Dark Banquet (24 page)

According to Lou Sorkin, “They can hide just about anywhere. Clock radios, TV remotes, telephones, picture frames, lamps, headboards—basically any type of furniture.” Books and wall hangings are also popular aggregation destinations as are the spaces behind the switch plates covering electrical outlets.

The bed bugs' ability to adapt to our methods of transportation is another reason for the recent resurgence in these creatures. Remember that in the days before civilization, the spread of bed bugs was limited by the range of their bird or bat hosts (and the bug's ability to hold on and not look down). Before the twentieth century the majority of people lived and died without traveling much and the resulting spread of bed bugs was gradual. But once humans began traveling, bed bugs followed them. Nowadays bed bugs are rapidly dispersed, sometimes over enormous distances, by the potentially millions of people who routinely travel in cars, buses, trains (subways), and planes.

Dr. Tamson Yeh, an entomologist at the Cornell Cooperative Extension, had her own hypothesis as to how bed bugs were getting around big cities like New York.

“Taxis,” she told me during a visit to her office in Riverhead, Long Island. “People put their bags or suitcases down next to the curb and bed bugs can climb right on—or climb right off.”

“Jeez,” I chimed in, “and just think about how many people are traveling all over the world and then tossing their suitcases into the trunks of cabs when they get home.”

“It's the perfect environment,” Tammy said. “Dark, dry, plenty of places to hide…”

“And how often do cabbies sanitize their trunks?”

“Exactly.”

Once limited to movement from cave to cave or nest to nest, as bed bugs became associated with humans, it was no stretch for them to migrate from room to room or apartment to apartment. Now, however,
Cimex
infestations are spreading across cities, between states, and even to different countries. So right up there among the multiple reasons for the twenty-first-century resurgence in bed bugs, cheap, fast, long distance transportation is near the top of the list.

According to pest-control expert Andy Linares, “Sometimes outbreaks can be traced to overseas travel since it's pretty easy to pick up bed bugs from cruise ships, resorts, hotel rooms, or hostels.”

“My cousin's kid just got back from a hosteling trip through Australia,” I said.

Andy shook his head. “The media is full of reports of people bringing back bed bugs after spending big bucks at top-notch hotels or spectacular resorts. And hostels? That's scary.”

The bug man went on to explain how basically any place that has a high resident turnover rate (e.g., shelters, dorms, hostels, hotels, and apartment buildings) pretty much fits the bill as a potential source for passive introduction.

“So where are the trendy bed bugs heading nowadays?” I asked.

“Eastern Europe is a hotbed of bed bug activity,” he said. “And England has a huge problem.”

Apparently, a suitcase or backpack, opened or even set down in an infested room can serve as a sort of bed bug version of the Trojan horse. And on a related note, by placing your clothes into a hotel dresser drawer in an infested room, you can also easily pick up some unwelcome traveling companions.

To minimize the risk, Andy recommended that travelers examine their rooms
before
bringing in their luggage and other belongings. Although this might sound a bit extreme, he stressed the following preventive measures as the
least
you should do: Start your search at the corner of the bed nearest to the clock alarm. Carefully lift up the sheet and the mattress cover and examine the mattress, especially around buttons or along the raised seam. Using a flashlight if necessary, look for fecal stains (tiny, dark-colored raised bumps) or for the bed bugs themselves (flattened apple seeds with legs). Then lift the corner of the mattress and look at that section of the box spring. Use your flashlight again to examine the space between the headboard and the wall. If you're still suspicious, look under pillows and inside pillowcases. Bed bugs can live in the clock alarm, the nightstand, or even the bedside lamp. If you find any bed bugs or even any fecal stains (which appear as pinhead-sized raised dots, usually dark brown in color), leave immediately and insist on another room. Of course, you should repeat your inspection in the new room and be prepared to “bail” on the hotel, if need be. Finally, while traveling, keep luggage elevated off the floor and check it carefully for unwanted hitchhikers. Hard plastic suitcases are more resistant to bed bugs than fabric suitcases with their multiple nooks, creases, and folds. In any event, once home, you should thoroughly vacuum your luggage and store it in sealed, black plastic bags—but not in your bedroom.

This illustrates another distressing point. Even if you don't bring bed bugs into your home, it's quite possible that someone else might. Plumbers, electricians, visiting nurses, and house cleaners can become involved in passive introduction. And when guests arrive at our homes, how many of us throw their coats and handbags onto our beds?

Bed bugs are turning up in hospitals, doctor's offices, health clubs, and movie theaters. They can be transmitted to your clothing if you sit on infested furniture or happen to brush up against someone wearing bed bug–laden clothes.

Along similar lines, Gil Bloom suggested in his talk that people should be a bit cautious when a friend asks to stay at your apartment for a few days “for unspecified reasons.” I guess the implication here is that your jokey reply, “You're not having your place treated for bed bugs, are you?” should
not
elicit a coughing fit, nervous laughter, or sudden and profuse sweating.

“Bed bugs can break up relationships and friendships,” Andy Linares told me. “And even people who don't have them can get screwed up.”

“How's that?” I wondered.

Andy explained that many people mistake specks of dirt or lint for bed bugs.

“I tell them to stay calm and not to freak out. Use a magnifying glass. Lint doesn't have six legs, and it doesn't crawl around by itself.”

I nodded. I'd have to remember that one.

“Sometimes they think they've been bitten by bed bugs, but it's not a bite at all. In those cases, I'll ask them if there's a construction site nearby,” Andy said.

“Why's that?”

