Dark Banquet (23 page)

Why do bed bugs find living with humans so comfortable? And just as importantly, what are
we
doing that makes it so easy for them to thrive and spread from place to place?

Let's begin with some housing and transportation issues.

Many ectoparasites (like the ticks, mites, and chiggers, which will be discussed elsewhere in this book) use an array of specialized appendages to cling or otherwise attach themselves to their hosts—sometimes for extended periods. Bed bugs and their relatives, however, spend a major portion of their lives hiding in close proximity to their hosts but not living on them.
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Generally, bed bugs react negatively to light and actively seek out rough, dry surfaces that are at least partially darkened. They emerge from these harborages late at night (usually around 3 or 4 a.m.), climbing aboard their prey for short periods of time to feed.

The common bed bug,
Cimex lectularius,
generally feeds for five to ten minutes, often making three or four bites, roughly in a row (sometimes referred to as “breakfast, lunch, and dinner”) before returning to its harborage. After a feeding bout, bed bugs are ready to eat again within a week.

By the time a victim notices the bites, the bed bugs are long gone, leaving behind a cluster of itchy, red blotches, bumps, or welts that can occur on any exposed skin surface (e.g., face, neck, shoulders, arms, hands, etc.). Reaction to the bites can vary since it depends on the victim's immune response to proteins in the bed bugs' saliva, but generally, the more bites, the greater the level of inflammation. Unfortunately, bed bug bites are often misdiagnosed by physicians as mosquito or flea bites or, more commonly, as scabies, an itchy skin condition caused by the microscopic mite
Sarcoptes scabei.

Since birds are parasitized by a wide variety of ectoparasites (including many species of bed bugs and their relatives), bird nests are often infested with tiny ectoparasites (like chiggers, lice, and ticks). Nests provide the miniature vampires with the perfect microhabitat for activities like breeding, hiding out, and waiting for the home delivery of their next meal.
^*108

Similar to cimicids that prey on birds, those that feed on bat blood spend the majority of their lives killing time in places where their prey hang out—in this case, literally. Bat roosts generally vary by species but they're commonly located in caves, mines, attics, abandoned buildings, and tree hollows. There, the bat bugs hide in cracks and crevices—quietly digesting their meals and presumably catching up on the latest bits of misinformation about their hosts.

With this behavior in mind, it's no surprise that bed bugs have made an easy transition from bird nests and bat caves to the vast heated structures created by humans and packed with potential hiding places of every conceivable shape and size.

“Clutter is the bed bugs' best friend,” said bed bug expert Gil Bloom, during his presentation. And so, in many human homes bed bugs have found paradise.
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Similarly, the actual dispersal of bed bug colonies (aka spread of the bed bug infestation) has developed a significant human element.

According to Bloom, there are two ways that bed bugs can be introduced into a home: actively and passively. In active introduction, bed bugs migrate from one place to another under their own power. Since bed bugs don't have functional wings, active dispersal of the colony depends on walking (or running) to a new home.

Migration from one room to another is easy enough to visualize but what about between apartments or floors? As Bloom tells it, bed bugs can easily relocate within a building via pipes, phone wires, or cables.

Humans can often pick up an assist in these active introductions and here's how. Let's say your neighbor upstairs has figured out that his apartment is infested with bed bugs. He decides to ditch his bug-filled bedding curbside and proceeds to wrestle his mattress out into the hallway. Some of the bed bugs might fall off as he tips the mattress on its side, while others are jostled off as the bugged bed is dragged down the hall or thumps its way down the stairs (think of that scene in
King Kong
with the sailors clinging for their lives to a giant log as Kong tries to shake them off ). Rather than falling to their deaths, though, the displaced vampires hit the ground running, heading for the first crevice they can find. In all likelihood, this means scooting under doors and into new apartments. Once they get themselves settled (think about how those aggregational pheromones work), females will start pumping out five or so eggs a day (several hundred in a lifetime) and a new colony can form almost as fast as you can say, “Honey, check out this red spot on my arm.”

The role of your neighbor in this scenario leads us to the second method by which bed bugs can infest a residence. Passive introduction pretty much covers any transport method that
doesn't
employ the bed bugs' own locomotor abilities. In cimicids that do not feed on humans, this generally occurs when bugs are delivered via airmail to new locals by unsuspecting bats or birds. In
Cimex lectularius,
passive introduction relies primarily on humans—their products and their wonderful efficiency at moving from one place to another. As we'll see, this ability to exploit our habits as well as the things we use on a daily basis has become one of the major factors in the current spread of bed bug populations.

