Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

I’m sure we’ve all heard the expression, “Sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite,” but did you know that bed bugs aren’t just an adorably terrifying children’s rhyme? There is, in fact, an official species of insect colloquially known as “bed bug,”—Cimex lectularius. Over the past week I have become intimately accquainted with the little buggers.

I’d suspected that I had a bug problem for a couple of weeks, mostly because of the tiny brown spots and streaks that were showing up on my sheets. I’d thought that perhaps I was simply dragging little bits of dirt into the apartment with me, or perhaps having extraordinarily small bowel movements from my torso in my sleep. While I’m sure you can see that both explanations are equally plausible, the tiny brown spots were in fact the excremental waste of the bugs.

Then came the rash, or at least what I thought was a rash. As it turns out, the small reddish spots that peppered my body, which I mistook for repeated cases of hives, were the aftermath of an army of bugs having me for dinner every night.

Lastly came the itching. The terrible, terrible itching that prevented me from sleeping. One night at around 4:00AM I finally got up and turned on the lights, only to see several of the flat, round bugs crawling all over my sheets. Exterminators were called immediately. To prepare for the fumigation I wanted to launder my sheets, and upon pulling up the bedsheet from the far side of the bed, I discovered what I shall call the source of the problem. Rather than the laundry room, I took the sheets out to the dumpster. If I’d had a match, I would have lit them on fire.

Fumigation went well, but I suspect a few of the little pests might still be hanging around. Luckily, bed bugs are pretty harmless. They cannot fly, are practically motionless during the day, do not typically carry disease, and are not inherently toxic. All they really do is bite you for some of your delicious blood. I learned several things from this experience.

1. Do not ignore the warning signs. Bed bugs will not simply go away on their own. They will not get bored with your interior design and leave for a more stylish apartment. Insects reproduce quickly and in large numbers, so the problem will get expoentially worse in a matter of weeks.
2. Speaking of warning signs, do not feel bad about those little brown stains when you see them because remember, it’s not your fault. Shame is a luxury you cannot afford as you fight off the infestation.
3. Likewise for the bite marks. They really, really can look like a rash of some sort, especially if the bugs choose to bite up your feet. Again, it’s not a hygiene issue on your part. It’s not an embarrassing infection, it’s dozens of tiny wounds.
4. Strike swiftly and mercilessly.

Thus concludes this PSA.