Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with infestation

Avoiding a bed bugs infestation

grrarrgh00 — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 22:14:13 -0800

I just woke up from a night in my Amsterdam hotel room and realized my bed has bed bugs in it. How do I make dead certain these things don't return with me to the US? Also, what should I expect from the hotel? I've spent the last two nights in a boutique hotel in Amsterdam.

Last night, I came back to my room and relaxed for a while reading on the bed. When I got up, I saw that there were bites down the back of one arm, but I didn't pay much attention; I thought an ant might have gotten into my jacket or something. I slept through the night, but when I woke up, I discovered another bite on my other arm. I suspected something was up, got up immediately, and inspected the sheets. I saw one dead bed bug, and several more live ones crawling around. (Ick.)

I'm downstairs in the lobby now, waiting for the hotel's housekeeping manager to arrive. I imagine I need to get all of my clothes laundered; they were on a seat touching the bed all night. What should I do with my luggage? How do I get into a set of uninfested clothes (I'm currently wearing the outfit I wore last night when I got in)? What other steps can I take?

Also, do you have any tips on interacting with hotel management about this? What should I expect from them? If they offer to launder my things, should I let them?

I had originally planned to transfer to another hotel today (this hotel was covered by the conference I was speaking at; I had previously reserved another room for myself at a place in a different part of town). Should I call them and explain the situation? Is there a chance I could get my things treated well enough today that bringing the infestation with me wouldn't be an issue?

Thanks much for your help with this. These things are so nasty.

Worms on the celing

mippy — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:00:37 -0800

We found small brown maggots on our celing/walls this morning. Why, and how do we get rid of them? (NB - do not click if you are eating.) Last year I took a sealed bag of porridge out of the baking cupboard, cut the corner, poured it into a bowl and saw it move. It was infested. We threw it out, went through that cupboard, and bleached the surfaces. At the same time, I found a couple in my room on a piece of my fabric (bought from an outdoor market), so threw that out, washed everything, and put it safely back into storage. We have a lot of moths around, so I wondered whether the two were connected, but there was no sign of moths on my clothing containers.

A few months ago, I took a jar out of my cupboard to find a chunky white maggot on the top. A cardboard tub of gravy granules seemed to have some in, and a plastic bag of hazlenuts (corner snipped off) and a plastic tub of candles (washed and replaced with the lid on the tub) had thin white ones in. Again, things got thrown out, other things got placed in sealed tubs.

Now, this morning, one maggot was on the wall, two near the celing, and one on the celing. The first time we've seen them in the kitchen for a while. The baking cupboard has shown no sign of them, and we keep everything else in the fridge or sealed. I am worried the moths might be part of the issue - we get small ones which, worryingly, occasionally fly out of cupboards. We keep the kitchen clean, mop the floor once a week, rinse everythign before it goes into the recycling bucket, and there are no tiles or anything like that. Any ideas? Is it just likely to be a random maggot occurance? If it helps, we live in London.

bats in my house--help!

mamaraks — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:21:45 -0800

Bats keep showing up either alive or dead in various places in my house. I do not know how they are getting in, but my house is a two-story home and it is an older home (from the 30's). I travel a lot, so I am hardly ever actually at my home and nobody else has access to it. It is so disgusting to come home to dead bats, which I'm assuming may carry disease. Bats have shown up in my home throughout the years, but never this often. In the past six months, I've found a dead one on my bed and one in the pantry and one dead in front of the refrigerator. Does this have anything to do with the fact that I got a new roof and siding a couple years ago? The contractors were not insured and I wonder if they didn't seal something up when they finally got the job completed. I cannot imagine how the bats are finding their way into my house! Would you have advice for me? I really don't know where to start, or which type of professional to contact.

What the hell are these bugs?

Ignatius J. Reilly — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:32:40 -0800

Name that infestation! What the hell are these zombie insects and why do they want access to my home? Relevant facts:
I live in Chicago, and the phenomenon I am writing about is definitely seasonal. All summer long, there has been a low level of a certain kind of bug in my neighborhood (far north side, very close to Lake Michigan but not to the Chicago River or any other body or water): it looks like a cross between a mosquito and a fruit fly, but with a transparent abdomen.

