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Bedbugs - MEGAMERGED - vs. tell these pests to gtfo

Damn this is fucked up shit. If this ever happens to me I'll go insane no doubt.
 
Bed bugs aren't selective in who they bite, but a lot of people, its thought that it could actually be as high as 60% of the population, just have no reaction to the bites. Some people don't even realize they have an infestation unless they actually see the bugs because they have absolutely no reaction to the bites.

Changed, do you live in an apartment? Mariposa, this could have applied to you as well, in most states (here in the US, obviously, I don't know how this works for the rest of the world so I'm speaking for strictly US residents) if you are renting an apartment, the landlord has to pay any extermination fees for bed bugs. If you are renting a house, if you've just moved in or can prove that the infestation was already there when you moved in (maybe by talking to the previous tenants) they also have to pay for treatment. Unless they can prove that you are the source of the infestation (which most aren't going to bother doing... in Chaged's case I'd suggest not telling them that you probably are the source). There are a lot of effective treatments out there, much safer than diatomaceous earth or DDT, including heat treatments, though those are more expensive so probably not a route a landlord would take. Also, you should never have to throw out any of your stuff, including furniture, because of an infestation. There's almost always some treatment for it. Also, 1 month is not long enough to quarantine something that you know has bed bugs, if you have treated it and are pretty sure that its clean, you shouldn't need to quarantine it, however if you want to just to be safe, in that case 1 month might be sufficient, but if you are quarantining something because you KNOW its infested, you need to do 18 months on average. Thats how long they can survive without food. If you can manage to find a way to totally cut off an air source, make sure its completely air tight, then one month MIGHT be good enough, but I'd suggest longer just to be safe, and again, thats only if you know that its completely air tight.

I got a small infestation a while back and went into panic mode, I spent about 3 days doing almost nothing but research for this, hence knowing the laws associated with it. My infestation came from a neighbor. I was lucky that my landlord was so good about the treatment, a lot of them aren't. They had my apartment and all the neighboring apartments and the hallway treated, which actually works better for them in the long run because that way they can guarantee they've gotten every possible source of the infestation and won't have to start all over again a few months down the line. A lot of landlords might just try to treat your single apartment, which wont necessarily be good enough, and will likely cost them more down the line, so if you have a stubborn landlord, I suggest reminding them that its going to be cheaper for them to do it right the first time.
 
@chrissie - it was when I lived with a certain now-banned ex-mod. Not a bite on him, and we shared a bed. My doctor said that maybe he was not as allergic to the bites as I was. I think it's because he had a little too much fail in his blood that even bedbugs wouldn't bite him. ;) The doctor's explanation is probably the right one. I have rid myself of both problems. ;)

@fizzle - the property manager treated 4-5 other apartments on the same floor as me. He hired Terminix. They explained that the treatment was probably sufficient to save my stuff. By then I was so crept out and the blood from the bites went through my mattress pad to the actual mattress. I had to throw it out (and I did put a sign on it), it was gross. When I moved I bought a new bed and was not reinfested. It was a small studio with very little furniture other than my bed. The property manager paid to treat all of the apartments. They did the heat treatment on all of the carpeting, my mattress and boxspring, and a chair. I was fine settling out of the lease as I was planning to move when it was up anyways.
 
i got bedbug bites from sleeping over at some scumbag's place one night. i swear to god, it was the grossest thing that ever happened to my body. it was THE GROSSEST thing. luckily none of them carried over, but i did the dryer treatment for everything that was over at their place. it would be life ruining to have them in your own place. good luck.
i scratched my bites so hard they were all just sores. it itches so much you feel like they are still in your skin. =[
 
Mihai6Yu9Ri said:
Maybe because it was in a nicer neighborhood?

Bedbugs are probably selective to the unwashed and impoverished :D
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Believe me, that is not the case at all. They aren't selective about cleanliness, and you think they care if someone has money or not? Its really just the luck of the draw. There's been several reported cases in 5 star hotels even. You can pick them up in movie theaters or pretty much any public place, so saying they are selective to unwashed and impoverished is highly inaccurate and also pretty offensive. As I mentioned earlier, I had a small infestation due to a neighboring apartment having them, and I live in a very nice apartment in one of the most upscale parts of a nice city, so I am neither unwashed nor impoverished by any means. You were very lucky to not get them, its possible that by the time you picked up that bed, it had sat out long enough that they had moved elsewhere, or never had them to begin with. Most people aren't so lucky, and picking up used furniture off the side of the road with no idea where it came from is very unwise if you want to avoid bedbugs.
 
^ I live with this one so I second everything she says ;)

I am not just an averagely clean person, I am bordering on OCD with how clean I keep myself and how clean we keep our apartment so her phrasing here was understating the point if anything.

