non-vengeful) landlord and ask for something?
I have bites on my lower back around where a waistband hits, on my mid-thigh, and on my hip below where my underwear elastic sits. The bites appear to be paired, but I'm not totally sure about that. They are in clusters of 4 or 6. I tend to react badly to insect bites, but these aren't super swollen - a little worse than a typical flea bite. I sleep in a t-shirt and long pants, so most of the bite areas are covered when I sleep. I'm pretty sure this is happening while I'm sleeping. I think the first bites were Friday? At first I thought my skin was irritated from something else.
I haven't been handling animals besides incidental scritches of neighbor cats. I haven't been sleeping other places or even sitting on other people's couches. I washed all my bedding, towels, and clothes yesterday (on hot, dried hot) and inspected my mattress, bedframe, nightstand, other upholstered furniture in my apartment, and baseboards - no bugs, no bug feces, nothing. I got the hip bites last night. :( I live in Oregon, and it's the time of year when outside bugs are finding their way inside.
Friend gets in on Friday, and will be sleeping in their own room with no rugs / upholstery on an air mattress with bedding I don't use regularly.
So, what is this and what do I do? Should I get some horrible bug bomb thing and try to nuke this from orbit? Do I call my (responsive, non-vengeful) landlord and ask for something?
Yeah, this sounds A LOT like bedbugs to me. Early infestations can be incredibly hard to detect, and since you only started getting bit on Friday...
Please don't have your friend stay with you until you've had an exterminator out (preferably one with a bug-sniffing dog) to tell you if you have bedbugs or not.
posted by schroedingersgirl at 9:42 AM on November 5, 2018 [4 favorites]
Please don't have your friend stay with you until you've had an exterminator out (preferably one with a bug-sniffing dog) to tell you if you have bedbugs or not.
posted by schroedingersgirl at 9:42 AM on November 5, 2018 [4 favorites]
I live in Oregon, and it's the time of year when outside bugs are finding their way inside.
Data point: Every year, at exactly this time, I wake up with a bunch of bites like this around my belly button. Always the same place, always while I'm sleeping, always what seem to be either large flea bites or small mosquito bites.
They always go away after a few days. (I live in New England, same weather.) My theory is that they're small mosquitoes who are desperate for their last gasp of food, or something. Hope that's all it is for you!
posted by Melismata at 9:44 AM on November 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
Data point: Every year, at exactly this time, I wake up with a bunch of bites like this around my belly button. Always the same place, always while I'm sleeping, always what seem to be either large flea bites or small mosquito bites.
They always go away after a few days. (I live in New England, same weather.) My theory is that they're small mosquitoes who are desperate for their last gasp of food, or something. Hope that's all it is for you!
posted by Melismata at 9:44 AM on November 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
bedbugs are easy to see when they're not hiding, but they're great at hiding.
second that there's no way to identify bugs by the bite. Everyone's skin reacts differently and even bedbug bites vary tremendously depending on their maturity (yes! they are incredibly voracious as babies.)
what to do -- do what you did (ie clean and wash everything); now wait and see. Be honest with your friend; she may choose to stay elsewhere. If she stays with you she should at least keep her bags closed and off the floor/soft surfaces. It might have been something else; there's a lot of different bugs in the world. But if problem persists, get bedbug sniffer dog to come.
posted by fingersandtoes at 9:44 AM on November 5, 2018
second that there's no way to identify bugs by the bite. Everyone's skin reacts differently and even bedbug bites vary tremendously depending on their maturity (yes! they are incredibly voracious as babies.)
what to do -- do what you did (ie clean and wash everything); now wait and see. Be honest with your friend; she may choose to stay elsewhere. If she stays with you she should at least keep her bags closed and off the floor/soft surfaces. It might have been something else; there's a lot of different bugs in the world. But if problem persists, get bedbug sniffer dog to come.
posted by fingersandtoes at 9:44 AM on November 5, 2018
I live in Oregon, and it's the time of year when outside bugs are finding their way inside.
I don't know about Oregon, but where I am this means an influx of spiders. I'll often wake up with (sometimes multiple) clusters of bites from a disgruntled spider, and it isn't at all unusual for the problem to persist for several nights. Eventually the spider (or spiders) find a better place to be and I stop getting bitten. Paired punctures, as you describe, would be consistent with a spider bite.