In the last 3 or 4 days, things have gotten out of control. First, these bugs have grown in number by leaps and bounds. There are now probably at least 10 times as many as there were last week. Second, and most alarmingly, they seem to have changed their behavior: on each and every window of our apartment (facing East, West and South) these bugs have actually begun wiggling their way through the screen and inside.

For the first night, we ended up with hundreds of these insects swarming around our light bulbs. We have now closed up the place, and there is a thick layer of dead bugs on the sill between the screen and the window.

I do not have a photo. I can't get one to turn out correctly, because of glare from the windows and all. I should be clear that these are NOT mosquitoes, though they are somewhat similar. They don't bite and they are very stupid/bad at surviving. They just sit there and let you kill them.

The termites are invading!

dirtmonster — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 12:06:57 -0800

We've called the exterminator. But it's Saturday, and the termites are pouring into one room in the house. Are there any short term methods for fighting the infestation? The professionals are coming on Monday, but what can we do before then? We definitely have termites, and today they have started showing up in force (the kind with the wings). Is there anything we can do to stem the tide? Cat and people safe solutions welcome.

invasion of the brown specks

apostrophe — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 10:43:56 -0800

Can you help me identify some teeny-tiny bugs that just invaded my kitchen cupboard? This is in the SF Bay Area. This morning I awoke to find a bunch of these little guys crawling around my kitchen cupboard. They are so tiny so the photo is not very detailed. I tried zooming way in and my camera is just not up to the task. I've searched online and there are plenty of images of termites and carpet beetles, but they are the close-up kind so I can't tell if these are the same. They are light brown and very interested in food. I mean, as opposed to wood, as far as I can tell. They only showed up in the one kitchen (food-storing) cupboard. Last fall we renovated our kitchen, painted all the cabinets, caulked them all thoroughly, so I suspect these are new guys and haven't had eggs lying in wait. But what do I know? We cleaned them all up and sprayed the cupboard with a vinegar solution. Please tell me this isn't some horrible thing where my walls are about to crumble away.

I've killed 15 rats and now need to clean and disinfect my garage. Please help!

phixed — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 08:00:46 -0800

My garage has been a rat motel for the past year. Now that the rats are gone how do I clean it and make it usable again? My wife and I recently purchased a house that was in pre-foreclosure and although the house itself was in decent condition, the garage was an abandoned mess infested with rats. We've been working with an exterminator for the past three weeks and, 15 dead rats later, finally have succeeded in clearing out the current infestation.

Pictures of what we inherited can be seen here, here and here. Overwhelming, to say the least.

Now that the rats are gone and the garage cleared out I'm at a lost of how to move forward. The smell is tremendously bad (in February, in Chicago), there are rat droppings everywhere, about 20% of the concrete is dug up and there are three holes that need to be plugged. Part of me wants to just tear down the entire structure and build a new one but it is a beautiful brick garage from the 1920's and is in really great shape overall.

So please help me! What's my next step(s)? How do I make this garage suitable to be a garage?

Supposedly they have a nutty flavor

granted — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:51:03 -0800

I found a bug in my pistachio. :-( Last night, I was spending another thrilling Sunday evening playing Text Twist and eating a bag of Chili Lemon pistachios from Trader Joe's when I cracked open a shell and saw a grub of some sort nestled inside. I shrieked and threw it into the shell bowl. I don't know if it was dead or alive, as I was too scared to inspect more closely. (Yeah, yeah, laugh all you want, but you'll be sorry you didn't evolve a more effective fear instinct when you're dying of trypanosomiasis.) I lost my appetite and put the bag of pistachios away. But now I'm debating giving the bag another go, because I'm addicted to these god damn nuts.

But what if there's another bug? A family? Eggs? Larvae? Infestation? What are the odds that this bug's world was confined to the one pistachio? What would you do? Inspect every subsequent pistachio thoroughly before eating it? They're kind of a lot of work as it is.

Should I Eat This? It should be noted that I had eaten about half the bag when I made my horrifying discovery. In addition, my aversion to grubs is severe enough that if I accidentally eat one I'll puke and never eat pistachios again. AAAAGGGHHH get the thought out of my head!!! (Yes, I know that in some heathen societies bugs are considered a delicacy and/or sold fried from street carts or whatever. That's disgusting. This is America! We only eat bugs if they're enormous and live at the bottom of the sea.)

