Friday, two weeks after my discovery, I got word from my landlord that he had scheduled an inspection by our local Terminex outfit. For the following Tuesday. Not soon enough for me, but it'd have to do.
Thanks to the Atarax by Saturday I was rested enough that my baseline anxiety level retreated from orange alert to something below yellow. I still noticed myself reacting to feeling something brush against me, but that reaction had gone from "OhmygodwherearetheygetthemOFFMENOW!" to me glancing at the area, noting nothing and shrugging it off.
There wasn't much I could do before Tuesday to prepare other than unwrap the sofa and take the bedding off the bed. There was no way I wanted the sofa unwrapped for 3 days and I needed to sleep in the bed so unmaking it wasn't a viable option. Instead, I spent the weekend doing other things, normal weekend things. And vegging on some TV.
Shortly after my landlord told me the date and time of the inspection, I sent him an email asking what I would need to do to prepare, and followed that up a day or so later. I got no reply to either email. On Monday I called Terminex directly and asked them what I'd need to do. The customer service woman didn't know, but gave me the cell phone number of my inspector. I called and he told me to unwrap the couch, remove the bedding, and make sure there was access to baseboards all around the rooms where I'd seen bugs.
Tuesday rolled around and I took the day off again. I need to unwrap the sofa, vacuum up the DE, wash my bed clothes and the throws I'd placed on the sofa so I didn't have to sit on plastic, and generally straighten up the place. I didn't want the inspector, or more importantly my landlord, to have anything negative to say about my cleaning habits (which are good, don't get me wrong, but I was paranoid).
Once the sofa was unwrapped, I shook out all the DE onto the floor and started coming through for bug carcasses. I'm not going to lie, I started feeling a bit like an entomologist: on my hands and knees wearing a face mask and sifting through the dust with a pair of tweezers and a jar. (See my warning about overuse of DE here.) There were probably more amidst all that dust, but I only found 3 dead adults and a couple of dead nymphs.
It happened to be one of the hottest days of the year that day. By 10 am, and hour after starting to work on the vacuuming project, I was dripping sweat. By noon, we were at 100°. At 1:30 pm, an hour and a half before my scheduled appointment, the Terminex guy calls to report that he will be unable to make it because the heat has caused his car to break down and wanted to know could we please re-schedule for tomorrow?
Heavy sigh.
I told him no, I couldn't take another day off work that week. We were 3 days away from our 30th Anniversary Gala at the office. A 650-person seated and plated dinner followed by a casino party that had room for up to 1,000 people. Even taking one day off was a stretch. He told me he would make a couple of calls and see if he could get another Inspector. 10 minutes later he calls to tell me that another inspector will be coming a bit later, closer to 5:00.
Just before 3:00 my landlord showed up to wait. Terminex hadn't called to tell him they would be late. I'd assumed they would do so and hadn't called either. I explained what they'd told me and he decided to go home, and asked me to call him when they got here (he lives close by).
At 7:00 pm I figured the guy wasn't coming.
Even heavier sigh.
My landlord and I agreed we wouldn't use Terminex and didn't re-schedule. Instead, I was able to convince him to use one of the two local bedbug inspection companies who use bed bug sniffing dogs to search. If there are bugs within a few feet of the dogs, they react. I'd wanted this service from the beginning but my my landlord wouldn't agree to it. He ultimately chose Pestec, because the don't just do the inspection, they also do the treatment.
Unfortunately, Pestec couldn't make it until 5 on Friday. I decided to try and live with the sofa unwrapped - it was too late at that point to re-wrap it and I didn't want to put in all that effort just to undo it again a couple of days later. Instead, I took the DE and my paintbrush and drew a protective circle around the sofa and vowed not to sit on it until after the inspection. I felt a little like a witch drawing a protective circle to keep spirits away as I cast spells, but instead of trying to keep the spirits out, I was trying to keep the bugs in.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
My Landlord Pussyfoots around, Part II
The day after my sofa defeat, I spent hours more re-treating the sofa with DE and re-wrapping the frame in plastic. At this point, I was starting to feel pretty demoralized. My landlord was taking his sweet time getting an inspector in to check the rest of the building. I emailed him again asking if there was any word on when there might be an inspection, and his response avoided the issue and went on and on about my upstairs neighbor's baby and them not wanting any chemicals used to treat an infestation.
I had been CC'd on my landlord's original email he sent to the other tenants in the building, but they didn't seem to be hitting "reply all" as far as I could see, as I never saw any response. In the first email he'd been nondescript, simply asking about "bugs" generally and considering the treatment maintenance pest control. In my reply to his email about the upstairs neighbors' sensibilities, I asked if had told the other tenants specifically that they were looking for bed bugs, explaining that unless you are allergic to the bites and/or see the bugs, you aren't just going to notice them hanging around like you would ants, spiders or gnats.
His reply was a little baffling. "Are you suggesting to shut down the entire building?"
Um.
Huh?
I replied, no, I just think they should know specifically what they should be looking for. About an hour later, I was CC'd on another email in which he specified bed bugs, without passing along any of the information about how to look for them. I was worried that maybe one of the other units in the building was a major vector of infestation, and it started to drive me crazy that it was taking so long for my landlord to get an inspector in to discern the extent of the problem.
When I returned to work the next day, I felt it was time to let the rest of my co-workers know what was going on. I'd been reluctant at first because of the stigma associated with bugs. I didn't want anything to think I was dirty and didn't want to freak anyone out about the possibility that I'd transported them into the office. Rather than making an announcement at staff meeting that morning, I decided to go through and individually speak with each of my colleagues who weren't already in the know. Rather than be horrified at my uncleanliness, they were all incredibly sympathetic. Some even developed the empathetic itch - as I explained, in addition to my own unconscious scratching, I noticed theirs.
The following day marked 12 days since the discovery and a week since I had notified my landlord. Concerned at his lack of action, I posted a question on a legal advice forum asking how long was reasonable for him to wait to act. Because it was an unmoderated forum, I got snarky replies, unhelpful replies, downright mean replies, and one or two that confirmed what I suspected: he should have already had an inspector. But because it was an unmoderated forum I had no way to verify the integrity of the responders. I suddenly remembered a former co-worker from my last job, who volunteered at San Francisco's tenants rights union. I explained what was going on and asked about my landlord's rights and responsibilities as well as my own, and how long was reasonable to wait for my landlord to act.
My former co-worker wasn't able to help, but her husband still works at the SF tenants' union. She passed my email along to him and said he would reply in the next couple of days. It only took him a day to respond. Luckily, he has specifically handled bed bug cases and had quite a lot of information to give me.
He said generally, a landlord should be given 30 days to respond to a repair request, unless the problem was an emergency or something considered to make the unit uninhabitable. In that case, the response should be within 48 hours. Since I was having allergic reactions to the bites, missing work to deal with the problem and become sleep deprived, I was told this would be considered an uninhabitable condition. I could contract the pest control service myself and then deduct the cost from my rent. I would also likely be entitled to a rent reduction of 25-50% from the time I notified my landlord to the time the treatment began. And the most important piece of information: whether or not I brought the bed bugs in through some chance encounter, in a multi-unit rental it is the landlord's responsibility to pay for extermination.
I emailed my landlord again asking about when there would be an inspection: he still didn't have an answer, and started talking about some company in Georgia from whom he could buy a home treatment kit and do the work himself, much to my chagrin. I knew how many hours it had taken me to deal with my sofa, the living room in general, and the bed. Acting alone, I was pretty sure my landlord wouldn't have the ability to effectively treat 4 units.
I had a little mini melt-down, at which point a co-worker told me about some drug her doctor had prescribed her when she had an allergic reaction. The brand name was AtaraxAtarax. An hour or so later, they informed me the prescriptions had been called in.
That night, for the first in almost a fortnight, I slept deep and hard, and woke up not exactly fully rested, but much more rested than I had felt in days. The funny thing about being rested enough? Your stress level goes down almost instantly. Feeling less anxious, I decided to try again to appeal to my landlord's sense (or lack) of urgency.
I had been CC'd on my landlord's original email he sent to the other tenants in the building, but they didn't seem to be hitting "reply all" as far as I could see, as I never saw any response. In the first email he'd been nondescript, simply asking about "bugs" generally and considering the treatment maintenance pest control. In my reply to his email about the upstairs neighbors' sensibilities, I asked if had told the other tenants specifically that they were looking for bed bugs, explaining that unless you are allergic to the bites and/or see the bugs, you aren't just going to notice them hanging around like you would ants, spiders or gnats.
His reply was a little baffling. "Are you suggesting to shut down the entire building?"
