Bugs in the Bed
by Cait Johnson

As she tucked me into bed at night my mother, with a big smile, used to sing-song: Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite. I mean, we knew bedbugs didn’t actually exist, not in our pristine home in our pristine suburb—the absurdity of it was part of the joke. Well, things have changed.

When my artist son took a school trip to Italy several years ago, he brought back a thousand photos of decaying walls in Venice, sexy underwear for his girlfriend, illegal-in-the-States absinthe (which I poured down the toilet, but that’s another story), and—gasp!—bedbugs. From a nice hotel in Positano, yet. I thought you only got bedbugs from the kind of place that charges by the hour. Boy, was I wrong.

There’s nothing like discovering insect life bivouacking in one’s home and biting one’s offspring to galvanize one into taking action. After a lifetime of hitherto blissful bedbug ignorance, I learned more about the nasty little critters than I ever wanted to know. If you’re like me, and think it could never happen to People Like Us, think again: we are currently in the midst of a Great Bedbug Resurgence. Along with epidemics and the common cold, bedbugs have thrived as people have become more frequent travelers—in fact, many bedbugs have probably seen more of the world than I have—and we’re schlepping droves of the nasty stowaways home with us along with the duty-free booze and mementoes of our trip.

May you never throw back a contour sheet to discover a bedbug staring back at you. But just in case you do, and in the spirit of prevention, allow me to share with you what I learned.

First, the Bad News
The wily bedbug hitches rides on fabric, which means clothing as well as secondhand furniture and luggage. Because you can be infested without knowing it, you can spread the gift that keeps on giving in no time flat. The bugs can crawl from room to room, or apartment to apartment, and they hide in hard-to-get-at places. They live on warm-animal blood. (I’m all for the Buddhist precept of not harming living beings, but when something’s out to suck my blood—or, worse, my son’s—all deals are off.) They are mainly nocturnal and, while you don’t usually feel a bedbug biting, its calling card is an itchy rash. While Better Living With Chemicals was supposed to rid the world of pests, it has led instead to a proliferation of SuperBugs that laugh at conventional pesticides. Bedbugs are now found everywhere: don’t suppose that just because you paid $350 for a night at some swanky hotel, you won’t be bringing a few of those uninvited guests home with you. They are built to survive: bedbugs have been with us for thousands of years, and they’ve been known by some pretty pungent aliases along the way, including redcoat (no doubt a Revolutionary War slam on the Brits), crimson rambler, and heavy dragoon. And, speaking of pungent, if you have a serious infestation, they leave a smell like rotting raspberries or almonds. (Oh, and if you weren’t grossed out enough already, the male bedbug practices something called “traumatic insemination” on the hapless female, piercing her abdomen with a hypodermic-like thing to inject its sperm. But I guess that’s too much information.)

Next, the Ounce of Prevention
If you buy clothing at the local thrift store or yard sale, throw it in the washer as soon as you bring it home. Hot sudsy water will kill the eggs and bugs. Secondhand furniture should be checked thoroughly for cast-off bedbug skins, nest casings, and bugs—before you buy it. If you see any signs of infestation, step away from the sofa and run for the hills. When you travel, never place luggage on a bed. Ever. The safest place to put it is in the bathtub. Seriously. And when it’s shower time, put it on the sink. You could also use one of those foldout racks specifically designed for the purpose, pulled a few inches away from the bed, since bedbugs can’t jump. But they can crawl, so I’ll bank on the tub, thanks.

And the (Relatively) Non-Toxic Pound of Cure
After the initial screams of horror and revulsion most folks, when they discover the little buggers, usually call an exterminator and add to the toxic load of the planet with chemical bombs, sprays, you-name-it. This is basically like using an atom bomb to kill a cockroach. And it may not even work—one statistic I came across suggested that bedbugs actually proliferated in Africa after DDT use. But there is good news, especially for us wanna-be-green types; one relatively harmless substance will take care of the bedbug problem without leaving you and your pets gasping on the floor: boric acid. This cheap, white, boron-based powder, often used to combat cockroaches, works by drying them out. So here’s the drill: after you’ve stripped the bed (while murmuring the mantra, “Eww, eww, eww”) and all the bedding is agitating in a washer full of hot, sudsy water, apply the powder liberally to the sides and seams of the mattress. Put a line of powder all around the bed and along the baseboards of the room: let boric acid be the magic circle that will ward away the evil beasties. You can also mix one tablespoon of boric acid to two cups of warm water and use in a spray bottle to apply a film to the whole mattress; allow to dry, then vacuum to remove the residue. Thankfully, it worked for us, and we have been bedbug-free ever since.

So good night, sleep tight, and may all your beds be bugless.