Your rug shouldn't crawl. Ever heard of maggots hatching out of a rug?

lottie — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:37:27 -0800

IKEA Rag Rug nastiness: Has this happened to anyone you know? (Somewhat gross explanation ahead) (Warning: Grossness ahead.)
A couple of years ago, a very strange home furnishing-related thing happened to me and I've always wondered if it affected anyone else. I know it kind of sounds like an urban myth, but it absolutely happened to me.

I lived with a flatmate in Los Angeles at the time and we were having breakfast one sunday morning when we looked down and noticed a lot of large white maggots, or larvae of some kind, crawling over the floor. Keepers of a very clean home, we were horrified by this, and quickly moved everything out of the kitchen and swept and mopped before noticing that they were back again. Three or four times we swept them up, covering the floor in hot, bleachy water, only for them to return, seemingly from nowhere. We checked the drains and under the fridge and all cupboards, but couldn't figure out the source, and we both started to come unhinged. The maggots were the size of small dried beans, white and rubbery when we tried to crush them with the mop-head.

It was only later on in the morning when, giving up, we started moving some of the things which had been in the kitchen that we picked up an IKEA rag rug that had been on the floor, and literally dozens of these maggot things fell out of it. We remembered then that we had the same rug in the bathroom, and sure enough - a shower of them fell out when we picked it up. The floor was absolutely crawling with maggots.

Now neither of these rugs were very old, nor were they dirty. We'd actually bought them because we knew we could launder them frequently. We paid about $2 for them, and so getting our money back wasn't really an issue, it was more "What the heck?!". I called and complained, and (surprisingly) customer service kind of went "Meh. These things happen. They were hand loomed in India." (like that somehow explains it) and they offerded us a refund, which we turned down - it was just a really small amount and we really didn't care. I was more interested in letting them know that their rugs seem to be hatching, and sparing anyone else the anguish of having their homes crawling with larvae. I actually thought they would have been more alarmed, or have heard of this happening before. No big deal.

I can only guess that they were some kind of egg that was woven into the rug and the right conditions of moisture and heat had them hatching in our kitchen and bathroom. Would really like to know if this is a common sort of thing with these rugs. Anyway, has anyone else ever experienced this? Any idea what they were?

Bugs!

backseatpilot — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:28:03 -0800

My roommate brought some bugs along with her when she moved in. How do we get rid of them and protect the food? Apparently my now-roommate had a small bug problem - the kind that likes to eat flour and pasta and the like. She threw out everything that was contaminated before she came here, but just last night found one swimming in the pasta she was boiling for dinner. We found a couple more containers that were compromised (those individual-sized rice pouches and some pickles that were in serving-size apple sauce cups). The bugs had eaten through the packaging. Once again, everything contaminated was thrown out.

So now what do we do? She lives off of those tear-off-the-top-and-throw-in-water pouch meals and has tons of them; do we need to throw them all out? Her food is separated from mine by several cabinets - do I need to throw out all of my flour and pasta? What's the best way to prevent them from coming back? I plan to do a very thorough cleaning of countertops and floors tomorrow, but what other prevention should we practice? What types of food are at risk? How careful do we need to be about keeping dirty dishes out of the sink and generally maintaining cleanliness in the kitchen?

sleep tight and pleeeeaaase don't let the bedbugs bite.

purplefiber — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 19:49:05 -0800

The upstairs neighbors have bedbugs. My roommate and I really really really don't want them! Are there any preventative measures we can take? Bonus points for non-chemical solutions.

Old apartment under insect attack!

utsutsu — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 09:22:13 -0800

Old apartment under insect attack! I am posting this question on behalf of a good friend who is a reader of this site but not yet a member. We'll call her M.

M: "It seems as though we have a black carpet beetle infestation (or at least that's what they look like to me). We've seen a few adults around since spring, which I thought just came with the old-and-in-disrepair apartment package, but today I found larvae while I was cleaning the litter boxes (they were under the bag of litter).

The litter boxes are in a "sun room" close to two unused mattresses and the room has a scrap carpet from my parents' house covering the linoleum. We've also found more under our couches and the jute rug in the living room. The rest of the apartment has old, gappy hardwood floors, so I'm hoping that's all there is.

