December 01, 2005

Bedbugs Attack New York City. "'They're insatiable,' he said five minutes into the bug's feeding. To show off the insect's special sucking stylus, Mr. Sorkin removed a bedbug nymph from a container and placed it on his finger. Even under a bright light and being nudged by tweezers, it began to feed and turned rust-colored as it filled with blood. Bedbugs...can live longer than a year, with the female laying up to 500 eggs in a lifetime. An adult bedbug can survive unfed for up to a year." Article includes a photo too. They look small.

What the article doesn't mention is what if New York becomes the source point for infestations across the country? Or even internationally?

  • I think we're pretty much doomed, StoryBored. DOOOMED. DOOOMED!!!
  • "stylus"?
  • Related story Bed Bugs in Las Vegas They're EVERYWHERE!!!111
  • I had a run-in once with some bedbugs in a hostel in Prague. Nasty creatures. I was covered in half-dollar size welts for a week.
  • "I've become obsessed," said Ms. Torielli, 33, a student who lives in Hell's Kitchen, in Manhattan. "I switched to white sheets so I can see them better, and I've set up a bedbug jail in a Tupperware container that I put on the windowsill to torture them with daylight. It's all-out war." Jesus.
  • I think we're pretty much doomed, StoryBored. DOOOMED. DOOOMED!!! Cimex lectularius Is a bug nefarious It waits until you're slumberous Before it pokes you with its stylius
  • That make me itch all over. Is there a black market for DDT?
  • Under warm blankets Beneath the cold winter moon You are bedbug food.
  • See, it's things like this that freak me out. I'm going to sleep like shit having read that, now. Ignorance was bliss!! Damn you, StoryBored, damn you!
  • Screw the terrorists.. lets go after those bedbugs. That's a war I would support.
  • New York, New York! It's a wonderful town! The bedbugs dine 'neath your eiderdown!
  • This is why I sleep suspended from piano wires.
  • I love this film. And I am a revolting film snob.
  • Uugh. It's disgusting, and I'm at the stage in my life where I live in an apartment complex and I can't control the living conditions of my neighbors and I know those bastards don't care if you're in #5 or #6. Still, an ex's current partner has them (in a suburb of NYC) and it totally grosses me out, yet I can't help the Schadenfreude.
  • Did ya hear the one about The Bedbug Letter from the railway company?
  • I would much rather talk about earwigs or dust mites. Then spiders.. Then you can just lock me in the room and let me slam myself against the padded walls.
  • wolof... wanna check that link to imdb??
  • So... this infestation had led to women staying out late and having drinks and going home with strangers to avoid sleeping in their own beds? *taps fingertips together, making nefarious plans*
  • I read a story in the New Yorker a few months ago, about roommates with an infestation that they just could not beat. Finally, they put the worst furniture out on the curb with a note saying something like, "Caution, Bedbugs". The furniture was gone in a few hours. Itch, itch, itch.
  • "Caution, Bedbugs". The furniture was gone in a few hours. Damn... Those are some serious bedbugs!
  • Don't spiders eat bedbugs? I have cultivated the friendship and respect of the prodigious spider population of my basement, as a collaboration with them against the far more hated bugs of all other stripes. Bugs are beaten with slippers or captured and kept in ziploc bags with their repugnant six-legged fellows until they either fight or starve; spiders, I bid them a pleasant evening as I pass, and sometimes throw fresh captures into their below-sink webbery as as gift. I would be a capricious and cruel God, I think. Perhaps on the Greek model.
  • No, Cthuloid.
  • Maybe. *waves mouth-tentacles and bats nictitating membranes at Chy*
  • You should build tiny racks and hang the bug carcasses on them, as an offering to the spiders and a sign of your benevolence. Might I suggest some chanting or a naked interpretive dance? Perhaps a magical Shower of Gold to awe them with your mighty power?
  • Our Feeees...is an awesome Fes, he reeeeeigns...with Pop Rocks and Pez, we dooooooes...just what he sez, our Fes is an awesome Feeeeeees! /speaks in tongues
  • I don't see the point in torturing bedbugs. They're never going to talk. And even if they did, the information would not be reliable.
  • And they have little teeny tiny voices, and you'd have to keep asking them to repeat themselves.
  • Best just to only torture them for entertainment, then.
  • My mother encountered some of these bloodsuckers back in the 1930s in a Montreal boarding house. She regarded them as only slightly less offensive than head lice (which beasties she also managed to acquire as a child after swapping hats with Mary Ann Chisholm). These disagreeable critters are ubiquitous. The only time I've ever met any bedbugs in the flesh so to speak was in Sri Lanka once many years ago. They're not easy to see till ye start looking.
  • That bitch Mary Ann Chisholm stole my crayons, too.
  • Mary Ann Chisholm? Mono Nu Cleosis.