Um.
Huh?
I replied, no, I just think they should know specifically what they should be looking for. About an hour later, I was CC'd on another email in which he specified bed bugs, without passing along any of the information about how to look for them. I was worried that maybe one of the other units in the building was a major vector of infestation, and it started to drive me crazy that it was taking so long for my landlord to get an inspector in to discern the extent of the problem.
When I returned to work the next day, I felt it was time to let the rest of my co-workers know what was going on. I'd been reluctant at first because of the stigma associated with bugs. I didn't want anything to think I was dirty and didn't want to freak anyone out about the possibility that I'd transported them into the office. Rather than making an announcement at staff meeting that morning, I decided to go through and individually speak with each of my colleagues who weren't already in the know. Rather than be horrified at my uncleanliness, they were all incredibly sympathetic. Some even developed the empathetic itch - as I explained, in addition to my own unconscious scratching, I noticed theirs.
The following day marked 12 days since the discovery and a week since I had notified my landlord. Concerned at his lack of action, I posted a question on a legal advice forum asking how long was reasonable for him to wait to act. Because it was an unmoderated forum, I got snarky replies, unhelpful replies, downright mean replies, and one or two that confirmed what I suspected: he should have already had an inspector. But because it was an unmoderated forum I had no way to verify the integrity of the responders. I suddenly remembered a former co-worker from my last job, who volunteered at San Francisco's tenants rights union. I explained what was going on and asked about my landlord's rights and responsibilities as well as my own, and how long was reasonable to wait for my landlord to act.
My former co-worker wasn't able to help, but her husband still works at the SF tenants' union. She passed my email along to him and said he would reply in the next couple of days. It only took him a day to respond. Luckily, he has specifically handled bed bug cases and had quite a lot of information to give me.
He said generally, a landlord should be given 30 days to respond to a repair request, unless the problem was an emergency or something considered to make the unit uninhabitable. In that case, the response should be within 48 hours. Since I was having allergic reactions to the bites, missing work to deal with the problem and become sleep deprived, I was told this would be considered an uninhabitable condition. I could contract the pest control service myself and then deduct the cost from my rent. I would also likely be entitled to a rent reduction of 25-50% from the time I notified my landlord to the time the treatment began. And the most important piece of information: whether or not I brought the bed bugs in through some chance encounter, in a multi-unit rental it is the landlord's responsibility to pay for extermination.
I emailed my landlord again asking about when there would be an inspection: he still didn't have an answer, and started talking about some company in Georgia from whom he could buy a home treatment kit and do the work himself, much to my chagrin. I knew how many hours it had taken me to deal with my sofa, the living room in general, and the bed. Acting alone, I was pretty sure my landlord wouldn't have the ability to effectively treat 4 units.
I had a little mini melt-down, at which point a co-worker told me about some drug her doctor had prescribed her when she had an allergic reaction. The brand name was AtaraxAtarax. An hour or so later, they informed me the prescriptions had been called in.
That night, for the first in almost a fortnight, I slept deep and hard, and woke up not exactly fully rested, but much more rested than I had felt in days. The funny thing about being rested enough? Your stress level goes down almost instantly. Feeling less anxious, I decided to try again to appeal to my landlord's sense (or lack) of urgency.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Preparing for Victory, I Unwrap the Sofa
Sunday, 9 days after the initial discovery. I'm not very rested (up until 4 am "painting" the baseboards and crown moldings with DE), but I decide I'm unwrapping the sofa. It'd been well over the 48 hour period needed for bed bugs to crawl through DE and die, and I was pretty confident I'd coated the couch so heavily that nothing would survive.
Unwrapping a sofa is much easier than wrapping it. A good pair of scissors is all you need. I sliced length-wise and back to front along the center of the sofa. I hauled out the vacuum-cleaner and proceeded to vacuum every inch of the sofa. Not terribly easy when all you have is the crevice nozzle attachment.
That little opening? Less than an inch long and maybe 1/4 inch wide. Great for crevices. But my sofa is 9 feet long and pretty deep.
I expected to find a field of different sized carcasses on the floor.
Instead I found several adult bed bugs chillin' along the zippers of the sofa cushions. Note, when I'd coated the sofa with DE I did not individually coat each cushion. I just set them atop the coated sofa and wrapped the whole thing in one big package. At the time, I still wasn't fully cognizant of how cunning and capable of hiding the bugs are, and figured any bugs I hadn't noticeably killed the first day of home treatment must be hiding in the frame.
3 hours after I started unwrapping the sofa, I was resigned to wrapping it again. I knew the hardware store 6 blocks from me closed at 5:00, it was just after 4:00. I headed down for a new 10' x 25' sheet of thick plastic. When I got there, I learned the hardware store is closed on Sundays.
What. The? What kind of hardware store is closed on Sundays?
I was furious with myself for not going to the hardware store the day before as I'd planned before I spent the day isolating the bed, and for not being bright enough wait until after I'd procured the plastic to unwrap the couch.
I headed home, knowing I'd be a sitting duck for any bug that wanted to crawl out at me. They like to feed every 3 or 4 days. It had been 9.
When I stopped figuratively kicking myself, it occurred to me I could at least get large garbage bags and individually wrap each cushion, and perhaps use the bags to help Macgyver the cut plastic back together with a whole lot of duct tape. That necessitated a walk to Walgreen's, which is a good 10 - 12 blocks from my place in the opposite direction from the hardware store.
So I schlepped to Walgreen's, bought the bags, bought more duct tape, bought a face mask to wear over my mouth and nose while spreading the DE around.
Midway through the re-wrap, I ran out of duct tape and prayed the little corner market a couple of blocks away would have some - I didn't want the 20 block round trip walk to Walgreen's again because I was running out of energy.
I got the sofa wrapped well enough for overnight but knew it wouldn't hold and knew I had multiple hours of effort the next day to get it re-wrapped and wouldn't have the time or energy to do it after work, so planned to call out "sick" the next day to deal with it.
Unwrapping a sofa is much easier than wrapping it. A good pair of scissors is all you need. I sliced length-wise and back to front along the center of the sofa. I hauled out the vacuum-cleaner and proceeded to vacuum every inch of the sofa. Not terribly easy when all you have is the crevice nozzle attachment.
That little opening? Less than an inch long and maybe 1/4 inch wide. Great for crevices. But my sofa is 9 feet long and pretty deep.
I expected to find a field of different sized carcasses on the floor.
Instead I found several adult bed bugs chillin' along the zippers of the sofa cushions. Note, when I'd coated the sofa with DE I did not individually coat each cushion. I just set them atop the coated sofa and wrapped the whole thing in one big package. At the time, I still wasn't fully cognizant of how cunning and capable of hiding the bugs are, and figured any bugs I hadn't noticeably killed the first day of home treatment must be hiding in the frame.
3 hours after I started unwrapping the sofa, I was resigned to wrapping it again. I knew the hardware store 6 blocks from me closed at 5:00, it was just after 4:00. I headed down for a new 10' x 25' sheet of thick plastic. When I got there, I learned the hardware store is closed on Sundays.
What. The? What kind of hardware store is closed on Sundays?
I was furious with myself for not going to the hardware store the day before as I'd planned before I spent the day isolating the bed, and for not being bright enough wait until after I'd procured the plastic to unwrap the couch.
I headed home, knowing I'd be a sitting duck for any bug that wanted to crawl out at me. They like to feed every 3 or 4 days. It had been 9.
When I stopped figuratively kicking myself, it occurred to me I could at least get large garbage bags and individually wrap each cushion, and perhaps use the bags to help Macgyver the cut plastic back together with a whole lot of duct tape. That necessitated a walk to Walgreen's, which is a good 10 - 12 blocks from my place in the opposite direction from the hardware store.
So I schlepped to Walgreen's, bought the bags, bought more duct tape, bought a face mask to wear over my mouth and nose while spreading the DE around.
Midway through the re-wrap, I ran out of duct tape and prayed the little corner market a couple of blocks away would have some - I didn't want the 20 block round trip walk to Walgreen's again because I was running out of energy.
I got the sofa wrapped well enough for overnight but knew it wouldn't hold and knew I had multiple hours of effort the next day to get it re-wrapped and wouldn't have the time or energy to do it after work, so planned to call out "sick" the next day to deal with it.
Friday, October 15, 2010
As Week 2 Begins, I Seem to be Losing the War
I spent the Friday night one week after the discovery of bed bugs sweeping up the layer of diatomaceous earth I'd spread over the bedroom floor in preparation before the move back into my bedroom. Airbeds are nice in an emergency but my cats and I were feeling cramped living and sleeping in just one room (I am not someone who does well living in a studio-like setting. I need my bedroom and sleeping area to be separate or I start to feel claustrophobic). I was also sick of having to put on a special set of shoes I left outside the bedroom to put on upon entry and remove immediately after exiting so I wouldn't track DE all over the apartment.