Aside from frantic vacuuming, I need to know what else I should be doing. Should we just throw away the carpeting? Are the mattresses ok - and if not - how can I clean them? Do I need to use a pesticide? If so, is there something that is natural and/or safe to use around cats?

How can I prevent this from happening again (aside from stepping up the vacuuming)? Needless to say, I'm completely mortified and thoroughly grossed out. "

I will be posting any follow ups from M.

Thanks MeFi.

YABBQ(Yet Another Bed Bug Question)

mrzarquon — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 22:29:38 -0800

Bed Bugs or Chiggers? Please tell me what I found, so I know if I should be worried. (bonus points if you have experienced both in your life) (to set the scene) So I live in Seattle, in a 1 br / studio apartment, basement unit with the window at ground level. There are currently a stack of dead leaves in the window against the screen.

I took one cat (of two) to the vet on saturday, and the vet identified the scabs around his neck and base of his tail as flea bites with an irritated skin reaction. I had thought they were from rough play with the other cat, who under close inspection, has no scabs or irritated bite areas to speak of. Vet says that Nimbus, the second cat, is probably not allergic or reactive as the first.

Cut to today, where I am cleaning and sorting (after treating both cats with Advantage), and vacuuming the apartment, I come across three small, red, tick tike creatures (one ran across my keyboard, another across my screen while looking up said creature, and the third was on my shirt when I had a cat in my lap). They don't appear to be dear ticks (all red instead of little black legs with engorged red bodies), but they are suspiciously close to what I have read as either Chiggers or Bed Bugs. But I haven't seen one or the other in real life, so it is hard to tell what it is I am looking at.

I can't get a good photo of it, but they red, and "period at the end of this sentence" small, with three pairs of red legs.

I haven't had any remarkable bites or itchiness that could be attributed to a Bed Bug infestation.

Whatever this is, has been enough for me to get out of my lease with my current landlord (already approved) and be able to move into a new place, with no carpets and a much better layout as a whole. So if these are bed bugs, what should I be doing to ensure that me and my cats don't bring them to my new apartment, only to repeat the cycle? If they aren't, what should i do to make sure I don't bring whatever it is they are, with me too.

Ants in the bathroom!

nebulawindphone — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 09:54:30 -0800

Ants in the bathroom! We're re-caulking a bathtub that badly needs it — the old caulk is black and peeling. When I pulled away the last strip of old caulk, out poured a few dozen tiny red ants. We hadn't been seeing any in the house until now; apparently they were happily living in the wall until I disturbed them.

What's the best solution here?

In particular, do I have to take care of this before I reapply the caulk? We're all looking forward to bathing on Monday, so I'd rather not wait too long unless I have to.

Archnid Attack!Help me rid my house of them without chemicals.

pazoozoo — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 07:52:08 -0800

My wife, new baby and I just moved into a house that we love. The one problem is that it has spiders of every type, everywhere, indoors and outdoors. We even have these small spider webs all over our lawn. With the new baby, I am hesitant to go ape with the chemicals. We vaccum regularly, including ceiling corners, closets etc. and have moved vegitation back from the house a bit, though there is a ton of flowers and ornamentals. Any ideas for dealing with the critters without dousing the place in insecticide?

Oh crap! So much for trying to be frugal.

Anonymous — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 20:51:05 -0800

Can you get bedbugs from thrift store clothes? So I was on the train home tonight from a successful trip to the thrift store when I felt something itchy on my thigh. I looked down and there was a tiny, barely visible orange bug crawling on me. I flicked it off and didn't think much about it until a minute or so later I had another itchy feeling on my arm. I looked and there was a larger, nastier looking, but still orange bug on my arm. Weird, right?

A minute later a lightbulb goes off and I'm wondering if the bugs are coming from my bag of loot from the thrift store.

When I get home, I immediately dispose of the bag outside, strip and wash both my thrift store items (a top and a skirt) and everything I was wearing except for my backpack in hot water and detergent. Then I put myself into a very hot shower and shampoo my hair thoroughly (since I was pulling clothes over it in the dressing room).

I googled bedbug and the picture looks just like what I remember seeing on me on the train.

Questions: How likely is getting bedbugs from thrift store clothing? Assuming it's possible, do you think I'll be okay, given the actions i took immediately after retuning home? And finally, do you think once the clothes are washed and dried it's okay to keep them or is that a really bad idea?

