Ick!Bedbugs are even grosser when they aren't fully engorged with blood. Thank god we do NOT have these suckas. Unfortunately, someone on our block does. I checked out http://www.bedbugregistry.com/ and there's definitely a building down the block that has the much-maligned bloodsuckers. Well, better them than us, I suppose.
Our first bedbug "scare" happened shortly after we moved into our last place. The media were saturating the airwaves and periodicals with a gloom and doom scenario in which bedbugs would eventually multiply at a rate beyond the means of ordinary pest control, depose the President and establish a New World Order of parasitic dominance. Adding to the panic a certain sartorial slaughterhouse of preppy fashion was shamed by a dressing-room infestation of the bed-dwelling parasitic scourges. You could easily call 2010 "The Summer of the Bedbug"
Haley (now-wife, then-girlfriend) was paranoid as fuck. I couldn't blame her. The media were in full swing, digesting nightly horror stories of homes overrun by bedbugs. Then posh hotels. By the time the critters reached a movie house on 42nd st, she was thoroughly convinced that we had them. Haley embarked on a quest to free us from the plague upon our house. I'll never forget the day I came home and every hole along the molding was covered with clear packing tape. Our bed! Oh, our dear bed. All 4 of its legs were submerged in small cups of some liquid. I can't quite remember. The theory was that if the bedbugs were to use the legs of the bed as a path to their host(s), they would instead find themselves drowning in a cup of...something.
Pre-dawn bedbug raids were the worst. Before first sunlight even had a chance to peek out from behind the black night, Haley was out of bed, shining a flashlight on the covers, frantically directing the beam from corner to corner of the mattress. There was no warning the first time this happened and I woke up in abject fear, certain that a criminal past of some kind had caught up with me. Nope. Just bedbugs.
The bedbugs took over and you know what the funny thing was? They never once bit us. They never appeared from beneath the mattress in the wee hours of the morning, like some marching brigade of bloodthirsty philistines of the insect world. They never existed. At least not in our apartment they didn't.
It took Haley months to recover from the psychological trauma of the invisible bedbugs. Poor girl. What's not there can do as much a number on you as what is there. Thanks to www.bedbugregistry.com, we now know that an apartment building about 100 yards away is occupied by the most unwanted of guests. We're better prepared and less anxious now that we know the little fuckers will have to make a certain-death march, across the street and in freezing temperatures, to feast on our juicy flesh. It's unlikely that they would survive such a journey, but Haley keeps the flashlight close by. You never know.
