March 3, 2011

"All right. You can stop right there. I don't want to ever stay in a hotel room ever again."

Says Meade after I start to read items from this list on how to prevent bedbug infestations:
  • Never put clothes in hotel drawers or on a hotel floor.
  • Travel with resealable bags large enough to hold clothes....
  • Check your laptop. The bedbugs are attracted to the heat and body oils on the computer....
The rest of the list:
  • Inspect hotel room mattresses, bedding, furniture and closet hangers for signs of infestation....
  • Use dissolvable laundry bags when travelling. The bags can go straight from your suitcase to the washing machine....
  • If in doubt, don't bring belongings in the house....
  • Periodically inspect cribs, mattresses, box spring, head and foot boards and under the bed for signs of bedbugs....
  • Check the alarm clock on your nightstand, along with electrical outlets.

29 comments:

tim maguire said...

It sounds like they're saying, "don't stay in hotels." How is it even possible to follow this set of instructions?

Are we really this helpless against bedbugs?

Toad Trend said...

Not unlike the 'clean-up kit' suggested in case you break one of those curly fluorescent bulbs.

Anonymous said...

I heard that if you urinate all over your mattress, that will kill all the bedbugs, so you can sleep there every day without risk. However, you must urinate on the bed each day for this work. One hour before going to bed is recommended.

traditionalguy said...

Sounds to me like the 10,000 lawyers in the EPA set some rules of engagement in the man vs. insects war that stopped man from using many chemical weapons "because they last too long".

Mom said...

Check the laptop, clocks, and outlets for what? Are we supposed to bring toolkits along to disassemble them?

mesquito said...

“What made this problem pretty much go away for decades was the availability of very effective, long-lasting insecticides that were cheap, affordable and available not only to pest control companies but to consumers over the counter,” he said. He recently conducted a study comparing older pesticides to those used today. He found insecticides in two families, organophosphites and carbamates, are especially effective at eradicating bedbugs. Although some of these compounds can be found in insect traps or spot treatments, most are no longer permitted for use by pest-control professionals in North America, according to Mr. Goldman.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/08/07/faq-about-bedbugs-pesticide-bans-have-led-to-a-resurgence-of-the-dreaded-pest/

Shut up. It's for The Planet

Toad Trend said...

@seven

For some, that is a feature, not a bug ;)

The Crack Emcee said...

tim maguire,

Are we really this helpless against bedbugs?

Yep - been there - and it goes waaay beyond "this sucks". It's maddening, both finding them in the bed, so full of your blood they can't move, and trying to get rid of them, over and over again - just to realize you may have missed one or two and they're enough for the whole thing to start up again. My advice:

Don't let it begin.

Bob_R said...

Perfect timing Althouse. I don't travel much, but I was in a hotel last weekend. It seemed clean, but I'm going to be scratching all day.

AllenS said...

Bring an air mattress, and sleep in the tub.

KCFleming said...

Options:

1. Cover self completely in Saran wrap.

2. Sleep in tub full of vinegar.

3. Sleep in the hotel manager's house; give him your room.

4. Pretend to be a plant. bedbugs hate plants. Meade's a plant!!!

5. Set fire to mattress at bedtime. Try to keep flames at the edges for safety.

6. Charge the bedbugs admission. They are cheapskates and never bring their wallets.

7. Bring your own bedbugs for protection. Remember to pay them well.

KCFleming said...

8. have the bedbugs form a union.

After a massive increase in bedbugs, the problem will eventually collapse.

Bedbugs can live for up to a year, so it would take two generations for the bedbug union to fail.

The tiny pickets will be uncomfortable, briefly.

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michaele said...

My husband always knows when I'm reading Althouse comments when we 're sitting at the breakfast table. I make little laughing noises. Thanks guys!

Leland said...

The old normal: "leave for the airport 2 hours prior to your flight for security"

The new normal: "leave for the airport 4 hours prior to you flight to stop by the laundry mat"

pst314 said...

Never before has an RV looked so attractive.

Fen said...

Yep - been there - and it goes waaay beyond "this sucks".

Same. It was hell on earth. For about 6 months.

5. Set fire to mattress at bedtime. Try to keep flames at the edges for safety.

You laugh, but after a month of it, this becomes a reasonable course of action.

pst314 said...

That's fascinating, Jennifer. How do you know so much about this? Are you an entomologist?

No, Frank, but I did sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night.

ricpic said...

How about stopping the Mexican invasion?

Chip Ahoy said...

I wonder why nobody ever mentions killing them with steam.

Unknown said...

Somehow this probably goes back to how powerful the public employee unions are in Gotham.

And why the things Nanny Bloomberg obsesses about are all the wrong ones.

Mom said...

Check the laptop, clocks, and outlets for what? Are we supposed to bring toolkits along to disassemble them?

Of course. Don't you know, in the new Welfare State, no one responsible for doing a specific job is actually supposed to work?

chuck b. said...

Airplanes too! You DON'T want that blanket they offer. http://www.ba-bites.com/

MadisonMan said...

I see this as an opportunity for airlines. Have an unpressurized luggage bay, and have a $50 baggage fee a bedbug elimination fee. You put your bag in there, and the drop in pressure and extreme cold kills the varmints dead.

jr565 said...

If you heat or freeze them they die. So we have to come up with mattress technology whereby the mattress can be heated as soon as guests leave to the proper degrees so that bedbugs die. Put the mattresses in far infrared blankets so that the bedbugs are burned off. (Not sure if far infrared is hot enough though). But something to that effect.
Steam clean any carpeting with really hot steam after every visitor leaves.
And get one of those bedbug sniffing dogs for all hotels and have him go into each room and eat whatever bedbugs he finds.
Start a business that trains bedbug sniffing dogs and rent them out to hotels.

Jeremy said...

Needy's just catching up on the bed bug thingie?

Maybe The Queen can buy him a newspaper.

jr565 said...

Also heat up the rooms prior to guest staying in them to whatever degrees it takes to kill bedbugs.Do it weekly for each room. I saw on the news that that's how the professionals kill bedbugs. They literally turn up the heat and the bedbugs melt. However, it's an all day process and it gets really hot, like a sauna in the rooms. So it couldn't necessarily be done all the time. It might end up being expensive for hotels to do this. But it would work for at least the short term.

Big Mike said...

Or you can check out your hotel ahead of time at bedbugregistry.com

Big Mike said...

My own idea is to force the head of the EPA to live in a termite-ridden, bedbug-infested house with fire ant mounds in the front yard until the agency takes effective pesticides off the banned list.

Motivation.

Unknown said...

I think most people would do the same when they are headed with the situation.

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