If this is a cockroach, what do I do?

Caper's Ghost — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 18:53:34 -0800

Tonight I found this insect on the wall of my apartment. What is it? Tonight I found this insect on the wall of my apartment. My girlfriend’s dog actually found it first (thank god she wasn’t here at the time), and I found the dog staring at it. The bug was about 4 feet up on the wall, just sitting there. This was at roughly 8:00 p.m. EST. I tried to brush it down to the floor and it flew off the wall. It seemed to fly very lightly and easily, like a moth almost, but it didn’t fly more than a few feet down to the floor. I saw it fly a few times, but never more than a few feet. I managed to capture it easily (perhaps in part thanks to the dog, Teddy, who mauled it a bit). After capturing it in a drinking glass, I took some pictures of it. I think it sustained some physical trauma from the dog, because it has been very easy to capture and control and I always heard that roaches were very elusive.

After taking some pictures of the beastie, I killed it with ammonia-based generic brand window cleaner. After that I photographed it next to a coin for size comparison.

After some quick google research, I don’t know exactly how to classify this insect. It looks a lot like a roach of some sort. The wing pattern seems to look like what I consider a roach, but it is very light-brown colored. Most pictures of roaches I came across are a lot darker than the thing I found on my wall.

A few more facts: I live in an apartment in suburban Alexandria, Virginia, USA. My roommate and I are not exceptionally messy, but we have been known to let some stuff pile up in the sink or garbage can now and then. Nothing ridiculous though, just a little cluttered at times. The neighborhood is pretty clean though, and I have heard no other complaints of cockroach infestations. My building is three floors tall (I’m at the top) and it has four apartments on each floor.

Also, yesterday I got back from a two-day long camping trip to West Virginia, and brought a bunch of stuff up to the apartment from the car. There is a possibility that I brought this in from outside.

To date this is the first experience I have had with what may be a cockroach. Tell me, mefites, is it a roach? If so, what kind? Where may it have come from, and do I or will I have an infestation on my hands?

Thanks!

Black widow spiders want my blood

sdis — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 23:46:43 -0800

Black widow spiders are coming to get me; what do I do? What do I do about any of the following:

1) My house is starting to get a large number of black widows (I've killed 3 in the garage and 1 just now in my bathroom window in the last 3 months) (I'm in Los Angeles)

2) I am totally arachnophobic and this is freaking me out

3) My insect spray just seems to make them mad, at which point I need to find some sort of device that I can flail at them to make them splat, which is plenty traumatic for both me and the spider.

Help me escape my bed bug hell.

Anonymous — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 14:28:34 -0800

Help me escape my bed bug hell. I have been dealing with a bed bug infestation for about a year and a half. It is a nightmare that has been going on for too long. Although it's a minor infestation, no matter how many times my place is treated/vacummed/sprayed etc. it doesn't go away...the bugs probably travel from apartment to apartment in my building. I've gotten to the point where I just want to move. However, I want to make sure I do it right.

THE PLAN: To rent a new apartment and put every single thing I own into storage. Since I live in the northeast, if I move during the dead of winter and store things in an unheated storage unit, I am expecting that the cold will kill the bugs and the eggs.

For the first month all I will bring to the new place will be a brand new bed and clothes that have been freshly washed in hot water. Then after an adequate amount of exposure to below-freezing temps, I will bring the rest of my stuff out of storage and into the new place. The question is—how long is adequate?

I cannot find any hard & fast information online about exactly how long it takes to freeze the bugs and their eggs to death. I am *terrified* to take these critters to a new apartment. The good thing is that since my apartment has been treated so often, if anything the infestation is very minor...so I'm hoping I only have to worry about a few bugs trying to hitch a ride to my new place. But if I don't do this right, I could bring them along. Has anyone who’s had this problem successfully moved to a new place without these critters along? What are your thoughts?

Mouse in the House

RustyBrooks — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 02:50:02 -0800

We definitely have mice in our garage. I'm worried they may be in our attic or our house interior and I need some advice. So I'll break it down into a few pieces

* How do you estimate the size of an infestation? I've put sticky traps and poison all over our garage and in key parts inside the house. We've caught a few in the garage, none inside the house. I am interesting in figuring out how many mice we started with, and whether that number is decreasing.