I hadn't yet learned how bad for my lungs that amount of DE floating about could be but had been intuitive enough to cover my mouth and nose with a scarf (read the warning about diatomaceous earth dust here). It's a good thing, too because the dust was everywhere after the first sweep. The room was hazy, like riding behind a truck on a dry dirt road. When it became obvious that while I was sweeping up some of the dust I was mostly dispersing the dust to finely coat everything above floor level I decided maybe mopping would work better.
So I mopped my hardwood floor. An hour later when it was dry and covered with streaks of DE, I mopped again. An hour later, still streak-covered, I mopped again. 3 separate moppings seemed to do the trick.
I unbagged the bedding I'd washed on Wednesday and re-made my bed, looking forward to what I hoped would be my first real good nights sleep in a week. Thoroughly exhausted from a week's worth of fitful sleep and several hours of strenuous mopping and moving of furniture, I passed out on the plastic wrapped sofa I'd thrown blankets over to make it semi-comfortable for sleeping. I woke up around 4:00 am and went to climb into my bed thinking I was safe since I'd left the DE on the floor in the bedroom and dusted around the bed frame for more than 48 hours ... enough time to kill any bug that walked through the dust. I was hoping they all had.
I woke up several hours later to both of my cats sitting next to my pillow staring down ... not at me exactly, but on something close to me. My ankles and wrist felt itchy. Serge, the boy kitty, made his "there's a funny bug" noise. And I knew. I sat up and looked on the mattress between the pillow and my cats. Nothing. I lifted the top pillow and found my tormentor: a nymph, close to adulthood, crawling between the pillows. I squished it and blood squeezed out. I was its fresh blood meal, and it was on its way back to the harborage to molt and become an adult.
The full dusting of DE had been so messy and such a bitch to clean up, I decided to try a different method. In my research I'd read about "isolating" the bed. Isolating the bed involves finding a jar or pan or paper plate or something of the sort to place the legs of the bed into and then adding some substance to trap the bugs to prevent them crawling into the bed with you and/or to kill them if they make it through the substance. Some sites suggested water as the substance. They can't swim so if they crawl in, the drown. Some suggested talcum powder, which doesn't kill them but does trap them. Some sites suggested Vaseline. Many suggested Diatmaceuos Earth. Most of the sites also suggested double sided tape on the bed legs should the bugs make it through whatever mote you create for them.
Placing the legs of my wooden bed frame in water seemed like an excellent way to destroy the bed, so I 86ed that idea quickly. I didn't have any talc or Vaseline. I did have plenty of DE. I bought disposable aluminum cake pans, managed to maneuver my bed frame so that each leg was in a pan using the lift with all my strength and then kick the pan into place method. I'm strong, but it wasn't easy to do alone. This is another moment, like wrapping the couch, when an extra set of hands or feet would have been a seriously great boon. But I managed, like I usually do. When everything was in place, I sprinkled DE into the pans, thinking "try to get me now, f*ckers".
I needed a break from my apartment and a break from all the work. A friend invited a small group of us over to her place to catch up on Sons of Anarchy and I absolutely leaped at the prospect of exiting the place that should have been my haven, but wasn't, for a few hours. I warned my friend what was going on, in case she wanted me to stay away on the off chance I might transport a stow-away. She was suitably disgusted but nice enough to let me come over anyway.
That was the night the psychological effect of having bedbugs really started to hit home. My friends are affectionate and very touch-oriented. I couldn't stand being touched, especially if I was being touched lightly. My hair follicles activated and hair stood on end. I started searching for bugs. I noticed whenever I talked about the infestation I was unconsciously scratching. My friends noticed how irritable I was. Someone tried to tell me it wasn't that bad, saying they don't spread disease, thinking it would help me feel less dirty. Instead, I practically ripped her head off for diminishing my experience.
I explained what I'd spent the day doing to my bed, and one of my friends who had done a bit of bed bug research in the preceding week informed me that wouldn't help. He'd read that apparently when the bugs can't crawl up your bed frame to get at you, they will instead crawl up the wall, across the ceiling and DROP ON YOU. Little bloodsucking alien paratroopers who are attracted to the carbon dioxide you exhale and can sense your heat as you sleep. Sounds like the plot of a bad SciFi film, no? It was certainly starting to feel that way.
I had another cocktail and tried to put it out of my mind and just enjoy Sons of Anarchy. I was mostly successful. Our friend finally kicked us out close to 1:00 am and once home, I went straight to the Internet to verify the paratrooping abilities of the bed bug and learned it was indeed true. I spent the next three hours first on my hands and knees painting DE dust along the baseboards of my bedroom with a paint brush and then on a ladder doing the same to the crown molding, ensuring any bed bug paratroopers who made it to my bed would be on a Kamikaze suicide mission if they made it.
The work is labor intensive, the bites are itchy, but the real damage of the bugs, in my opinion, is the psychological toll the infestation takes on you. You don't sleep unless you manage to get so exhausted you pass out - how can you, knowing as soon as you close your eyes there are countless bugs waiting to come out and make you their blood meal? When you do sleep, it isn't restful. You become obsessive in your need to prevent them from biting you. You disrupt all the routines in your life. You feel like things are crawling on you all of the time. It alienates you from friends, family or co-workers who don't understand what you're going through. You feel isolated, alone, and dirty. They may not be vectors of disease, but they are certainly vectors of trauma.
I hadn't yet learned how bad for my lungs that amount of DE floating about could be but had been intuitive enough to cover my mouth and nose with a scarf (read the warning about diatomaceous earth dust here). It's a good thing, too because the dust was everywhere after the first sweep. The room was hazy, like riding behind a truck on a dry dirt road. When it became obvious that while I was sweeping up some of the dust I was mostly dispersing the dust to finely coat everything above floor level I decided maybe mopping would work better.
So I mopped my hardwood floor. An hour later when it was dry and covered with streaks of DE, I mopped again. An hour later, still streak-covered, I mopped again. 3 separate moppings seemed to do the trick.
I unbagged the bedding I'd washed on Wednesday and re-made my bed, looking forward to what I hoped would be my first real good nights sleep in a week. Thoroughly exhausted from a week's worth of fitful sleep and several hours of strenuous mopping and moving of furniture, I passed out on the plastic wrapped sofa I'd thrown blankets over to make it semi-comfortable for sleeping. I woke up around 4:00 am and went to climb into my bed thinking I was safe since I'd left the DE on the floor in the bedroom and dusted around the bed frame for more than 48 hours ... enough time to kill any bug that walked through the dust. I was hoping they all had.
I woke up several hours later to both of my cats sitting next to my pillow staring down ... not at me exactly, but on something close to me. My ankles and wrist felt itchy. Serge, the boy kitty, made his "there's a funny bug" noise. And I knew. I sat up and looked on the mattress between the pillow and my cats. Nothing. I lifted the top pillow and found my tormentor: a nymph, close to adulthood, crawling between the pillows. I squished it and blood squeezed out. I was its fresh blood meal, and it was on its way back to the harborage to molt and become an adult.
The full dusting of DE had been so messy and such a bitch to clean up, I decided to try a different method. In my research I'd read about "isolating" the bed. Isolating the bed involves finding a jar or pan or paper plate or something of the sort to place the legs of the bed into and then adding some substance to trap the bugs to prevent them crawling into the bed with you and/or to kill them if they make it through the substance. Some sites suggested water as the substance. They can't swim so if they crawl in, the drown. Some suggested talcum powder, which doesn't kill them but does trap them. Some sites suggested Vaseline. Many suggested Diatmaceuos Earth. Most of the sites also suggested double sided tape on the bed legs should the bugs make it through whatever mote you create for them.
Placing the legs of my wooden bed frame in water seemed like an excellent way to destroy the bed, so I 86ed that idea quickly. I didn't have any talc or Vaseline. I did have plenty of DE. I bought disposable aluminum cake pans, managed to maneuver my bed frame so that each leg was in a pan using the lift with all my strength and then kick the pan into place method. I'm strong, but it wasn't easy to do alone. This is another moment, like wrapping the couch, when an extra set of hands or feet would have been a seriously great boon. But I managed, like I usually do. When everything was in place, I sprinkled DE into the pans, thinking "try to get me now, f*ckers".
