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Well I Won’t Be Sleeping Tonight

Jill

Bedbugs taking over New York City? WHAT?!

Bedbugs are back and spreading through New York City like a swarm of locusts on a lush field of wheat.

Infestations have been reported sporadically across the United States over the past few years. But in New York, bedbugs have gained a foothold all across the city.

“It’s becoming an epidemic,” said Jeffrey Eisenberg, the owner of Pest Away Exterminating, an Upper West Side business that receives about 125 bedbug calls a week, compared with just a handful five years ago. “People are being tortured, and so am I. I spend half my day talking to hysterical people about bedbugs.”

Last year the city logged 377 bedbug violations, up from just 2 in 2002 and 16 in 2003. Since July, there have been 449. “Its definitely a fast-emerging problem,” said Carol Abrams, spokeswoman for the city housing agency.

Ugh.

“People come in here and cry on my shoulder,” said Andy Linares, the owner of Bug Off Pest Control, in a Washington Heights storefront. “They feel ashamed, even traumatized, to have these invisible vampires living in their home. Rats, even V.D., is more socially acceptable than bedbugs.”

Ok. That’s funny.

In interviews with more than a dozen bedbug sufferers, only a handful would speak on the record, saying they feared the condemning glares of neighbors or the shunning of co-workers. A bedbug infestation, many say, puts an added strain on relationships, all but ruling out staying the night.

Like many “bedbug victims,” as some call themselves, Josie Torielli has become consumed with the biology of bedbugs since she discovered them in her home last year. She blamed mosquitoes for the ruddy blotches on her body until she turned on the lights one night and found a few of the fiends crawling across her sheets.

She thought she had them conquered, but last week, after nine months of peace, Ms. Torielli discovered the telltale red spots on her sheets, the result of blood-engorged bugs crushed during the night.

“I’ve become obsessed,” said Ms. Torielli, 33, a social work student who lives in Hell’s Kitchen, in Manhattan. “I switched to white sheets so I can see them better, and I’ve set up a bedbug jail in a Tupperware container that I put on the windowsill to torture them with daylight. It’s all-out war.”

Say a little prayer for me, folks.

16 thoughts on Well I Won’t Be Sleeping Tonight

  2. oh man, bedbugs were a huge problem in my boston neighborhood during grad school – it was a college-y area, and people bought and sold used furniture all the time- spread them like wildfire. but i think as long as you don’t buy any used mattresses or couches, and don’t sleep on strangers mattresses or couches, you should be ok!

  5. The bedbug “revival” of recent years is partly a result of the push to cut back pesticide use. One more thing to thank the environmental movement for.

  6. The bedbug “revival” of recent years is partly a result of the push to cut back pesticide use. One more thing to thank the environmental movement for.

    I presume you have some evidence for this statement? I read in a news story (hardly an unassailable source, I realize) that actually bedbugs are quite pesticide-resistent, and that comes from overuse of pesticides, not underuse. However, I am quite willing to accept actual evidence to the contrary. You must have reviewed some scientific studies to make such a sweeping statement, so please, enlighten me.

  7. My favorite part of the article was the last paragraph where the woman said she went home with a guy she met in a bar just because she didn’t want to sleep with the bedbugs in her bed and ended up falling in love with him. They’re still together, and it’s all thanks to the bedbugs.

  9. Jill, I really wouldn’t freak out too hard about it. When I went to Cyprus in 2004 I stayed for a little over a month in room with bed bugs, and a couple really aren’t that bad. It was just like getting a misquito bite every night and it itched the next day. Then it went away and a new one popped up. They’re really nothing more then a minor inconveniance. You don’t feel it when they bite and they run as soon as you turn on a light or move around too much. I was there for 3 months and I only ever saw one.

    Unless, I would imagine, your house is really infested with them and you see them everywhere and that woud be gross. But to put it in perspective, I would much much much rather have had my bedbugs back from that summer then the roach problem I had this fall.

  10. I was wondering what those little red bumps were on that most recent picture of you.

    Ahhh… look at the lovely troll sexual harassment I missed while I was away.

  11. As I understand it, the best non-toxic way to rid oneself of those little lovelies is:

    Wash *all* bedding in HOT water. (I wouldn’t object to a small amount of chlorine bleach at this point; it might make the sheets/bedding less palatable to the bedbugs. However, large amounts are not only detrimental to the environment, but can cause your bedding to wear out much, much faster due to fiber degredation.)

    Vacuum *thoroughly* everything that cannot be washed — the mattress, the box springs, the bedframe, the floors.

    I suppose that rugs/carpeting should be included in this list — wash in HOT water what you can, and vacuum the crap out of everything else. Steam clean carpeting if possible. Be sure to dispose of the vacuum bag somewhere that the bugs can’t escape from. An outside dumpster/trashcan in NYC at this time of year should do nicely.

    Repeat vigourously until infestation diminishes/goes away.

    At least the little buggers can’t develop an immunity to getting drowned in hot water or sucked up in a vacuum cleaner! 🙂 Good luck, Jill — with a little bit of luck it won’t be a problem for you.

  13. I presume you have some evidence for this statement?

    This would be the celebrated wingnut technique of ad argumentum per clunis.

  14. Oh, god.

    Friends of mine have a bedbug infestation. It started off in their son’s room on one end of the apartment during the summer, and they had to move in space heaters to try to raise the temperature enough to kill them (you can kill them with heat or cold). They thought they’d gotten rid of it, when they found little red dots in their mattress on the other end of the apartment.

    Needless to say, I had mixed feelings about accepting their invitation to come over for Thanksgiving dinner. Happily, we all wound up going over to another friend’s place.

    But the shame is real. They had a hard time finding anyone who would take their dried-and-bagged clothing for a few hours while the exterminator visited, and like I said, I certainly had qualms about visiting lest I bring home any stowaways. In fact, I was VERY RELIEVED to figure out that the thing that was biting me this summer was in fact a mosquito.

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