* With the traps it's straightforward, fine one with a mouse, throw it away. With the poison, I'll find one that's been well nibbled (they're blocks of poison) but I've yet to find a dead mouse (not in a trap). Assuming that the poison is lethal in the doses that they're eating, where are they? Did they go outside to die, or, more likely, are they deep under some stuff, in a hole, in the attic, etc? Are traps alone effective enough, especially since I now need to worry about mice rotting away in various places?

* At what point do you consider calling in a professional? There is no evidence that they are getting into our food, the dogs food, etc. There has been a definite increase in activity in the garage, I found, for example, that a bag of ant poison had been eaten through, of all things, and a nest made inside. I suspect they are coming in because it's starting to get colder and wetter outside.

* Also, we live in a new house built in what was an empty field 6 months ago. So these mice are probably "field mice" right, and so this is the first wave that is moving indoors. Does that change anything? When we first moved in we had spiders EVERYWHERE but the numbers have died down since we remove them whenever we find them.

Termites in Hollywood

dentata — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 00:01:50 -0800

Who's responsible for a termite infestation? Tenant or landlord? I just moved into a four-plex a month ago. We found out yesterday that there's a termite infestation in the attic and basement, and they need to tent the apartment, meaning that we tenants need to move out for a couple days (with our pets).

The landlords have offered to take 2 days off our rent. Shouldn't they be paying to put us up? Do insect infestations constitute negligence or are they an act of god? We know that the landlords haven't treated the house for termites in 25 years.

Any opinions? I live in Hollywood, if that helps. Anyone know where I can research the legality of this?

Practicing Bedbug Awareness

macinchik — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 11:02:30 -0800

What are some practical measures for minimizing bedbug exposure during domestic (US) hotel stays? Having read all the posts here about what a problem bedbugs are becoming, I would like to do what I can to keep from bringing them home after staying in a hotel.

Things I can think of to do are:

-rip sheets and blankets off of bed and inspect mattress and headboards for rust stains and other signs of a bed bug presence. only introduce luggage into room if this search comes up negative

-keep luggage and all clothes in the bathtub, a place that bedbugs might eschew in favor of locations closer to the bed

-sleep naked

-instead of using luggage, use plastic or paper bags which can be disposed of before coming back home, and then wash all clothes with hot water and bleach

I realize I am being a little apocalyptic here but from what I've heard these things are the very devil to get rid of, once installed in a residence.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Traveling bedbugs

np312 — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 09:19:37 -0800

Can bedbugs survive an airplane flight if they hitch a ride in your (checked) luggage? I got into a conversation with my mom the other day about backpacking in Europe, and how some of the hostels I slept in had bedbugs. Now, I live in NYC, which is going through a crazy bedbug epidemic that I have so far (thankfully) avoided. But it has made me super vigilant and paranoid about the bugs infesting my apartment.

So my question is: if I stay in hostels abroad and make sure that the clothes I wear on the plane home have no bedbugs on them, what are the chances that any of the little suckers who might have snuck into my suitcase/duffle would survive the pressure/temperature changes of flying in the belly of the plane?

Just something I've always wondered. Thanks!

How to Vanquish Bedbug-Borne Phobias?

Anonymous — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 14:35:56 -0800

I was heavily bitten by bedbugs over the summer of 2005, and although they're gone, I've grown very anxious about the thought of ever becoming reinfested. In August 2005, my doctor identified bites on my arms as bedbug bites. My landlord and I found my bed and boxspring had numerous bedbugs crawling along it. They had been biting me for about four months' time; I had chalked it up to mosquitos.

My landlady wanted to exterminate using an ineffective technique, but my research made clear that the method she suggested wouldn't work. I offered to split the cost of an exterminating service that has been around over a century. They performed two treatments, and after the second, I never saw a live bedbug in that apartment again. When I learned she was not going to inspect, let alone preventatively treat, the other apartments for bedbugs, I asked her if she would consent to letting me out of my lease early. She did, and I moved at the end of last October.

I've been at my new apartment for nearly five months with no bedbugs spotted. Although bedbugs can last without food for up to eighteen months, they're not going to voluntarily pass up food for that long. Thus, if I've not been bitten in the past five months, I hopefully most likely did not bring them with me to my new home. (Knock on wood.)