I needed a break from my apartment and a break from all the work. A friend invited a small group of us over to her place to catch up on Sons of Anarchy and I absolutely leaped at the prospect of exiting the place that should have been my haven, but wasn't, for a few hours. I warned my friend what was going on, in case she wanted me to stay away on the off chance I might transport a stow-away. She was suitably disgusted but nice enough to let me come over anyway.
That was the night the psychological effect of having bedbugs really started to hit home. My friends are affectionate and very touch-oriented. I couldn't stand being touched, especially if I was being touched lightly. My hair follicles activated and hair stood on end. I started searching for bugs. I noticed whenever I talked about the infestation I was unconsciously scratching. My friends noticed how irritable I was. Someone tried to tell me it wasn't that bad, saying they don't spread disease, thinking it would help me feel less dirty. Instead, I practically ripped her head off for diminishing my experience.
I explained what I'd spent the day doing to my bed, and one of my friends who had done a bit of bed bug research in the preceding week informed me that wouldn't help. He'd read that apparently when the bugs can't crawl up your bed frame to get at you, they will instead crawl up the wall, across the ceiling and DROP ON YOU. Little bloodsucking alien paratroopers who are attracted to the carbon dioxide you exhale and can sense your heat as you sleep. Sounds like the plot of a bad SciFi film, no? It was certainly starting to feel that way.
I had another cocktail and tried to put it out of my mind and just enjoy Sons of Anarchy. I was mostly successful. Our friend finally kicked us out close to 1:00 am and once home, I went straight to the Internet to verify the paratrooping abilities of the bed bug and learned it was indeed true. I spent the next three hours first on my hands and knees painting DE dust along the baseboards of my bedroom with a paint brush and then on a ladder doing the same to the crown molding, ensuring any bed bug paratroopers who made it to my bed would be on a Kamikaze suicide mission if they made it.
The work is labor intensive, the bites are itchy, but the real damage of the bugs, in my opinion, is the psychological toll the infestation takes on you. You don't sleep unless you manage to get so exhausted you pass out - how can you, knowing as soon as you close your eyes there are countless bugs waiting to come out and make you their blood meal? When you do sleep, it isn't restful. You become obsessive in your need to prevent them from biting you. You disrupt all the routines in your life. You feel like things are crawling on you all of the time. It alienates you from friends, family or co-workers who don't understand what you're going through. You feel isolated, alone, and dirty. They may not be vectors of disease, but they are certainly vectors of trauma.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
My Landlord Pussy-foots Around, Part. 1
Two days after notifying my landlord he finally "reported" the problem to the other tenants in my building. Actually, what he did, was email all tenants saying that now that we'd all been in the building for a year, it was time for a maintenance pest control treatment. He also asked if there were any sign of "bugs" without specifying the type of bug. He asked for several dates in the next week or so that would be convenient for them to provide access to their unit and he would pick one that was convenient for everyone.
Here we started a back and forth. My upstairs neighbors with their new baby understandably didn't want any chemicals used in their apartment. As far as I know, the tenants in the other upstairs apartment had no objection to the type of treatment. The other downstairs unit has been empty since my neighbor vacated to join the Foreign Service sometime in mid-August. Everyone said there were no sign of bugs. Well, other than the bites, I hadn't any "sign" of them for serveral months, other than the welts from the bites I'd thought were a rash.
That's the point. You don't see signs of them until you start to look. Or unless you happen to be lucky (unlucky?) enough to have one crawl out of its hiding place to feast on you while you are awake and say, sitting on your sofa watching TV.
By 5:00 pm that day, email exchange between landlords and tenants ceased, with no resolution whatsoever.
Note to California landlords of a multiple-unit dwelling: California State Public Health Department Guidelines say you are supposed to specificly notify tenants of vermin infestation (type, location, etc), that you are supposed to do so immediately, and that you are to have an inspector on site within 48 hours of first notification. Further, a plan for treatment is also to be developed in that first 48 hours, and then implemented within the first 72 hours. Everyday you delay, more eggs are laid, more laid eggs have hatched into larvae, more larvae turn into nymphs, more nymphs turn into adults and all but the eggs are feasting on your tenants' flesh.
Note to California tenants of a multiple-unit dwelling: California State Public Health Department Guidelines say you are required to comply with the landlord's treatment schedule. It isn't a matter of your convenience. If they are in your unit, you need to make sure they don't make it into other units if the infestation hasn't already spread. If they aren't in your unit, it behooves you to move quickly because every day of delay the chances increase that the infestation will move into your space. Trust me on this one, a couple of hours of inconvenience to have your apartment inspected is well worth the trouble. Otherwise you're potentially looking at spending hours each day dealing with them in your space for weeks if not months.
Unfortunately for me, my landlord didn't seem to understand the urgency. And never really seemed to (but more on that a little later in the story).
Here we started a back and forth. My upstairs neighbors with their new baby understandably didn't want any chemicals used in their apartment. As far as I know, the tenants in the other upstairs apartment had no objection to the type of treatment. The other downstairs unit has been empty since my neighbor vacated to join the Foreign Service sometime in mid-August. Everyone said there were no sign of bugs. Well, other than the bites, I hadn't any "sign" of them for serveral months, other than the welts from the bites I'd thought were a rash.
That's the point. You don't see signs of them until you start to look. Or unless you happen to be lucky (unlucky?) enough to have one crawl out of its hiding place to feast on you while you are awake and say, sitting on your sofa watching TV.
By 5:00 pm that day, email exchange between landlords and tenants ceased, with no resolution whatsoever.
Note to California landlords of a multiple-unit dwelling: California State Public Health Department Guidelines say you are supposed to specificly notify tenants of vermin infestation (type, location, etc), that you are supposed to do so immediately, and that you are to have an inspector on site within 48 hours of first notification. Further, a plan for treatment is also to be developed in that first 48 hours, and then implemented within the first 72 hours. Everyday you delay, more eggs are laid, more laid eggs have hatched into larvae, more larvae turn into nymphs, more nymphs turn into adults and all but the eggs are feasting on your tenants' flesh.
Note to California tenants of a multiple-unit dwelling: California State Public Health Department Guidelines say you are required to comply with the landlord's treatment schedule. It isn't a matter of your convenience. If they are in your unit, you need to make sure they don't make it into other units if the infestation hasn't already spread. If they aren't in your unit, it behooves you to move quickly because every day of delay the chances increase that the infestation will move into your space. Trust me on this one, a couple of hours of inconvenience to have your apartment inspected is well worth the trouble. Otherwise you're potentially looking at spending hours each day dealing with them in your space for weeks if not months.
Unfortunately for me, my landlord didn't seem to understand the urgency. And never really seemed to (but more on that a little later in the story).
Friday, October 8, 2010
Cautionary Warning about Diatomaceous Earth from pest control specialist
I'm falling out of chronological order with this post to provide an update about Diatomaceous Earth, which I recommended as a bed bug killer in a previous post.
Fact: It does effectively kill bed bugs.
New information I just learned: It is NOT 100% safe for use in the home around animals and humans. It IS safe in terms of ingesting - as long as it doesn't have any chemicals added to it, so the use in organic gardening still applies.
First, what exactly is it?
From Wikipedia's entry:
However, when my landlord finally got a bed bug sniffing dog company to inspect my apartment, the woman from the pest control company wouldn't let her dog sniff my unit because there was too much DE around. She told me that "a good application of DE is one you cannot see" and that many people make mistakes in using the stuff because there is not good, consistent information online about how to use it correctly. One needs to use a proper applicator, a duster, which spays a fine sheen of powder that should be close to invisible to the naked eye. And one should ALWAYS wear a mask when using DE (I'd gotten that part right, at least) and keep pets out of the room when dusting.
A duster will look something like these:
So, if you are going to use Diatomaceous Earth in your home, please be sure to:
1) Wear a mask
2) Lock your pets out of the room until the dust settles
3) Use a duster
4) Make sure you cannot see the dust (in this instance, less is more)
Fact: It does effectively kill bed bugs.
New information I just learned: It is NOT 100% safe for use in the home around animals and humans. It IS safe in terms of ingesting - as long as it doesn't have any chemicals added to it, so the use in organic gardening still applies.
First, what exactly is it?