Let's say your neighbor has succeeded in humping that mattress down five flights of stairs (and potentially spreading the bed bugs to five new floors) before dumping the thing curbside. If a college student or someone in the market for cheap bedding picks it up, the bed bug infestation will start spreading as soon as the new owner lugs the mattress into his or her apartment. It may even spread to
her
neighbor's apartments as the mattress gets dragged up a new set of stairs and down yet another hallway.

But what if that scenario never takes place? What if people are smart enough
not
to pick up someone else's old bed? Perhaps the curbside mattress has been labeled by its former owner as being infested with bed bugs. In that case nobody in his or her right mind would touch it, right? Unfortunately, this just isn't the case—and not by a long shot. All too often, discarded mattresses and box springs are quickly snagged by companies that specialize in collecting and “reconditioning” these old mattresses before offering them for resale. According to several sources (who wish to remain unnamed), these secondhand mattress companies send around trucks manned by sharp-eyed crews. Their job is to pick up any box springs or mattresses they encounter—
even those that are clearly marked by their former owners as harboring bed bugs.
Supposedly, these bedding items are then “sanitized” before being “rebuilt.” But according to one New York City exterminator, unless “sanitizing” means baking at 150°F for forty-five minutes, or treatment in a fumigation chamber, the bed bugs present in the mattress and their eggs are not killed.

Fortunately, in some states like New York, there are laws to regulate the sale of reconditioned mattresses. Unfortunately, the lack of enforcement guidelines means that nobody is out there checking to see what these secondhand vendors are doing. Rather than being effectively sanitized, it's far more likely that used mattresses get a quick disinfectant spritz and a new cover—right over the old one.
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So, in addition to bed bugs (which can be hidden throughout the mattress), the old mattress might be contaminated with urine, saliva, and just about anything else your imagination can dredge up. After a quick turn-around, the refurbished bedding is sold to a generally clueless public (many of whom probably think they're getting a new mattress, perhaps with a bit of old hardware within).
^†111
In instances where the recycled and resold bedding is already infested with bed bugs, the results are predictable.

Here's another serious, bedding-related problem that helps explain the current bed bug resurgence. Let's say you've done your homework and found a bedding store with a stellar reputation. You pick out a mattress and box spring and set up a delivery date. So far so good—but here's where things start to unravel. Typically, in addition to delivering your new mattress, the company will haul away your old one—and even though
your
old backbreaker might be completely bug-free, there's a real possibility that some of the mattresses these guys pick up during their workday are going to be infested with bed bugs. These contaminated mattresses are going to be placed onto the same truck as your new mattress—perhaps they'll even be leaning against each other. And what about the interior of the delivery truck (dry, dark, and full of cracks and crevices) or even the deliverymen? Are you going to check their cuffs for tiny specks of bed bug feces? Some of these guys might have something to say about that (and the ones who don't could be even more of a problem).
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So the next time you purchase a new bed, you just might be getting more than only a new mattress and box spring delivered to your home (
especially
if you happen to be one of the day's last deliveries).

Alarmed by the spread of mattress-related bed bug transmission, New York City councilwoman Gail Brewer introduced new legislation in September 2006 that would ban the sale of all reconditioned mattresses. Introductory Bill Number 57 (or Intro. 57 for short) also required that new and used mattresses be transported separately. Unfortunately, while this law would be a move in the right direction, it wouldn't come close to stopping the bed bug problem.

“They sort of forgot to include box springs,” said Andy Linares, the owner of Bug Off Pest Control in northern Manhattan.

“What about couches, futons, and nightstands?” I asked.

“Whoops,” Andy said, smiling.

And
that
was a problem. How many thrift-conscious city dwellers have snagged a piece of furniture or other household items from a secondhand store or off the curb? Bed bug harborages aren't limited to mattresses and box springs, and it is unlikely that a change in the city's administrative code would have much of an effect on bed bug populations, if any. The bottom line is that people should forget about bringing
anything
into their homes that they've picked up curbside. They should also be very careful about what they purchase from secondhand stores, flea markets, or obtain from furniture rental outfits.