I don't know anything about bedbugs, so I can't tell you you don't have bed bugs. But you could just have spiders. In your shoes I would warn my friend about what I'd been experiencing, continue taking moderate precautions that don't involve toxic bug-bombs, and wait a little while longer to see if the situation resolves itself before calling on the landlord or doing anything drastic. But again, I don't have any experience with bedbugs, so I may be unreasonably relaxed about this kind of thing.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 10:28 AM on November 5, 2018
I don't know about Oregon, but where I am this means an influx of spiders. I'll often wake up with (sometimes multiple) clusters of bites from a disgruntled spider, and it isn't at all unusual for the problem to persist for several nights. Eventually the spider (or spiders) find a better place to be and I stop getting bitten. Paired punctures, as you describe, would be consistent with a spider bite.
I don't know anything about bedbugs, so I can't tell you you don't have bed bugs. But you could just have spiders. In your shoes I would warn my friend about what I'd been experiencing, continue taking moderate precautions that don't involve toxic bug-bombs, and wait a little while longer to see if the situation resolves itself before calling on the landlord or doing anything drastic. But again, I don't have any experience with bedbugs, so I may be unreasonably relaxed about this kind of thing.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 10:28 AM on November 5, 2018
Don't get a bug bomb! They rarely help and are probably more of a hazard to you than the bugs. Are you living in an apartment or another place with shared walls? If so, bed bugs could be encroaching from a neighbour unit, but if your landlord is responsive, you'd likely have been informed about problems in your building if that's the case. So you also could be the victim of some end-of-season mosquitos, or some other culprit.
Insect bites can take 24 - 48 hours to show up, depending on your reaction/response to the particular bug biting you, so finding a bite in the morning doesn't necessarily mean it happened the night before. You may have cleared out the whatever-it-was with the cleaning but had a delayed reaction to an earlier bite. If these are bites, they could be happening on public transit or while you're at work, but the location makes me wonder if you're having a reaction to the waistband elastic or fabric of your pants/underwear.
posted by halation at 10:30 AM on November 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
Insect bites can take 24 - 48 hours to show up, depending on your reaction/response to the particular bug biting you, so finding a bite in the morning doesn't necessarily mean it happened the night before. You may have cleared out the whatever-it-was with the cleaning but had a delayed reaction to an earlier bite. If these are bites, they could be happening on public transit or while you're at work, but the location makes me wonder if you're having a reaction to the waistband elastic or fabric of your pants/underwear.
posted by halation at 10:30 AM on November 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
Bed bug bites do tend to happen in clusters.
Bed bug nymphs are almost transparent and very small, so they can be easy to miss.
Bed bugs don't fly or hop, they need to be in walking distance of their host. They could be in the crevices of your mattress, cracks or gaps in your bed frame or nightstand, could be hanging out around the baseboards, they could even be in your books. You have to go searching for them.
To trap one you could wrap double sided tape around the legs of the bed; they'll get stuck on their way to eating you.
You could also contact an exterminator who uses bedbug sniffing dogs or who has experience with bedbugs and can deal effectively with extermination.
posted by brookeb at 11:35 AM on November 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
Bed bug nymphs are almost transparent and very small, so they can be easy to miss.
Bed bugs don't fly or hop, they need to be in walking distance of their host. They could be in the crevices of your mattress, cracks or gaps in your bed frame or nightstand, could be hanging out around the baseboards, they could even be in your books. You have to go searching for them.
To trap one you could wrap double sided tape around the legs of the bed; they'll get stuck on their way to eating you.
You could also contact an exterminator who uses bedbug sniffing dogs or who has experience with bedbugs and can deal effectively with extermination.
posted by brookeb at 11:35 AM on November 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
Bedbugs can be killed - eggs, larvae, and adults - by temperatures approaching 115F. The exterminator industry will tell you it has to be more than 150F, and has expensive procedures to accomplish that. The government says it's only 113F.
I have read claims that diluted cedar tree oil both kills them and repels them and other bugs. I tried it once, but it turned out that we didn't have bedbugs at all. The oil is diluted at 8% in water, and sprayed on baseboards, crevices, and other suspect areas. You don't need to buy much to generate a large quantity of spray. The oil doesn't dissolve in water, so you have to keep shaking it up. It smells pretty strong at first, but I didn't find it unpleasant. After a few days, the smell is much less, and it disappears pretty soon.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 12:08 PM on November 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
I have read claims that diluted cedar tree oil both kills them and repels them and other bugs. I tried it once, but it turned out that we didn't have bedbugs at all. The oil is diluted at 8% in water, and sprayed on baseboards, crevices, and other suspect areas. You don't need to buy much to generate a large quantity of spray. The oil doesn't dissolve in water, so you have to keep shaking it up. It smells pretty strong at first, but I didn't find it unpleasant. After a few days, the smell is much less, and it disappears pretty soon.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 12:08 PM on November 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
I'm an emergency physician.