From Wikipedia's entry:
Diatomaceous earth (pronounced /ˌdaɪ.ətəˌmeɪʃəs ˈɜrθ/) also known as diatomite or kieselgur, is a naturally occurring, soft, siliceous sedimentary rock that is easily crumbled into a fine white to off-white powder. It has a particle size ranging from less than 1 micron to more than 1 millimeter, but typically 10 to 200 microns.[1] This powder has an abrasive feel, similar to pumice powder, and is very light, due to its high porosity. The typical chemical composition of oven dried diatomaceous earth is 80 to 90% silica, with 2 to 4% alumina (attributed mostly to clay minerals) and 0.5 to 2% iron oxide.[1]The problem with DE is with breathing in the dust. At minimum, the dust can dry out mucous membranes when breathed in (for me this resulted in minor nosebleeds after having DE spread in far too great a quantity throughout my apartment for about a week). Some people express concerns that the silica that make up DE (which look like shards of glass under a microscope) can damage the lungs over time, but I have not found consistent information backing this up.
However, when my landlord finally got a bed bug sniffing dog company to inspect my apartment, the woman from the pest control company wouldn't let her dog sniff my unit because there was too much DE around. She told me that "a good application of DE is one you cannot see" and that many people make mistakes in using the stuff because there is not good, consistent information online about how to use it correctly. One needs to use a proper applicator, a duster, which spays a fine sheen of powder that should be close to invisible to the naked eye. And one should ALWAYS wear a mask when using DE (I'd gotten that part right, at least) and keep pets out of the room when dusting.
A duster will look something like these:
So, if you are going to use Diatomaceous Earth in your home, please be sure to:
1) Wear a mask
2) Lock your pets out of the room until the dust settles
3) Use a duster
4) Make sure you cannot see the dust (in this instance, less is more)
Thursday, October 7, 2010
I'd Prepared for Battle - They'd Prepared for War
Before wrapping the sofa, I thoroughly inspected my bed. I checked all the places you're supposed to: the seams of the mattress and box spring, in between them, all around the frame, behind the headboard, and including things hanging from the corners of my four poster bed and all the little nooks for the screws. These are all places on a bed frame bed bugs can hide or form a harborage. I saw no sign of bugs. I even searched the mattress for the tell-tale fecal and blood stains.
I found no trace of them on or near the bed.
I figured, a week or so would be enough time for anything living in the sofa to crawl through the diatomaceous earth I'd used to liberally powder the sofa, then I could unwrap, clean up the carcases, vacuum off the powder and then I'd be done. Bed bug problem solved.
I should have known in wouldn't be that easy, particularly when my contractor friend told me as much at a potluck the day after wrapping the couch.
For a couple of days, I was lulled into a bed bug "free" calm.
The following Wednesday I woke a little before my alarm. My wrist felt itchy and sure enough there was a welt. And my two cats were sitting next to my pillow, staring intently at the book I'd brought to bed with me the night before. I'm pretty sure they weren't interested in Living Dead in Dallas The were both perfectly still until my boy cat made his funny "there's an insect of some sort I'm tracking" noise, and I thought "Oh, F*CK. Here we go."
I started searching for the bug. I didn't see anything at first until my cat lunged at the book. The bed bug was crawling along the side of the book. When I picked up the book, it ducked between the pages (yes, they are that flat). I flipped it open and found a bed bug nymph that was one more blood meal away from adulthood. It crawled around to the front of the book, which I slammed against the headboard thinking "Die sucker!"
I knew I had a lot of work ahead of me, so I phoned the office to say I'd be home dealing with bed bugs. At that point, I was still too ashamed to admit it to everyone in the office. I had shared the sofa experience with a co-worker who I think of in some ways as a mentor already and took this opportunity to also let my immediate supervisor in on the problem. I asked them not to share with the entire office, because I didn't want anyone to think of me as a potential vector for infestation in the office and subsequently into their homes. I was still so new to the information myself, really, that I still had the "eww, bed bugs are dirty" stigma in mind.
At that point, I also notified my landlord. I hadn't done so immediately because I was unaware at the time that the California Department of Public Health Guidelines suggest I was supposed to notify him within 24 hours of first seeing the bugs. I was also, as I made clear earlier, naive as to the severity of the problem. At first, I really thought I'd successfully confined them to the sofa. I also have a little bit of PTSD around landlords providing services: my previous apartment was managed by a company would provide services, then turn around and bill me for them.
My landlord replied really quickly, but it was totally clear that he had not dealt with vermin infestation in the past and had no clue as to his rights and duties nor mine. But I was busy dealing with the mattresses for the rest of the day, so I didn't reply immediately.
My first action was to take both the mattress and box spring off the bed frame and inspect more closely. There were still no signs on the mattress itself, but I did see a couple of early stage larva on the frame. I sprayed the box spring and mattress with isopropyl alcohol in their entirites. Then I spread diatomaceous earth on the frame where the box spring would lay.
I'd learned my lesson about just going to the store and hoping they had what I needed before when I went to Home Depot looking for diatomaceous earth, so I did some research on where to find mattress encasements that both keep the bed bugs in and keep them out. They bed bug specific ones are really expensive - at minimum $60 for one mattress/box spring and $20 for pillows. For 2 mattresses and 4 pillows I was looking at $200. I just don't have that kind of money to spare, and I'd already spent about $60 wrapping and treating the sofa.
In the end, I went to Bed Bath and Beyond and bought 2 vinyl mattress encasements. They keep water out, and a water molecule is much smaller than a bed bug larva. The only worry was around the zipper, but I discovered online that you could duct tape over the zipper once the mattress was encased. The price for a single queen size vinyl encasement was a fraction of the cost of the bed bug specific encasement: only $17.99 each. I did splurge for 2 specific bed bug pillow encasements, choosing to throw away the two other pillows - they were decorative, usually sat on the floor next to the bed, and one had 2 bed bug nymphs along the seam that sat against the closed part of the pillow case.
I encased the mattresses and dusted DE along the insides of the encasements
If I didn't have an air mattress, I would have ended up sleeping in the bath tub, with the bed and sofa off limits. But I do have an air mattress, so I set it up in the middle of the living room, dusted DE around the base, and used spare bedding to sleep with. I was exhausted by the end of the day. I spent a good 12 hours dealing with bugs in various ways: from physical labor to research to procurement of supplies. I slept pretty well that night, given the exhaustion ... and once again hoped I had managed to quell the scourge.
I found no trace of them on or near the bed.
I figured, a week or so would be enough time for anything living in the sofa to crawl through the diatomaceous earth I'd used to liberally powder the sofa, then I could unwrap, clean up the carcases, vacuum off the powder and then I'd be done. Bed bug problem solved.
I should have known in wouldn't be that easy, particularly when my contractor friend told me as much at a potluck the day after wrapping the couch.
For a couple of days, I was lulled into a bed bug "free" calm.
The following Wednesday I woke a little before my alarm. My wrist felt itchy and sure enough there was a welt. And my two cats were sitting next to my pillow, staring intently at the book I'd brought to bed with me the night before. I'm pretty sure they weren't interested in Living Dead in Dallas The were both perfectly still until my boy cat made his funny "there's an insect of some sort I'm tracking" noise, and I thought "Oh, F*CK. Here we go."
I started searching for the bug. I didn't see anything at first until my cat lunged at the book. The bed bug was crawling along the side of the book. When I picked up the book, it ducked between the pages (yes, they are that flat). I flipped it open and found a bed bug nymph that was one more blood meal away from adulthood. It crawled around to the front of the book, which I slammed against the headboard thinking "Die sucker!"
I knew I had a lot of work ahead of me, so I phoned the office to say I'd be home dealing with bed bugs. At that point, I was still too ashamed to admit it to everyone in the office. I had shared the sofa experience with a co-worker who I think of in some ways as a mentor already and took this opportunity to also let my immediate supervisor in on the problem. I asked them not to share with the entire office, because I didn't want anyone to think of me as a potential vector for infestation in the office and subsequently into their homes. I was still so new to the information myself, really, that I still had the "eww, bed bugs are dirty" stigma in mind.
At that point, I also notified my landlord. I hadn't done so immediately because I was unaware at the time that the California Department of Public Health Guidelines suggest I was supposed to notify him within 24 hours of first seeing the bugs. I was also, as I made clear earlier, naive as to the severity of the problem. At first, I really thought I'd successfully confined them to the sofa. I also have a little bit of PTSD around landlords providing services: my previous apartment was managed by a company would provide services, then turn around and bill me for them.
My landlord replied really quickly, but it was totally clear that he had not dealt with vermin infestation in the past and had no clue as to his rights and duties nor mine. But I was busy dealing with the mattresses for the rest of the day, so I didn't reply immediately.
My first action was to take both the mattress and box spring off the bed frame and inspect more closely. There were still no signs on the mattress itself, but I did see a couple of early stage larva on the frame. I sprayed the box spring and mattress with isopropyl alcohol in their entirites. Then I spread diatomaceous earth on the frame where the box spring would lay.