“A lot of people have allergic reactions to concrete dust. If that shit gets on your skin it will definitely make you itch.”

Some individuals, however, experience a much more serious problem than concrete dust. The unfortunate people suffering from delusional parasitosis (sometimes referred to as Ekbom's syndrome) believe that they're being plagued by parasites crawling over their bodies and sometimes under their skin. These imaginary pests appear to vary with the individual—snakes, insects, and other vermin are often reported. Sufferers will also claim that these creatures are infesting their homes, clothes, and belongings. In some cases, delusional parasitosis results from drug use (“cocaine bugs” or “meth bugs”) or extreme alcohol withdrawal, but recent paranoia over bed bug infestations in places like New York City has apparently amped up some city dwellers to a new level of neurosis.

During lunch one afternoon, Dr. Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann recounted an incident that occurred while she was working for the Nassau County Cooperative Extension. “A guy came in convinced that there were bugs crawling all over his body. To prove it to us, he brought in his bedsheets
and
his underwear.”

I made a face that brought our waiter running over (probably thinking I'd found a bone in my sushi).

“Yeah, that's how we reacted,” Jody said, as I waved off the waiter.

“What did you find?” I asked.

“We didn't find anything,” she said. “But apparently that didn't satisfy the guy. He wound up spraying down his entire body with a garden pesticide—his ten-year-old kid too.”

“The symptoms are always the same,” Andy Linares told me. “People report an itching sensation but no bites. They see stuff crawling around. The next day it's flying. They come in with blobs of fabric and pieces of belly-button lint.”

“Andy, these people who imagine that they've got bed bugs—do you ever treat their apartments, just to get them off your back?”

“Absolutely not!” the bug man exploded. “If you do that you'll
never
get rid of them.”

He explained how a background in diplomacy and international affairs (he holds a master's degree from Fordham University) has actually helped him cope with frantic victims of bed bug infestation—both real and imagined.

“People can deal with roaches and rats, but bed bugs are another story. They're ninja insects—cryptic and insidious—and people feel powerless and violated by them.”

A big part of his job, he said, was to act as a sort of mental health counselor. “It's almost therapeutic when these people put themselves into my hands. They're stigmatized by old ideas about bed bugs, poverty, filth, and such. So they come in undercover. ‘Don't let anyone know what you're doing,' they tell me.”

At that point, my conversation with Andy was interrupted by a phone call. It was a woman who had just figured out that her daughter had brought back bed bugs from her college dormitory. Now the tiny monsters had infested her home and the woman was frantic. He'd call her back in a few minutes, he told her.

Andy shook his head. “She's going to freak when I tell her what she needs to do before we can treat her house.”

“Why's that?” I asked.

“Because she'll have a lot of homework to do before we get there. Furniture, bedding, magazines—you've got to be ruthless about throwing stuff out,” Andy told me. “Everything that has a crack, crease, or crevice has to be chucked out, steam-cleaned, or vacuumed.”

“Everything?” I asked.

Andy nodded. “People with huge libraries or old LP collections are pretty much screwed.”

After the prep work, “infestibles”
^*113
are either packed into a sealed container to be heated or pumped full of a fumigant like Vikane (sulfuryl fluoride) for forty-eight hours.

“Bed bug infestations were quite common before World War II,” Andy Linares explained, “but in the 1940s and 1950s, the use of DDT pretty much put a stop to them.”

Paul Müller, the Swedish chemist who figured out that DDT was an effective contact pesticide against arthropods like mosquitoes, ticks, and moths, was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology. Mueller discovered that DDT worked by causing neurons to fire spontaneously—not a helpful thing if you're trying to fly, bite, or crawl.

By the mid-1950s, however, bed bug resistance to DDT had became so widespread that two alternate pesticides, malathion and lindane, became the tools of choice for controlling them. Unfortunately, during the next decade, studies began to show that the lethal effects of these pesticides weren't just confined to the insects.
^*114

“Pyrethroids are our tool nowadays,” said Dr. Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann, during her lecture.

Pyrethroids are man-made compounds, similar in chemical structure and insect killing properties to the natural pesticide pyrethrum, produced by chrysanthemum flowers. According to a fact sheet issued by the Illinois Department of Health, “When used properly, pyrethroids have been found to pose very little risk to human health and the environment.” Unlike the previously mentioned (and banned) insecticides, pyrethroids apparently break down within a day or two of application. This means that should you ingest some, it won't stick around in your body to cause problems like birth defects or cancer.

Not bad,
I thought at the time.
Sounds easy enough.

But several days later, I learned from Andy Linares that there was nothing simple about the treatment of bed bugs, and that pest-control specialists were in fact using a number of additional substances in their war against cimicids.

The Bug Off Web site, for example, suggested that exterminators might inject “a variety of flushing agents (565-XLO, CB123 Extra), aerosols (D-Force), liquid residuals (Permacide Concentrate, P-1 Quarts, P-1 Gallons), powders (Drione), sanitizers (Sterifab Pints, Sterifab Gallons, Sterifab 5-Gallon), and growth regulators (Gentrol Aerosol, Gentrol Vials, Gentrol Pints), in all possible cracks and voids as part of a comprehensive treatment.”

“Bed bugs are becoming resistant to pyrethroids,” said American Museum of Natural History entomologist Lou Sorkin.

Andy Linares agreed. “Using a variety of chemical compounds minimizes the resistance factor.”

Dr. Gangloff-Kaufmann also addressed the question of bed bug resurgence with another treatment-related explanation. “In the old days,” she said, “exterminators used to regularly spray baseboards and molding with pesticides to control roaches.”