My perusal of blogs suggests to me it's not unusual for people who have dealt with bedbugs to have a good deal of residual anxiety even following the resolution of their infestations. My own anxieties no longer focus over the possibility that I've remained infested. I initially was casting a hard eye at every dark speck that happened to catch my eye. But the anxiety that remains from that experience focuses around the thought of reinfestation; of this occuring again.

It would help if I knew where my infestation originated. With no way of knowing for sure, I seem to subconsciously attribute it to one of two causes. Either I was infested while on public transit, which I ride daily; or I was infested when I stayed in a hotel in late February 2005. I don't remember noticing bites until late April 2005, and it would be odd for bedbugs to not feed for two months, but hotels are known to be the transmission vectors for bedbug infestations nowadays, and this hotel is even a regular home to crews for a particular international airline. And so I find myself checking subway seats before sitting down (not obsessively, but casting a hard eye at the cracks between the seats and the subway car side). And I am extremely anxious about the day in my future in which I will find myself needing to stay at a hotel overnight again. I'm honestly afraid that even if the experience doesn't cause reinfestation, it'll nevertheless turn me into a nervous wreck for the weeks preceding and following the experience.

So, you guys have the honest-to-God ability, through your answers, to make a substantial difference in my anxiety level, and I'm hoping you can offer advice in two arenas.

The first is from a practical perspective. (1) If one were to pay attention to the news media, you would think that every hotel and motel in America has a bedbug problem. I am wondering what the true likelihood of contracting a bedbug infestation from an overnight hotel stay is. One in five? One in a hundred? One in three thousand? In short, can anyone tell me what kind of odds I am running? The more the odds are in my favor, the more mental ammo I can provide myself. (Note that bedbugs infest both ritzy and poor hotels alike: they aren't attracted to filth, they're attracted to CO₂ and live off blood. Think tick-like, not roach-like.) (2) Can you recommend ways in which someone could determine prior to arrival whether a hotel has bedbugs? With million-dollar awards from juries for bedbug bites (seriously), hotels will now very happily lie through their teeth. (3) Once you arrive in your room, what things can you look for in that room to determine whether it suffers from infestation?

The second is from an emotional perspective. I imagine few, if any, of you have had to deal with bedbugs. But I'm sure some of you have had moments in your life that have caused you great anxiety and influenced your long-term behavior following the experience. What did you do to help yourself get over it? I have gotten better; I will continue to get better, hopefully. I am a strong man in many different ways, and I do not focus over this anxiety 24-7. I'm not, in short, an insane, tremoring basket case. But it is enough of a recurring and strong presence in my mind that I want to decrease its power over me. I am in therapy, but my therapist has recognized in the past the value of group input that Ask MeFi offers; I'm hoping you guys can dish up some life-changing advice for me this time around.

(A postscript: I realize this is nothing compared to the anxiety that an Iraq War veteran or a Hurricane Katrina survivor might have to deal with. My intellect understands that sense of scale. But that intellectual sense is not hooked up very well to the parts of me that are generating this anxiety.)

I'm terrified I'll be plagued with bedbugs for the rest of my life ...

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 15:13:58 -0800

I am seeking emotional tips to handle dreading the recurrence of a somewhat traumatic event, when it is relatively impossible to predict whether or not said event will actually reoccur. Details inside. I beg everyone's pardon, in advance, for the length. I am posting this anonymously due to the stigma still surrounding bedbug infestation; even though there is really no 'fault' attached to it, I'd really rather not have someone Google me in the future and discover this little gem. Hope it'll go through.

The backstory:

I recently found out my apartment has been infested with bedbugs, probably since late May or early June. Until recently, I thought they were mosquito bites, but my doctor diagnosed them correctly.

Practically, I am proceeding step-by-step as best I can. My landlord had wanted to use a pest control service who I believe would have simply fumigated the apartment with, from what I understand, would have been standard fumigation chemicals, which are ineffectual with bedbugs; I got her to agree to go halfsies on this company, which I felt was more reputable, as it has operated in my metropolitan area since the late 1880s (that's not a typo) and has actual experience treating bedbugs.