I'd learned my lesson about just going to the store and hoping they had what I needed before when I went to Home Depot looking for diatomaceous earth, so I did some research on where to find mattress encasements that both keep the bed bugs in and keep them out. They bed bug specific ones are really expensive - at minimum $60 for one mattress/box spring and $20 for pillows. For 2 mattresses and 4 pillows I was looking at $200. I just don't have that kind of money to spare, and I'd already spent about $60 wrapping and treating the sofa.
In the end, I went to Bed Bath and Beyond and bought 2 vinyl mattress encasements. They keep water out, and a water molecule is much smaller than a bed bug larva. The only worry was around the zipper, but I discovered online that you could duct tape over the zipper once the mattress was encased. The price for a single queen size vinyl encasement was a fraction of the cost of the bed bug specific encasement: only $17.99 each. I did splurge for 2 specific bed bug pillow encasements, choosing to throw away the two other pillows - they were decorative, usually sat on the floor next to the bed, and one had 2 bed bug nymphs along the seam that sat against the closed part of the pillow case.
I encased the mattresses and dusted DE along the insides of the encasements
If I didn't have an air mattress, I would have ended up sleeping in the bath tub, with the bed and sofa off limits. But I do have an air mattress, so I set it up in the middle of the living room, dusted DE around the base, and used spare bedding to sleep with. I was exhausted by the end of the day. I spent a good 12 hours dealing with bugs in various ways: from physical labor to research to procurement of supplies. I slept pretty well that night, given the exhaustion ... and once again hoped I had managed to quell the scourge.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
The Battle Begins - pt. 2
Now that I had an action plan, I could get to work.
I didn't find any more harborages at first and so started with the steamer. I quickly established a pattern. With each seat cushion and back pillow I first steamed the zippers, then the seams, then the piping. I started with one corner and worked clockwise, then flipped each cushion or pillow over and repeated the process. After the seams and piping, I would steam all sides of the pillows. After that, I repeated the same process on a larger scale with the whole sofa.
There were a couple of adult bugs clinging to the corners of the seat cushions, so I got to see the steam in effect. Blasting the bugs for a few seconds resulted in them puffing up, then collapsing dead. I think I liked the melting and bleeding out from contact with alcohol a little more: I'll confess to some vengeful blood lust.
When I was satisfied with the steam (2 hours later) I swept around and under the couch, along the baseboards in the room and then the room in its entirety.
Procuring the Diatomaceous Earth (DE) proved more difficult than I'd imagined, in part because I've chosen a life of public transit over a life of car ownership. I rode the bus to the Home Depot in Emeryville that isn't , asked the greeter where I could find "things for killing bugs and stuff" and headed to the proper isle. They had all sorts of sprays and powders for various insects, but their bed bug supply was limited to a Raid aerosol spray (ie: pesticide). I searched the rest of the aisle, moving from bug killers to rodent killers to plant nurturing growth chemicals. Colder ... colder.
I whipped out my trusty Droid MyTouch and looked up DE again. On the Home Depot website it is listed in the garden section. A lead! This time, I walked up to the customer service rep in the garden department and showed him the bag of DE on my phone, then asked if he knew where I could find it in the store.
At first he said he didn't know what it was, but a few sentences later said people have come in asking for it and they don't carry it in their store. Silly me for thinking they'd have it in stock. No, really - silly me. I should have called ahead
I debated picking up the rest of the stuff I needed there but decided instead to go outside and call the Ace Hardware store that is 6 blocks from my house and ask if they have DE. I knew they'd have painters plastic and duct tape. I called and asked if they have it - they did, and I asked them when they close. It was a little after 4:00 and they closed at 5:00. Not fully trusting my memory that DE is actually safe for pets, I asked the guy. He said it wasn't. I told him that I'd Googled and read that the stuff is for use in organic gardening and is sometimes given to people and pets to treat intestinal worms. He said no, it contains silica and that is bad for humans and animals.
I thanked him and hung up and being frazzled, struggled for a few minutes with whether he didn't know what he was talking about or I'd totally misremembered what I'd read. I tried to Google again but the browser was taking forever on my phone. At that point, I started to break down. I felt tears welling up and was about to lose it there in the Home Depot parking lot, but managed to buck up quickly after dropping a couple of tears. I decided to trust my memory and go to the hardware store and get the DE anyway, as long as I could get there before they closed. (It turns out the sales guy was right in part: For an update and warning on use of DE, see here).
I made it, and the salesperson who helped me there didn't share his co-worker's opinion that DE was unsafe in the presences of humans and animals. He was, however, completely unaware that DE was effective for use with bed bugs, and asked me to report my experience back because they've had a lot of people coming into the store lately looking for bed bug treatment and killing products.
3 out of 3 encounters with customer service people who knew less than I'd learned in a couple of hours of research and had wrong or unhelpful information (I'm not counting the Home Depot greeter). I shared my encounters with each of them to illustrate the lack of information out there, because disseminating accurate information part of the reason for this blog.
When I got home, wrapping the sofa turned out to be far more of a Herculean undertaking than I'd prepared for. First, there are the logistics of unwrapping a 10 ft. X 25 ft. sheet of plastic in a 14 ft. X 17 ft. room (that still has a sofa in it, and which is folded to accordion out on both sides). Then the maneuvering the sofa onto said sheet of plastic. I haven't mentioned it, but I'm 5'3. Lifting a sofa that is 9 feet long and about 4 feet deep is not a picnic. And that wasn't even the hard part. The hard part was the taping. If you ever find yourself wrapping a sofa in plastic, make sure you have another body with another set of hands present - they hold while you tape. It took me 3 hours to fully tape plastic.
Before wrapping, I thoroughly dusted the sofa with Diatomaceous earth. Every crevice was filled, every inch of piping coated, every seem liberally powdered. After wrapping, I hoped.
I didn't find any more harborages at first and so started with the steamer. I quickly established a pattern. With each seat cushion and back pillow I first steamed the zippers, then the seams, then the piping. I started with one corner and worked clockwise, then flipped each cushion or pillow over and repeated the process. After the seams and piping, I would steam all sides of the pillows. After that, I repeated the same process on a larger scale with the whole sofa.
There were a couple of adult bugs clinging to the corners of the seat cushions, so I got to see the steam in effect. Blasting the bugs for a few seconds resulted in them puffing up, then collapsing dead. I think I liked the melting and bleeding out from contact with alcohol a little more: I'll confess to some vengeful blood lust.
When I was satisfied with the steam (2 hours later) I swept around and under the couch, along the baseboards in the room and then the room in its entirety.
Procuring the Diatomaceous Earth (DE) proved more difficult than I'd imagined, in part because I've chosen a life of public transit over a life of car ownership. I rode the bus to the Home Depot in Emeryville that isn't , asked the greeter where I could find "things for killing bugs and stuff" and headed to the proper isle. They had all sorts of sprays and powders for various insects, but their bed bug supply was limited to a Raid aerosol spray (ie: pesticide). I searched the rest of the aisle, moving from bug killers to rodent killers to plant nurturing growth chemicals. Colder ... colder.
I whipped out my trusty Droid MyTouch and looked up DE again. On the Home Depot website it is listed in the garden section. A lead! This time, I walked up to the customer service rep in the garden department and showed him the bag of DE on my phone, then asked if he knew where I could find it in the store.
At first he said he didn't know what it was, but a few sentences later said people have come in asking for it and they don't carry it in their store. Silly me for thinking they'd have it in stock. No, really - silly me. I should have called ahead
I debated picking up the rest of the stuff I needed there but decided instead to go outside and call the Ace Hardware store that is 6 blocks from my house and ask if they have DE. I knew they'd have painters plastic and duct tape. I called and asked if they have it - they did, and I asked them when they close. It was a little after 4:00 and they closed at 5:00. Not fully trusting my memory that DE is actually safe for pets, I asked the guy. He said it wasn't. I told him that I'd Googled and read that the stuff is for use in organic gardening and is sometimes given to people and pets to treat intestinal worms. He said no, it contains silica and that is bad for humans and animals.
I thanked him and hung up and being frazzled, struggled for a few minutes with whether he didn't know what he was talking about or I'd totally misremembered what I'd read. I tried to Google again but the browser was taking forever on my phone. At that point, I started to break down. I felt tears welling up and was about to lose it there in the Home Depot parking lot, but managed to buck up quickly after dropping a couple of tears. I decided to trust my memory and go to the hardware store and get the DE anyway, as long as I could get there before they closed. (It turns out the sales guy was right in part: For an update and warning on use of DE, see here).
