Good night, sleep tight

I know, I know. I haven't posted in over a week. Been a bit under the weather. We've had two different illnesses running their course through the Bell Kahn clan this past week: a narsty cold, and a quick stomach bug. Eliza and I scored both, Max had only the bug and Cathleen only the cold. I missed three days of work for the first time (for health reasons) in quite a while (a few years?).

In any event, I have lots of bloggable stuff to write about, including our Thanksgiving weekend experience, but that will have to wait another day or two. Tonight, I am buggin'.

A couple of posts ago I described my flea nightmare. After a few more attempts at handling the nightmare ourselves, and me still being chomped on like a communal shard of laffy-taffy, we decided to throw in the towel and call an exterminator. Cathleen spent 45 minutes on the phone with our exterminator today and they don't think we have a flea problem. Great! They think we have a bedbug problem. Shit!

I spent the afternoon in denial, which included an hour of lunchtime reading up on bedbugs on the internet. Here's the deal with bedbugs. They were pretty much eradicated by the 1960s thanks to DDT. Thanks to Rachel Carson, DDT was pretty much eliminated by the 1970s. Thanks to a distinct lack of highly toxic and carcinogenic home pesticides on the market now, bedbugs are back on the rise, and they are reaching epidemic proportions. Anecdotally, we in the tenant advocacy business are seeing a lot more bedbug cases in housing court.

Bedbugs are flat little bugs, about 1/8 to 1/4 inch in length. They come out at night and feed on your blood, first injecting you with an anesthetic so that you don't feel their bite, and then they suck out a meal. You are left with a welt that later becomes itchy. Or you are like Cathleen and you have no physical reaction at all. Bite marks are often grouped together (breakfast...lunch...dinner). After feasting, the bedbugs recede to their hideouts -- creases and seams in furniture, fabric, walls -- where they can hangout and produce more bedbugs. They can go months (up to 18 months!) without eating.

How do you get rid of them? You have to wash every article of clothing and linen in the affected space, and then have your furniture treated by a pest removal professional (chemically or not, depending on your circumstances or preferences). Often it requires a couple of treatments for success to be achieved.

It seemed impossible that we would have bedbugs. Oscar definitely had flea dirt on him. What would the odds be that we would have a minor flea issue at the same time we were developing a major bedbug problem? Pretty good, it turns out.

After dinner I took apart our bed and inspected the wall behind the bed and the parts of the bed where the headboard pieces (covered with fabric) come together. I saw my first bedbug carcass on the floor, where the carpeting meets the wall. Its shape and color were undeniable -- 100% bedbug. I think I screamed, or cursed, or maybe both. I then vaccumed the hell out of the bed and room, ramming the thin nozzle attachment into every crease and corner. I think that it might hold things at bay for a night or two. We have exterminators coming on Thursday to inspect our apartment and develop a complete game plan, but we will at a minimum need to wash every piece of clothing Cathleen and I own, and likely will need to do the same for the kids as well. Friends of ours who had bedbugs said they kept their washer running almost nonstop for a week. The extermination will likely cost $1000.

I am so unhappy.

When I thought that it was fleas that were biting me, the concept didn't bother me too much. Fleas jump on you, chomp away, jump off. But bedbugs crawl out of their hiding places, crawl on you, bite and suck, and then crawl away.

Eeeeewwww. How am I going to sleep tonight?