Bed bugs could literally strike you anywhere!
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Consider this. You are at the movies watching the latest Hollywood blockbuster. In between mouthfuls of popcorn and sips of coca cola, you feel a nip or two on your shoulder. You are not sure if it is your imagination or if you have been bitten by an insect, so you ignore it and enjoy the rest of the film. On the way home, as you stroll with your wife on a warm summer’s evening, you start to notice an itching sensation on the same shoulder. Being concerned, as soon as you arrive home, you head into the bathroom to examine your shoulder. When you remove your shirt, you notice something fall into the sink. You look down and to your horror, you see two apple seed sized, reddish brown, wingless insects. You grab an aspirin bottle and dumping the contents, you put one of the bugs in the bottle to save it for later examination. The other one you squash with your thumb and you immediately notice a sizable blood smear around the crushed insect. Then you look at your shoulder and you observe two lines of red, irritated bed bug bites; both of which are in groups of three bites.
Being a modern guy, you boot up your home computer and access the Internet. Since you have used the Goggle Search Engine for years, you log on to the Google website and enter an appropriate group of keywords: “reddish brown wingless insects.” Instantly the search results appear and to your utter dismay, they are all for BED BUGS. The top ranked result reads, “What Do Bed Bugs Look Like?”, so you click the link and there, in full, living color, are several large, detailed photos that exactly match the insect in the bottle. Now you know that you have been bitten by bed bugs. You read further and soon you learn why the bites are in neat lines of three bites each. Bed bugs, you discover, feed in what scientists refer to as a “Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner” pattern and they leave rows of 2 or 3 bites per feeding.
Before you shake your heads and think it is all nonsense, be aware that this is a true story. This is how your devoted author first learned about bed bugs and the problems they are causing, as they stake their claim for the most annoying insects of the 21st. Century. Bed bugs are back after laying dormant and forgotten for almost 75 years. Bed bugs had all but vanished from the modern world until the banning of DDT and many other commercial pesticides in the 1980′s and 1990′s allowed them to stage a comeback. Thanks to overzealous environmentalism and an ever shrinking world, bed bugs returned with a vengeance in the dying days of the 20th century.
Now a days, bed bugs are major news.
They are being written about in magazines and newspapers, featured on the nightly news and splashed all over the Internet. Homes and apartments are being infested along with major hotels, movie theaters, cruise ships, trains, planes, nursing homes and hospitals. Bed bugs have had an enormous impact on the economy with removal costs running from $500 to $1000 per room. Imagine the financial impact when a major New York City Hotel with 700 hundred rooms is shut down for two weeks to undergo a top to bottom, bed bug cleanup. Now imagine this impact coast to coast in America, with bed bug incidents up over 500% in the last 10 years.
There is some good news in this gloomy situation because the bed bug problem is not beyond your control. There are many excellent methods to protect yourself against bed bugs and if you ever have the misfortune to be infested with them, there are many effective treatments to get rid of the miserable, little blood drinkers. Fortunately, the Internet is full of useful websites that are packed with tons of legitimate information about bed bugs. They offer solutions and products to assist with every aspect of the bed bug invasion. Take the time to become familiar with bed bugs and arm yourself with the greatest weapon of all against bed bugs: KNOWLEDGE
Bed bugs are back and they are becoming a major problem in homes, apartments and places of business.