I made it, and the salesperson who helped me there didn't share his co-worker's opinion that DE was unsafe in the presences of humans and animals. He was, however, completely unaware that DE was effective for use with bed bugs, and asked me to report my experience back because they've had a lot of people coming into the store lately looking for bed bug treatment and killing products.
3 out of 3 encounters with customer service people who knew less than I'd learned in a couple of hours of research and had wrong or unhelpful information (I'm not counting the Home Depot greeter). I shared my encounters with each of them to illustrate the lack of information out there, because disseminating accurate information part of the reason for this blog.
When I got home, wrapping the sofa turned out to be far more of a Herculean undertaking than I'd prepared for. First, there are the logistics of unwrapping a 10 ft. X 25 ft. sheet of plastic in a 14 ft. X 17 ft. room (that still has a sofa in it, and which is folded to accordion out on both sides). Then the maneuvering the sofa onto said sheet of plastic. I haven't mentioned it, but I'm 5'3. Lifting a sofa that is 9 feet long and about 4 feet deep is not a picnic. And that wasn't even the hard part. The hard part was the taping. If you ever find yourself wrapping a sofa in plastic, make sure you have another body with another set of hands present - they hold while you tape. It took me 3 hours to fully tape plastic.
Before wrapping, I thoroughly dusted the sofa with Diatomaceous earth. Every crevice was filled, every inch of piping coated, every seem liberally powdered. After wrapping, I hoped.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
The Battle Begins - pt. 1
The morning after my discovery I got up at my usual Saturday morning time, roughly 10:00 am. I wouldn't call my sleep restful, but I was better equipped to deal with the new-found than I had been 10 hours earlier. I sat down with some coffee and breakfast and began my research.
First I needed to know what to look for. Do they live in nests? As some kind of colony or hive? I literally had no idea what I was looking for. Turns out it is called a "harborage". In a bed bug harborage, you will find adult bugs, larva and nymphs of the various stages, eggs, the exoskeletons of bugs that have fed and molted to the next life phase, and little black dots that are either your blood, their excrement, or both.
Kind of like this:
It's ok if you just threw up in your mouth a little bit. I almost did, too.
I prepped by pushing all of the other furniture out of the way, then started pulling my sofa apart. I didn't find anything with quite as many adults as that, but I did indeed find several harborages. One on each of the pillows that are cut to rest over the sofa arms and one on each side of the front of the sofa below where the arms meet the body of the couch. There were some discarded exoskeletons on the piping on the front of the sofa, as well. Each of the harborages in my sofa had 4 or 5 adults, a few early stage nymphs that hadn't yet fed (you can tell because they are white until they feed) and eggs.
Even knowing in advance what I would find wasn't enough to stop the shrieking and tossing the first pillow to the ground when I found the first harborage, nor the "ohmygodI'minfestedwithbedbugsandthisisthegrossestthingEVER" dance that subsequently took place in my living room.
I checked along the baseboards behind the sofa, the window sills, the seams of the curtains, the drop-leaf side table that belonged to my great-grandmother, my ikea Poang chair and its cushions, the stack of floor pillows used for sitting on the ground, and the coffee table including its storage area and found no further evidence of bugs.
Hurrah! My naivete allowed me to think this was the end of the infestation. I fall asleep on the sofa pretty much every night, waking up anywhere between 1:00 am and 4:00 am before crawling into my bed, so the bugs wouldn't have to go far to find themselves a nightly meal.
Now that I knew where they were, I had to figure out what to do.
As with any other internet search, I found many places with information about bed bugs. But like any other internet search, some were helpful and some were full of misinformation. It takes a while to wade through it all and initially I looked at so many different sources it would be difficult to say just which source was best in terms of the information I needed. Badbedbugs.com turned out to be a pretty good primer, both in terms of what to look for and the basic steps to take upon finding an infestation, like encase the mattress and box spring, seal other items in plastic, vacuum harborages, etc.
All of those are great for the harborages you can see. They don't do a lot for the ones you can't see, and don't really address how to kill them (other than leave the stuff encased and wrapped for 18 months to starve the bugs out).
For killing bed bugs en masse, I learned from various sources that there are different chemical treatments and bug bombs, most of them pretty toxic and requiring multiple treatments. Nothing, though, is effective as DDT, the pesticide that was though to have mostly eradicated the species which has subsequently been banned in the US. Chemicals that work on other insects don't work on bed bugs unless they specifically state they can be used for bed bugs (sometimes not even then). Exterminators have been using extreme heat and experimenting with extreme cold and these means have been effective, but I was looking for something a little less costly and more targeted - and something I could do that day.
I have 2 cats, so I didn't want to use a chemical pesticide and wanted something non-toxic but effective, if such a thing exists. My friend sent me to this stuff called Diatomaceous Earth (DE) . It comes in powder form and you spread it around and when the bugs walk through it, they dry out and die within 48 hours. Perfect! I did a Google shopping search and learned that Home Depot sells DE But I also wanted something that would kill them immediately. (For an update and warning on use of DE, see here).
One website suggested Isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol kills bed bugs on contact. I didn't have any, but I had a bottle of Bactine. I wondered "Hmmm ... can't hurt". Turns out, Bactine kills them, too. A couple of sprays onto the harborage took out all of the adults. They sort of melted and bled out. I have to say, it was mighty satisfying watching the pests bleed out the blood they'd taken from me. As a bonus, the Bactine seemed effective at pulling some of the fecal & blood stains out of the fabric of the sofa.
Other websites suggested steam worked well to clean them. It just so happens inherited a steam-machine from a roommate several years back.
So I developed a plan of action.
First I needed to know what to look for. Do they live in nests? As some kind of colony or hive? I literally had no idea what I was looking for. Turns out it is called a "harborage". In a bed bug harborage, you will find adult bugs, larva and nymphs of the various stages, eggs, the exoskeletons of bugs that have fed and molted to the next life phase, and little black dots that are either your blood, their excrement, or both.
Kind of like this:
It's ok if you just threw up in your mouth a little bit. I almost did, too.
I prepped by pushing all of the other furniture out of the way, then started pulling my sofa apart. I didn't find anything with quite as many adults as that, but I did indeed find several harborages. One on each of the pillows that are cut to rest over the sofa arms and one on each side of the front of the sofa below where the arms meet the body of the couch. There were some discarded exoskeletons on the piping on the front of the sofa, as well. Each of the harborages in my sofa had 4 or 5 adults, a few early stage nymphs that hadn't yet fed (you can tell because they are white until they feed) and eggs.
Even knowing in advance what I would find wasn't enough to stop the shrieking and tossing the first pillow to the ground when I found the first harborage, nor the "ohmygodI'minfestedwithbedbugsandthisisthegrossestthingEVER" dance that subsequently took place in my living room.
I checked along the baseboards behind the sofa, the window sills, the seams of the curtains, the drop-leaf side table that belonged to my great-grandmother, my ikea Poang chair and its cushions, the stack of floor pillows used for sitting on the ground, and the coffee table including its storage area and found no further evidence of bugs.
Hurrah! My naivete allowed me to think this was the end of the infestation. I fall asleep on the sofa pretty much every night, waking up anywhere between 1:00 am and 4:00 am before crawling into my bed, so the bugs wouldn't have to go far to find themselves a nightly meal.
Now that I knew where they were, I had to figure out what to do.
As with any other internet search, I found many places with information about bed bugs. But like any other internet search, some were helpful and some were full of misinformation. It takes a while to wade through it all and initially I looked at so many different sources it would be difficult to say just which source was best in terms of the information I needed. Badbedbugs.com turned out to be a pretty good primer, both in terms of what to look for and the basic steps to take upon finding an infestation, like encase the mattress and box spring, seal other items in plastic, vacuum harborages, etc.
All of those are great for the harborages you can see. They don't do a lot for the ones you can't see, and don't really address how to kill them (other than leave the stuff encased and wrapped for 18 months to starve the bugs out).
For killing bed bugs en masse, I learned from various sources that there are different chemical treatments and bug bombs, most of them pretty toxic and requiring multiple treatments. Nothing, though, is effective as DDT, the pesticide that was though to have mostly eradicated the species which has subsequently been banned in the US. Chemicals that work on other insects don't work on bed bugs unless they specifically state they can be used for bed bugs (sometimes not even then). Exterminators have been using extreme heat and experimenting with extreme cold and these means have been effective, but I was looking for something a little less costly and more targeted - and something I could do that day.
I have 2 cats, so I didn't want to use a chemical pesticide and wanted something non-toxic but effective, if such a thing exists. My friend sent me to this stuff called Diatomaceous Earth (DE) . It comes in powder form and you spread it around and when the bugs walk through it, they dry out and die within 48 hours. Perfect! I did a Google shopping search and learned that Home Depot sells DE But I also wanted something that would kill them immediately. (For an update and warning on use of DE, see here).