You have fleas or bedbugs.
The clusters and/or roughly linear patterns of itchy red lesions that you describe--it's known as the "breakfast, lunch, dinner"sign, and its the unique calling card of fleas or bedbugs. No other parasitic or non-parasitic arthropods feed in that pattern
There are two explanations (not mutually exclusive) for the "B-L-D" pattern: pre-selection of tasty areas and successive feeding. Before feeding, fleas and bedbugs mark tasty skin areas with an anticoagulant enzyme called salivary apyrase, which by itself can cause itchy bumps. And during feeding, while attached to the skin, fleas and bedbugs can be interrupted and forcibly detached by sudden movements or friction. When this happens, they simply reattach at a nearby site marked with salivary apyrase, causing the linear or clustered pattern of small intchy red lesions
If you're infested with fleas, you'll see them hopping around. If you don't see any fleas, it means you have bedbugs.
posted by BadgerDoctor at 3:47 PM on November 5, 2018
You have fleas or bedbugs.
The clusters and/or roughly linear patterns of itchy red lesions that you describe--it's known as the "breakfast, lunch, dinner"sign, and its the unique calling card of fleas or bedbugs. No other parasitic or non-parasitic arthropods feed in that pattern
There are two explanations (not mutually exclusive) for the "B-L-D" pattern: pre-selection of tasty areas and successive feeding. Before feeding, fleas and bedbugs mark tasty skin areas with an anticoagulant enzyme called salivary apyrase, which by itself can cause itchy bumps. And during feeding, while attached to the skin, fleas and bedbugs can be interrupted and forcibly detached by sudden movements or friction. When this happens, they simply reattach at a nearby site marked with salivary apyrase, causing the linear or clustered pattern of small intchy red lesions
If you're infested with fleas, you'll see them hopping around. If you don't see any fleas, it means you have bedbugs.
posted by BadgerDoctor at 3:47 PM on November 5, 2018
On review, I didn't mention treatment. So here goes
For you
oral antihistamines (benadryl, or any generic equivalent containing the active ingredient diphenyhydramine) plus topical hydroscortisone cream to reduce itching and and swelling. Do your best to avoid scratching to prevent secondary infection.
For environment
First, you need to confirm bedbug infestation. You can do this yourself by closely inspecting mattresses, bedding, sleeping areas, and bed clothes for adult , eggs, and fecal spotting (collections of tiny brown or black flecks of poop). Another do-it-yourself option is to capture bedbugs in heat- or carbon dioxide-emitting traps sold at any hardware store.
The other way to confirm infestation is through an exterminator. This might be an easier, kill-two-birds-with-one-stone option because you're ultimately going to need a professional exterminator to eradicate the bedbugs.
The confirmation and eradication process is expensive and can take a while. I don't know if eradication by Friday is possible or not. You need to contact an exterminator ASAP to get the ball rolling
posted by BadgerDoctor at 4:15 PM on November 5, 2018
For you
oral antihistamines (benadryl, or any generic equivalent containing the active ingredient diphenyhydramine) plus topical hydroscortisone cream to reduce itching and and swelling. Do your best to avoid scratching to prevent secondary infection.
For environment
First, you need to confirm bedbug infestation. You can do this yourself by closely inspecting mattresses, bedding, sleeping areas, and bed clothes for adult , eggs, and fecal spotting (collections of tiny brown or black flecks of poop). Another do-it-yourself option is to capture bedbugs in heat- or carbon dioxide-emitting traps sold at any hardware store.
The other way to confirm infestation is through an exterminator. This might be an easier, kill-two-birds-with-one-stone option because you're ultimately going to need a professional exterminator to eradicate the bedbugs.