The exterminator will spray my apartment and my empty furniture twice, once on the 22nd to kill 90% and once two weeks later to catch the remaining 10% that are in the walls. A family member is assisting me in the extremely work-intensive preparation required: we will have to empty numerous bookshelves and videoshelves and a fairly packed closet, move all furniture away from the wall, and clean all clothing or fabric that can be put into a washing machine.

For the two weeks in-between the two sprayings, I will find myself living in an odd state, with most of my belongings packed away and almost all of my furniture in a tight concentration in the middle of the apartment, as I can't foresee moving everything back on my own only to move it back out again two weeks later for the second spraying.

The problem:

I am terrified that I will never escape these damn bugs ever. And when I say terrified, I mean that my appetite's disappeared, I occasionally shiver for no reason at all, and I had a moderate panic attack already. But this is a tricky terror to vanquish, given that it has some basis of fact to it.

The exterminator says that there are three main causes of bedbug infestation he has seen: purchase of used furniture, being somewhere that was severely infested and bringing some with you, or travel within a building from another apartment. We can eliminate the first one, as I've purchased no used furniture in nearly a decade.

That leaves the remaining two. As I live in one of the bigger cities in America and use mass transit daily, it is certainly a possibility that the second option was the cause. If this is the case, the possibility of reinfestation is close to nil, as the procedures he's doing should rid my apartment of all bedbugs, including the hard-to-spot nymphs.

But most of the 'basis of fact' of my terror lies in the third option. The exterminator says that if they did indeed come from another apartment, the possibility of reinfestation within a few months is 70-100%. My landlord is going to spray, but I'm relatively certain she is not spraying every apartment, and I'm also not certain of the efficacy of the chemical she's using.

The quirk:

It may sound counterintuitive, but aside from the physical discomfort of the bites (lessened significantly since we removed the boxspring), I don't think the bugs themselves are the cause of the terror. If I spot and can catch them, I squash them and clean up the bit of blood on my hands. I really don't find myself afraid of the bites or of the bugs themselves (aside from the moment of revulsion).

When I try to determine what is inciting the cause of fear and panic, the best I can do is that they seem centered more around (a) the thought of having to do such extensive physical work yet another time [I am unfortunately quite morbidly obese and extremely physically weak and unconditioned], and (b) the possibility of this being a continually repeating curse -- of running into these again here, of accidentally bringing an infestation along to a new apartment, of running into these again into a new apartment or a new home.

(Additional causes of the panic seem to center around (a) the disruption to my usual 'routines', (b) panic surrounding the idea of doing necessary things without the necessary supplies (i.e. sleeping on the wood floor if my cat punctures a loaner air mattress, once we toss the infested mattress, which I'll do prior to the spraying), and (c) the continual drain of funds from replacing items that must be thrown away, i.e. mattress, boxspring.)

What I'm doing already:

I am fortunate enough to have access to both physical and mental health care; my therapist knows of my problems (and indeed talked me down from a moderate panic attack on Sunday morning), and I've left a message asking my physician to consider prescribing some sort of anxiety-reducing medication. Additionally, given my metropolitan area's local landlord-tenant ordinances, I think I could argue before a municipal court to get out my lease if they did come back, but then I'd still be concerned I might bring them elsewhere or run into them elsewhere, given the fact that my research indicates both that they are hitting my metro area somewhat strong, but evidently are on a national upswing as well due to the higher use of gel bait and the outlawing of DDT.

A few final educational notes, considering I'm hoping this can be posted anonymously (and thus will not be able to reply to questions). If I'm wrong on any of this, let me know, but this is what my research has turned up, and part of what makes this so scary: bedbugs infestations have nothing to do with cleanliness (think ticks, not roaches); they are attracted by exhaled carbon dioxide; due to their shape, they can hide in a million different crevices and cracks and are willing to travel nearly 100 feet to reach their food; they don't seem to be particularly slowed down by winter; they can survive up to 18 months without a meal.

Finally, I acknowledge and am very grateful that this situation is not far worse than it could have been: there are far worse things to dread reoccuring than bedbugs, and while I am not rich, I am not so close to the poverty line that I cannot handle this, albeit not without significant financial inconvenience. Furthermore, this is not a building that traditionally has had problems with bedbugs, thank God. I'm aware of all this, but sometimes terror does not behave rationally.