One website suggested Isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol kills bed bugs on contact. I didn't have any, but I had a bottle of Bactine. I wondered "Hmmm ... can't hurt". Turns out, Bactine kills them, too. A couple of sprays onto the harborage took out all of the adults. They sort of melted and bled out. I have to say, it was mighty satisfying watching the pests bleed out the blood they'd taken from me. As a bonus, the Bactine seemed effective at pulling some of the fecal & blood stains out of the fabric of the sofa.
Other websites suggested steam worked well to clean them. It just so happens inherited a steam-machine from a roommate several years back.
So I developed a plan of action.
1) Locate any more harborages and spray with Bactine
2) Steam sofa
3) Procure DE, large thick sheet of plastic & duct tape
4) Powder sofa with DE
5) Wrap sofa in plastic sheet and seal with duct tape
** to be continued **
Saturday, October 2, 2010
The Discovery & How the Nightmare Begins
Friday September 10, 2010 around 11:30 pm.. I was sitting on my sofa, made new for me 5 years ago, when I noticed something the size of a lady bug crawl across one of the throw pillows that came with the sofa. I’m a girl. I didn’t scream, but I tossed the pillow to the floor and watched the bug fall off. As I went to smash it, I noted its appearance.
Google is your friend. Or maybe, Google is the tool that allows you to find in seconds the bug that you are about to start obsessing over.
I Googled “Bug”, and lo and behold, the first few images that appeared looked just like my little creepy crawlie.
A bed bug?
My invader was an adult bed bug. Their full life cycle is depicted below. For a close-up, take a look at my blog's header.
What. The. F*ck?
My invader was an adult bed bug. Their full life cycle is depicted below. For a close-up, take a look at my blog's header.
I was still naive at that point. I mean, I’ve heard the “sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite” nursery rhyme, of course, but they were eradicated in the 60s, weren’t they? I knew nothing about them. Ok, so, A bed bug. One. And now it’s dead, problem solved.
10 minutes later my cat, sitting on the sofa next to me, started making the funny noises he makes when stalking a spider or fly. And lunging at my crotch. I looked down and there was another bed bug crawling across my pajama bottoms.
I might have screamed at that point. I definitely killed it. I IMed a friend and said “I think I have bed bugs?!?!? HOW THE F*CK DID I GET BED BUGS???” She and I IMed for a while about it, both of us Googling and sending each other links, getting more and more horrified about the discovery the amount of work it is going to take to get rid of the bugs.
Given I was searching for pictures of the bugs, it didn't take long before I found pictures of people suffering from bed bug bites. Clearly, the rash I mentioned in The Admissionwas not a rash at all, but bed bug bites. I was waking up every few days looking much like this guy:
But it was late, I was a little drunk, and too tired to deal with undertaking the search and destroy mission just then. I headed to bed. I didn’t sleep well, ultimately, and I haven’t since.
Given I was searching for pictures of the bugs, it didn't take long before I found pictures of people suffering from bed bug bites. Clearly, the rash I mentioned in The Admissionwas not a rash at all, but bed bug bites. I was waking up every few days looking much like this guy:
But it was late, I was a little drunk, and too tired to deal with undertaking the search and destroy mission just then. I headed to bed. I didn’t sleep well, ultimately, and I haven’t since.
Friday, October 1, 2010
The Admission: Ending the Silent Shame
Yes, I’m that girl.
The one who looks tired, jumpy and a little strung-out. The one frequently searching for things crawling on her. The one constantly, silently, scratching.
The one with the bed bugs.
‘Ew‘, you might say. ‘Gross‘. And you’re right.
You might even go so far as ‘dirty‘, maybe?
But no. Let’s get that misconception out of the way right up front. Bed bugs are not a sign of filth, uncleanliness, or lack of hygiene.
Bed bugs are parasites. They want nothing more and nothing less than your blood. Sort of like mosquitoes, only not as honest and forthright. They don’t buzz around so you can see them. They hide until you are fast asleep, then come out, crawl across you until they find open skin and pierce your flesh to suck your blood. They’re like vampires. Only, not sexy. Trust me. If Eric Northman in an Alexander Skarsgaard suit were crawling out from under my bed and making me his blood meal every night, I wouldn’t be complaining. At least, not until the anemia kicked in.
Bed bugs don’t care about dirt, or unwashed plates, or not cleaning your pet’s poop off the floor, or half empty beer bottles full of chaw spew and cigarette butts randomly strewn across an apartment or any of the other horrifying conditions you see on an episode of Hoarders. Bed bugs appreciate clutter, but they’ll thrive in a minimalist’s space so long as there is a seam or a crack no thicker than a credit card for them to crawl into. They’re found in unkempt hostels, and at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. A frequent business-class traveler is just as likely to transport the littlest hitchhikers as the person in economy who uses garbage bags as a suitcase. They’ll live in an empty apartment until a new victim moves in or 18 long bloodsucking-less months go by with no victim to feed them and they die, whichever happens first.
A bed bug resurgence has been occurring for a couple of years now, but you may not have heard much of it until recently, unless you happen to be one of the unfortunates who've encountered them, or know someone who has. The bugs have been infiltrating hotels in most major US cities but this summer, Summer of the Bug we'll call it, saw a rash of infestations break out in non-traditional and very public places. Libraries, schools, military barracks, college dorms, movie theaters and retail stores like Nike, Victoria's Secret and Bloomingdale's are all places whose bed bug problems have made the news.
Well, at least I'm trendy.
I discovered bed bugs in my apartment on Friday, September 10, 2010, after living in this apartment for just a few days more than a year. I'd had what I thought was hives or a rash on my back, arms, and ankles come and go beginning in March, but never assumed I was infested with vermin. Besides go to work each day, I've done little other than combat and research the bugs, clean and attempt to bug-proof (ha!) my apartment. And scratch. And search myself and my surroundings for bugs. Usually I like the intensity of a project to focus my energy. But this isn't fun.
To channel some of the energy ... to break the cycle of endless research and cleaning in hopes of finding peace of mind I know won't come until the infestation is eradicated ... I've decided to start this blog. My goal is to document my experience in my quest to quell the scourge; to provide tips for searching for the presence of bed bugs and what to do if and when you find them; too gather current news articles; and hopefully to give voice to all of the people out there suffering the bugs in silent shame rather than suffer the stigma attached to having vermin in their home.
I hope, too, that people will share their experience and tips as comments on this blog. In all seriousness, we are in the midst of a public health crisis that is going to get worse before it gets better. Bed bugs are nearly impossible to prevent if you go out in public, live in a multi-unit building or even within a certain distance from other homes, travel and/or stay in hotels. They are really hard to eradicate once they've settled in. The more information we can get out into the public, the better for us all.
A bed bug resurgence has been occurring for a couple of years now, but you may not have heard much of it until recently, unless you happen to be one of the unfortunates who've encountered them, or know someone who has. The bugs have been infiltrating hotels in most major US cities but this summer, Summer of the Bug we'll call it, saw a rash of infestations break out in non-traditional and very public places. Libraries, schools, military barracks, college dorms, movie theaters and retail stores like Nike, Victoria's Secret and Bloomingdale's are all places whose bed bug problems have made the news.
Well, at least I'm trendy.
I discovered bed bugs in my apartment on Friday, September 10, 2010, after living in this apartment for just a few days more than a year. I'd had what I thought was hives or a rash on my back, arms, and ankles come and go beginning in March, but never assumed I was infested with vermin. Besides go to work each day, I've done little other than combat and research the bugs, clean and attempt to bug-proof (ha!) my apartment. And scratch. And search myself and my surroundings for bugs. Usually I like the intensity of a project to focus my energy. But this isn't fun.
To channel some of the energy ... to break the cycle of endless research and cleaning in hopes of finding peace of mind I know won't come until the infestation is eradicated ... I've decided to start this blog. My goal is to document my experience in my quest to quell the scourge; to provide tips for searching for the presence of bed bugs and what to do if and when you find them; too gather current news articles; and hopefully to give voice to all of the people out there suffering the bugs in silent shame rather than suffer the stigma attached to having vermin in their home.
I hope, too, that people will share their experience and tips as comments on this blog. In all seriousness, we are in the midst of a public health crisis that is going to get worse before it gets better. Bed bugs are nearly impossible to prevent if you go out in public, live in a multi-unit building or even within a certain distance from other homes, travel and/or stay in hotels. They are really hard to eradicate once they've settled in. The more information we can get out into the public, the better for us all.
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