Still Buggin Out in '08

It is getting to the point where I can barely remember life before bedbugs. Or when I didn't tend towards hyperbolic pronouncements, with a penchant for overdramatization and wistful bouts of self pity.

The bedbugs, folks, are still with us.

The exterminators came back to our apartment on the Friday after Christmas because I had seen a bug crawling across Max's pillow (in our room) and had received bites on the night of the 26th. We had left for Yorktown on Thursday, so Sophie graciously greeted the exterminator (this time it was Jeff) and led him to our room. I spoke with him on the phone, and he indicated to me that he had been told he was coming for a mice extermination, so although he had some Bedlam in his truck, he normally would have wanted to drill holes in our walls but lacked his drill. Oh well. He completely redid our room, from spraying the perimeter to the various parts of our bookshelves and dressers. He told Sophie that he used an entire canister of Bedlam, despite the EPA's apparent recommendation not to do so. Great?

We then went through a week and a half of bug-free living. We vowed not to unpack our clothing from the plastic bags until I had been bite-free for three weeks, but we felt in our hearts that it was only a matter of days before we would be able to declare a tenative victory.

Then, this past Monday night, after I had read Max his books and told him his bedtime story, I noticed that the top of my right wrist was feeling a little itchy. I looked down and saw three small little bumps. No way. Impossible. I stared at them some more. Within minutes they had developed into distinct little hives. I was so dumbstruck that I couldn't figure out what had happened, but when I told Cathleen, she instantly concluded that the bugs had made it into the kids' room. The bites were on the exact hand that I was resting on Max's bed as I told him his bedtime story. I was bitten three successive times, while awake, while recounting "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" to my son.

You've got to hand it to the bedbugs. They are some serious little mothers. Objectively, I have to admire their elusiveness and evolutionary capacity to persist. On the other hand, I have not felt this level of annoyance, frustration and hopelessness since the Bush administration. I mean, when the exterminators give you a 15% discount because "you've been having a hard time," you know you are in the shit.

The exterminator returned this Thursday (this time we had Dave!). He completely sprayed the kids' room and our room (including drilling a few small holes at the base of our wall and injecting insecticide into the wall). While Cathleen prepped our bedroom that morning (disassemble bed, empty ziploc bags out of dresser drawers, disassemble bookshelves), she saw a bedbug on our bed's headboard. That thing -- the headboard -- had been leaning against our bedroom wall ever since, in an effort to eliminate a favorite harborage spot, we had unbolted it from the bed's mainframe a month ago. The headboard is padded and covered with a cloth material, and if there was a bug crawling on it, then it was likely that there were more inside the actual headboard. That night we encased the entire headboard in plastic (two contractor bags and a lot of ducktape), and then last night we did the same to the padded sides of our bed frame. I am investigating steam-cleaning options (heat is an effective bug/larvae/egg killer), because it is either that, keep the things wrapped in black plastic and ducktape for more than a year, or throw out the bed. We've bagged up all of the books in the kids' bedroom but rather than freeze them for 2+ weeks as we did our books, we're going to search through them page by page for signs of bugs or eggs. We can't do bedtime all that well for 2+ weeks without the books. Thursday night we slept in the basement, but returned to the fold last night. No bites or bug sightings for one night and counting...