The confirmation and eradication process is expensive and can take a while. I don't know if eradication by Friday is possible or not. You need to contact an exterminator ASAP to get the ball rolling
posted by BadgerDoctor at 4:15 PM on November 5, 2018
Are there rodents or birds nesting in your walls or right outside your window? I had some clustered and extremely itchy bites like this at this time of year several years ago, was terrified I had bedbugs, and it turned out to be mites from the nest of a rat that had moved into the basement wall right under the bedroom for the winter. Evicted the rat, stopped being bitten, fortunately didn't come down with the plague. Don't rule out bedbugs, check carefully for them, but there's some level of possibility that it's something else.
posted by centrifugal at 4:56 PM on November 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by centrifugal at 4:56 PM on November 5, 2018 [2 favorites]
Missed the edit window, but they looked like poppy seeds, and we vacuumed, washed the bedding a couple of times on hot, and had the rat nest cleaned up and they were immediately gone.
posted by centrifugal at 5:08 PM on November 5, 2018
posted by centrifugal at 5:08 PM on November 5, 2018
Yeah, this is exactly to the letter what it was like when I discovered we had bedbugs. Even the professional exterminators could find no evidence of them in our mattress and other belongings, but I caught several live ones with traps, so they must have been living in the walls.
Honestly, call your friend and ask them what they would like to do. Bedbugs are no joke, as it's very easy for them to spread undetected, and the consequences are very far-reaching. It would be completely reasonable to cancel/reschedule the visit, stay somewhere else, or be mentally and emotionally prepared to take precautions like never putting their clothes or bags on the floor while at your place and running literally everything they brought to your house through the dryer on high heat after they leave.
If you want to sleep without getting bitten, look up how to make your bed a bug-free zone. This does not eliminate the problem. It just buys you time and sanity so you can sleep in your bed without getting bit while you figure out how to deal with the rest of the problem. The bedbug interceptor traps that go under each leg of your bedframe can also help confirm if you have actual bedbugs or not by catching live specimens. An alternative is to put a sugar-water-yeast trap on top of your bed while you sleep somewhere else. However, this kind of trap may take 4-7 days to catch anything, as the bugs only come out when hungry.
Good luck. I'm sorry.
posted by danceswithlight at 8:43 PM on November 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
Honestly, call your friend and ask them what they would like to do. Bedbugs are no joke, as it's very easy for them to spread undetected, and the consequences are very far-reaching. It would be completely reasonable to cancel/reschedule the visit, stay somewhere else, or be mentally and emotionally prepared to take precautions like never putting their clothes or bags on the floor while at your place and running literally everything they brought to your house through the dryer on high heat after they leave.
If you want to sleep without getting bitten, look up how to make your bed a bug-free zone. This does not eliminate the problem. It just buys you time and sanity so you can sleep in your bed without getting bit while you figure out how to deal with the rest of the problem. The bedbug interceptor traps that go under each leg of your bedframe can also help confirm if you have actual bedbugs or not by catching live specimens. An alternative is to put a sugar-water-yeast trap on top of your bed while you sleep somewhere else. However, this kind of trap may take 4-7 days to catch anything, as the bugs only come out when hungry.
Good luck. I'm sorry.
posted by danceswithlight at 8:43 PM on November 5, 2018 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: It looks like it's not bedbugs! I've had homemade interceptor traps on the bed, a CO2-releasing trap, and sticky traps out, and caught precisely nothing. No bedbugs, no fleas, no rat mites, nothing. I had a pest inspector out, who also couldn't find anything and confirmed that I should have caught bedbugs if I had them - there's not a lot of places for them to hide in my furniture / apartment. I used a pyrethrin-based fogger to cover a spectrum of other random crawlies that could be biting me, washed my bedding again while that was going on, and I haven't gotten bitten again, whew. Leaving the interceptor traps on the bed for a bit just in case because y'all scared the tar out of me.
I did tell my friend, and the pest inspector's word is good enough for them, they'll stay with me. Hooray for lazy mornings in pjs chatting and drinking coffee!
posted by momus_window at 9:35 AM on November 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
I did tell my friend, and the pest inspector's word is good enough for them, they'll stay with me. Hooray for lazy mornings in pjs chatting and drinking coffee!
posted by momus_window at 9:35 AM on November 9, 2018 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Oh, and PSA: most spiders can't bite humans - they don't have the right mouthparts. Most bites people blame on spiders aren't spiders. Spiders eat insects that can bite humans. Spiders are your friends.
posted by momus_window at 9:45 AM on November 9, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by momus_window at 9:45 AM on November 9, 2018 [2 favorites]
This thread is closed to new comments.
So, if it's not that, I would have no idea.
Do you have someone who you trust to take a look at your unit with another pair of eyes? Can you pay for an exterminator to do an inspection?
You could have an allergy to something else, or be having a delayed response to a bug biting you in another location (like at work).
posted by AlexiaSky at 9:37 AM on November 5, 2018 [5 favorites]