Not bed bugs again, I hear you whine! But I could not do “B” and not talk about this stubborn pest. A couple of years back, it seemed everywhere I looked everyone was talking about bed bugs. They were infesting cinemas and clothes shops in the States and public transport too. Ireland, UK, Germany – they all had (and have) bed bug problems – no country is safe!
I am happy to say that I have never had a run-in with bed bugs – well, I did get very badly bitten in my student accommodation in Vienna. I woke up with raised lumpy red skin on my right wrist. It looked really horrible and was very itchy. I confess I had no idea what the cause was then, and I still can’t be certain now that it was bed bugs. It took a couple of days for me to get to the pharmacy – I remember I had to look up the German word for “itchy” (juckend).
Now I am very vigilant whenever we spend a night away from home. In fact, my husband prompts me to do my ‘usual checks’ as he calls it. This involves me pulling back the covers on the bed, checking for any blood spots on the sheets, looking behind the headboard and down by where the floor meets the wall. Only after all this will I sit on the bed. Our suitcase never goes on the bed – that is a big no no! Bed bugs love to crawl inside or onto your luggage and happily get transported back to your home.
Once this pest is inside your home, it will be very difficult to get rid of it. Bed bugs can be difficult to treat, even by a professional pest control company, apparently due to their resistance to a wide range of pesticides. Luckily new innovative technologies, like heat application, are available to treat bed bugs and are proving to be very successful.
So, what’s the worst bed bug experience you ever heard about? By the way, what is the correct way to write bed bugs? One word or two? There’s got to be a right or wrong way!
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