The travel souvenir you never wanted: bedbugs
0 Comments | The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star, Norfolk, VA, May 9, 2010 | by DOUGLAS BROWN
By Douglas Brown
The Denver Post
Years of backpacking in Third World countries introduced Michael Newberg, 53, to plenty of meddlesome insects. None, though, compared to the bedbugs that infested his suburban Denver home last year after a stay in a hotel in Estes Park, Colo.
“My stepdaughter had to throw away all of her stuffed animals,” said Newberg. “They will go inside the animals. How do you tell an 8- year-old that her life with stuffed animals is gone? Our expenses (to rid the house of bedbugs) are pushing $3,000 to $4,000.”
Newberg hired pest-control specialists to fumigate the house – three times. All of his clothing, and even the drapes, had to be laundered.
Bedbugs, like vampires, live to suck blood. But wooden stakes kill vampires, and garlic repels them. Compared with bedbugs, vampires aren’t so tough.
“We’ve had people say, ‘We know they are in this apartment complex; can we just shut it down for a year?’
” said Mathew Camper, a research associate at Colorado State University who studies bedbugs. “The answer is no. They go into hibernation and they just wait.”
Hotel rooms – from low-budget affairs to suites in luxury resorts, as well as rental condos and apartments at ski resorts – have served as vectors for the spread of bedbugs. Bedbugs attach themselves to patrons while they sleep. Hotel guests then bring the pests home. Soon, the house is swarming with them.
Cleaning won’t affect them. Laundering clothes will get rid of some, but the house undoubtedly contains more. Even spraying every room with powerful poisons won’t always do the trick.
Bedbugs are back, and it seems they may be here to stay.
Anywhere people sleep can become a breeding ground for the nasty little insects.
About half of the people who hire Gary West to kill their bedbugs believe they got their infestation from a hotel. You can also get bedbugs from a neighbor, a plane flight, even used furniture.
Last year West, of Boulder, spent more than $100,000 on bedbug- killing equipment after his wife, who works in real estate, kept dealing with apartment buildings suffering from bedbug infestations.
Now, the former engineer is a busy man.
His equipment pushes the temperatures inside rooms to 130 degrees, which is about 10 degrees more than is needed to kill bedbugs. Treatment takes all day, typically, and costs $25 a square foot, with a minimum charge of $1,200.
He finds them everywhere. Most commonly, though, they nest near beds because the insects use carbon dioxide to find their prey – and bedrooms are carbon-dioxide machines in the evenings, while people sleep. One prime location are pictures hanging on the wall behind a bed.
“They like to harbor, to avoid light,” he said. “It’s a nice space to hide. They hide near their food source. The only thing they ingest is blood.”
Another favorite spot for bedbugs, he said, is bedroom computers.
“People surf the Net on their computers in bed,” he said. “The computer becomes one of the warmer things. And the bugs love it, they go to the computer looking for food, and they climb into the keyboards.”
For Newberg, the first evidence of bedbugs occurred several days after he and his wife spent a night at a hotel. The hotel denied that its room was the source, he said. Wherever they came from, getting rid of the bugs was inconvenient, unpleasant and expensive for the family. The bugs bit Newberg, but he wasn’t deeply affected
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