  • Mary Ann Chiggers.
  • If we had no bugs attachin', We'd never know the joy of scratchin'.
  • Well Mary Ann is dead now.
  • For a second I saw it: Beedogs attack New York city. Bullets can't stop 'em, rockets can't stop 'em. We may have to use nuclear force! The national guard are hoping to lure the enormous beedogs into the subway where they can destroy them with napalm..
  • Now that would be a story that kept me glued to TV news!
  • I remember reading not so long ago about someone's friend who had bedbugs. She tried everything to get rid of them... exterminators, fumigations, replacing furniture, moving. Finally she had to throw away everything she owned (including books, cds, mementos, whatever) and start completely fresh in another new place. That took care of the problem.
  • verbmix: That certainly would suck. I guess it'd be liberating in a Fight Club sort of way, but dayum!
  • Gawrsh, EarWax- impressive Googling! So long, Mary Ann (although I suspect that bees' mom 's Mary Ann would be a tad younger than that)
  • Still, for Ms. Scanlan, there has been a silver lining. The night after she discovered the bugs, she went out drinking, intent on avoiding her own bed. That evening she met a man at a bar, and, contrary to her usual instincts, accompanied him to his apartment. An encounter partly born of desperation soon blossomed into something more, she said. "We've been together ever since," Ms. Scanlan said with a smile. "Thanks to the bedbugs, I've fallen in love." Aww a happy ending after all!
  • That's what I want to see more of on the internets, dammit! Parasites bringing true loves together.
  • Fes: I had a very opposite situation going on. I purposely cultivated a large anole population in my house, and every time I found a spider, I would catch it in a cup, find the nearest lizard, and watch it FEED. It was fantastic.
  • The story goes that you put your bedposts in a can of kerosene and take your blankets out and toss 'em on an ant hill to help control the BBs. I'm blaming the IRS for the infestation. Damn Bloodsuckers!
  • I don't want to be exposed to anole.
  • THE ANOLE SEES YOU
  • *nods approvingly* When I return from the Elder Dark, ian would say, you will be protected from the madness.
  • No no, I don't want to be sane when the elder gods return. That would simply be too much to bear.
  • But you can torment ian would say all you like.
  • Hey Mord: THE ANOLE SEES YOU AS WELL
  • I dunno guys, they're kind of cute.
  • ARRRRGH! *leaps back, spills coffee What the heck is THAT?
  • Yeah, and wait a second, do these anoles eat bedbugs? *ponders a profit opportunity*
  • I don't know. I just googled "anole bedbug" and could not discover their eating habits, but did however, discover both creatures have teh gay.
  • To a Bedbug Let be! o gay invertebrate! Thanks to your devastating nips I'm sore inflamed from neck to hips, I feel ye feasting on my feet -- with mouth more fearsome than the flea ye've sipped from private parts o' me.
  • What I want to know is, how are we supposed to "don't LET the bedbugs bite?" Tiny ball-gags? Cast-iron pajamas?
  • Smearing of the skin with hot pepper jelly.
  • It might work!... unless they like their food spicy....
  • ummm, sounds like you have a choice of bed bug bites or spicy hot ... tacos?
  • Took me a week to dig this old clinker out. When I lay down at night, I wonder how can a poor gal sleep, When I lay down at night, I wonder how can a poor gal sleep While some's holding my hand, others is eating my feet. -- [recorded by Bessie Smith, "Mean Ol' Bed Big Blies"]
  • Well. Dang. ="Mean Ol' Bed Bug Blues"
  • I prefer the previous title.
  • Hail to thee, blie bed big! Bug thou never wert, nibbling me beneath my shirt [MC-Tease Ol' Bed Big Blies]
  • if ye've got 'em they've got you the blistery burning keeps ye up and keeps ye squirming ye scratch and scratch can't help but yelp as ye peer and damn near pinch your freckles off so damn angry ye get too rough intent on catching the whole batch
  • Excerpt THINGS THAT GOD MADE By D. M. C. God made in six days all the things that we see, The nits and the lice and the busy bumblebee. … God made the big whale and the snake in the grass, The bed bug and weevil, the lowly jackass.
  • You thought NYC had bug problems. Look at what Germany has to deal with. (bia bb)
  • Thanks for dredging this thread up smallish bear, as I missed it first time around. Now I feel itchy all over. Dealt with them in 2001 (NYC). Found a big 'ol nasty one burrowed on the underside of my mattress. As far as the "recycled mattress" business goes in NYC, it wouldn't surprise me if this is a huge spreader of bedbugs in the area. It's quite common-sight to see dilapidated vans with massive stacks of used mattresses on top (I think they cruise the streets, keeping the lookout for any tossed mattress). What happens next? They re-cover the mattresses with a relatively cheap and masking material, and re-sell them as new (I recall seeing a local undercover investigation on this, it made me squirm in my seat). For some reason, I think bedbugs would go well with marmite.