Bedbugs are Back

And in the Best Places – Bedbugs are something most people in the U.S. have heard of, although few of us who haven’t traveled extensively in third world countries have ever actually experienced them. But now 28 states are reporting bedbug infestations (some of them in expensive hotels).

Charles Laurence writes in The Telegraph that foreign travelers and immigrants are being blamed for the bugs. How do you know if you’ve got them? You wake up with red, itchy welts on your skin and there are blood stains dotting the sheets.

Andy Linares, of New York’s Bug-Off Pest Control Center, is getting “more calls than we can deal with?We are getting calls to five-star hotels and Fifth Avenue addresses from people who will never admit to getting mauled by bed bugs. It’s getting out of hand, really out of control. Bed bugs are a medieval scourge and they spread pretty much the medieval way?they travel the trade routes just like the rats that spread the plague.”

DDT, now banned in the US, got rid of them the first time around, when soldiers brought them back from World War II. Linares says, “The harsh products are banned, and we need new materials. It’s a stealth situation. These things hide, breed copiously with 500 eggs to a hatch and are hard to kill.”

Getting rid of these critters is as hard as getting a good reading from a psychic medium, except we know someone who can tell you how.

NOTE: This news story, previously published on our old site, will have any links removed.