I do agree that people who are less concerned about cleanliness sometimes allow infestations to become worse and they can contribute to spreading the problem more and this does tend to occur more frequently in lower socioeconomic areas partly due to differences in culture but also simply because they lack the funds to pay people to clean up after them or pay exterminators to come out if they find evidence of bedbugs. They also might be less informed about what the area and not know that they need to call someone to get rid of them.

This does not mean being clean or having cash makes you immune because as fizzle said, anyone who sits in a movie theater, lives in an apartment building or otherwise occupies space that other individuals use, you can get them.

ETA:

Less than 2 minutes ago an exterminator knocked on our neighbor across the hall's door to spray their apartment (we had ours sprayed about 2 weeks ago and apparently they are getting a second treatment). They are just as clean and orderly as we are so this certainly isn't the cause of the problem. There is another apartment down the hall that is filthy and disgusting and they might be causing infestations in the neighboring units.

Another point is that some people don't react to the bites so may be unaware their living space is infested and unknowingly allow this to spread to their guests or neighbors. (I'm not sure if this has been mentioned previously)
 
^I didn't know you 2 shacked up :) :D Awesome! I wish you the best in handling your situation. It's a toughie.

Also not in the unwashed or impoverished crowd; pretty solidly middle-class. The apartment that got infested was in downtown San Francisco. It was a small studio, and the rent was DOUBLE what I pay to share a 3700 sq ft sprawling ranch house with one other in suburban Portland, Oregon. There are a lot of hotels and apartment buildings within a few blocks' radius of my old place. There were ~50 apartments in my building. It could have been anybody in the building that did it. My neighbors were mostly 20s-30s professionals with the exception of a few elderly people (who weren't the ones that did it, I knew them all). It's likely that someone either traveled and caught them at a hotel, or that someone picked up used furniture from an infested building.

They're disgusting and I am glad to be rid of them.
 
An update: bedbugs have simultaneously ruined my life and pushed me to the point that I needed to be to make a SIGNIFICANT change...

I threw out my bed and frame, but that obviously didn't do anything. Bedbugs are easily the most annoying fucking living thing on Earth. I went out and spent $400 on a new bed frame, mattress, and bedding-- since then, I've gotten bitten 5+ times. I can only assume that I had bugs in my clothing, as the bed was isolated the whole time (save for 1 hour setup). I sleep naked to avoid carrying BB's into my bed on my clothing. I slept bite-free last night for the first time in a while.

As a result of this psychological stress, in conjunction with some terrible familiar stress (half of my family is on their deathbed/has been diagnosed with fatal cancer in the past year), I will be leaving this city and apartment in the next month. I'm a very minimalist person that carries, quite literally, all I own on my back, but I'm still going to be throwing into the garbage several hundreds of dollars worth of stuff. The only possessions I consider safe is clothing that can be heated for hours on end. My brand new, hundreds of dollars worth of backpacks, shoes, and technology will be going in garbage bags for several months on end, or simply being tossed in the garbage.

I went for two weeks with almost no sleep, and considered killing myself. Don't take second hand furniture, whatever you do. Find out if your new apartment has had BBs... and leave immediately if it has. Sue your landlord if you know you have BB's. Don't fuck around. I wish you all the best luck.
 
Rather disgusting lol.

My only experience with bed bugs was in NYC, when I was staying in a friend's apartment, and a desperate bed bug came running for me in broad daylight across the bed (they usually hide until night when you're asleep but this fucker was obviously starved and half-dead).

I put plastic bowls under the bed legs and pulled the bed away from the wall so no more could crawl onto the bed. I then became convinced there were some in my luggage once back home, and bought bed bug control crap, silicate etc, and spent weeks paranoid about anything that looked like a bite lol.
 
CFC said:
Rather disgusting lol.

My only experience with bed bugs was in NYC, when I was staying in a friend's apartment, and a desperate bed bug came running for me in broad daylight across the bed (they usually hide until night when you're asleep but this fucker was obviously starved and half-dead).

I put plastic bowls under the bed legs and pulled the bed away from the wall so no more could crawl onto the bed. I then became convinced there were some in my luggage once back home, and bought bed bug control crap, silicate etc, and spent weeks paranoid about anything that looked like a bite lol.
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Nice addition! I always loved this thread, for all it scared the living fuck out of me.

As if it just came bolting towards you, you must be a prime target!
 
Tranced said:
Nice addition! I always loved this thread, for all it scared the living fuck out of me.

As if it just came bolting towards you, you must be a prime target!
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Yep, literally running across a crisp clear white sheet at surprising speed towards my body. Fortunately easy to catch and kill therefore lol. Turned out his upstairs neighbour had a bedbug infestation and had not been cooperating with building management to eradicate them. And I'd foolishly opened the mosquito screen on the window a crack (it was a fucking NYC swelteringly hot summer), which let a starved opportunist presumably crawl down the wall outside and into the room. They only usually go for you in the day (so I read) when they're starving.
 
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