“Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite!” your mom said before turning off the lights when you were a kid.
A sweet little nursery rhyme. But when you think about tiny little parasites crawling out of your mattress in the dead of night and scuttling across your skin to feast on your blood, the sweetness drains away instantly.
When it comes to the thought of a bed bug infestation, one solution comes quickly to mind.
Kill it with fire!
Burning your house or apartment to the ground may feel like the only solution… followed by chartering a SpaceX flight into orbit and nuking the planet — but hold on, if only for a few minutes. There are a few things you should know about bed bugs first.
Bed Bug Bites
If you haven’t spotted the nasty little parasites yet, you should first identify their bites. Bed bug bites can be mistaken for mosquito bites unless you know what to look for. Both will itch, which won’t help you. But there are other important factors.
Bed bug bites will often be small, red, raised bumps in a line or cluster on your skin. These often come in threes known as “breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” Also, a bed bug’s mouth looks like a long saw that they drive into your skin to suck out a tiny drop of blood. Due to their unique shape and — let’s face it — brutal methods, bed bug bites will often have a darker red spot in the center of the bump.
Most often bed bugs bite on your arms, neck, or — yikes — face. Less likely bite locations are the armpits and back of the knees, due to being natural chafing areas. If you’re worried about a bed bug infestation, long sleeves and pants for PJs will help reduce bites. Bed bugs can’t burrow through your clothes to bite.
Bed bugs don’t carry disease, fortunately. At least not any communicable to humans. Although prolonged exposure to their hungry mouths can threaten you in other ways.
Repeated bites increase your risk for allergic reactions. In time, the small, raised bumps can turn into welts. And the incessant itching they cause (due to the anticoagulants in their saliva) can lead to bacterial skin infections as your scratching fingernails can break down your epidermis.
How to Check for Bed Bugs
Concerned bed bugs have moved in? Here are some tips to identify them.
Size: Adults are 5mm long and 3mm wide, flat and oval
Color: Brown to reddish-brown
As bed bugs mature, they molt their pale, yellowish exoskeletons which will be the size of an apple seed
Sign: bed bug excrement looks like tiny, dark specks found along mattress seams or cracks in walls or floor trim
Bites often come in clusters and itch for 1-2 weeks
An infestation may smell sickly-sweet, like rotten raspberries
Have you found one or more of these signs of bed bug infestation in your home? Don’t wait! The only sure way to kill bed bugs for good is to hire a pest control professional.
While there are methods for tracking down and killing bed bugs by the handful, it is impossible to completely rid yourself of the little bugs once they’ve set up shop.
Why?
They’re small, and hide in nooks and crannies where they aren’t easy to spot. Hiding places include inside cracks in walls or trim, beneath clutter in your room, or even inside your mattress!
They’ll only come out to feed on your blood once every five days. So maybe you’ll starve them out? Sleep in the guest room for a week or two? Nope.
Bed bugs can survive 11 months without food.
If you try to leave an infested area for another part of the house, bed bugs will track you down in the night. They locate their prey (you) by detecting the carbon dioxide you exhale when breathing, your body heat, and the natural chemical odors you emit. Regardless of how much deodorant you used that day.
They also hate the light, which further complicates matters when you try to hunt them down.
How to Get Rid of Bed Bugs Fast
While it is true that home remedies can kill bed bugs, really nothing you can do on your own will eliminate the little pests.
Rubbing alcohol kills bed bugs on contact — but only in their adult stages. Nymphs are too small to find, and a bed bug’s eggs are impervious to the desiccant effects of alcohol.
You can vacuum up any bed bugs you find. Just make sure you dispose of the vacuum bag immediately!
But there’s really only one sure home remedy that can kill bed bugs fast.
Heat.
Throw any infested clothing or bedding in the dryer on the high heat cycle. The heat will kill bed bugs at any life stage — from eggs to retirement.
But the problem is you can’t put your whole house in the dryer. You have to expose bed bugs to 122* Fahrenheit for over 90 minutes to kill them.
Only professional pest control technicians have the required equipment to completely get rid of bed bugs. They will use several different types of pesticides and heat treatments to eradicate the infestation. It really is the only way to make sure your future is free of these pests. Reach out to a professional pest control operator near you, like Victory Pest Control in Cortez, Colorado. Don’t delay!
Where Do Bed Bugs Come From?
Contrary to “conventional” wisdom, bed bug infestations rarely occur because of poor housekeeping. They’ve been around for thousands of years, parasitically sucking human blood.
Bed bugs are hitchhikers. They take any free ride they can get. And the host never knows they’ve got a passenger.
If you inadvertently visit an infested area, bed bugs can crawl aboard your clothing and hitch a ride back to your place. Beds and couches are a bed bug’s favorite hangout. But you can find them in clothing, backpacks, packing boxes — really anything with a dark spot big enough to fit an apple seed.
If you live in an apartment complex, bed bugs can travel through the duct work to adjoining dwellings. They can even crawl through gaps in the ceilings or framework of a duplex or any shared household.
While bed bugs only have an appetite for human blood, they’ve been known to use animals as an efficient mode of transport. Birds, bats, even your cat or dog can end up an unwitting accomplice in the spread of a bed bug infestation.
Bed bug infestations have increased significantly since the 1990’s. Bed bugs can even hide in airline seats, prepared to travel internationally!
What Can You Do to Stop Bed Bugs?
By now it probably looks like there’s nothing you can do to stop the inevitable march of the bed bug. No matter where you go, they’ll find you and follow you home.
But there are precautions you can take when travelling to reduce the risk of picking up any future squatters.
Check your airline seat and the mattress in your hotel room. Look for the little, yellowing exoskeletons. Check for small black speckles — telltale sign of bed bug poop. Similarly, check the walls and floor trim near the bed or couch for the same signs.
When you check into your hotel room, keep your suitcase off the floor. Put it up on the dresser or on a stand. If you leave it on the floor, bed bugs can creep out of hiding at night and deposit themselves into your belongings. Elevate them to keep the creepy crawlies from finding your stuff.
If you need to unpack, hang your clothes up on a hanger in the closet. Never fold and stack them on the floor.
And when you get home, launder your clothes immediately. If you have picked up any free-riding bed bugs, you’ll eradicate them in the dryer.
But if you suspect recent travel has landed you with a bed bug infestation, please, DO NOT HESITATE to call a pest control expert. In the four corners area, and Southwest Colorado, look to Victory Pest Control to eradicate your bed bug infestation.