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Musings from Moyieboy ... |
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The love nibble of the bed bug |
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July 14, 2017 |
By Ken Carpenter
Bed bugs have become one of the trendiest blood
suckers around, even more so than the popular
movie vampires. It is not that they are admired
or, Lord forbid, lusted after, but in the 21st
century, they are likely to show up in any
high-class hotel at any time, especially in New
York.
Filthy rooms do not draw them and moral decay
does not attract them, so bums and perverts are
no more likely to find out how much the bed bug
bites than you, Mr. and Mrs. Average, are.
Bed bugs travel wherever they can hitch a ride,
and once there are what you might call them
entrenched guests. If there is occasional blood
and a tight crack to sleep in, it is home sweet
home.
The class of citizen means nothing, and rich
snobs are as tasty and handy anyone, though more
capable of shelling out the dough for hotel
rooms and a professional bed bug killer to take
over their house for a while.
Problem is, a bed bug can go over a year without
eating, so abandoning a place does not mean they
won't be around when you come back. If they can
eat, they will suck blood for about five minutes
once a week, then scurry, or waddle, back to
their hideout.
Male bed bugs are complete cads, making male
cads almost amiable by comparison.
When they eat, they get sexually excited, and
bed bug sex is not normal, if there is such a
thing as normal bug sex. Male bed bugs perform
"traumatic insemination," which is labeled as
such because their "hypodermic genitalia" just
pierces anywhere it wants to, ignoring any
attempt at finding the female organ that was
most likely designed for the act.
Anyway, this creates a lot of sore spots on the
long-suffering females, shortening their lives,
and also wounds a lot of careless males who
happen to get in the way. The males all deserve
a vicious little impaling occasionally, given
their unsavory habits, but it doesn’t change
their ways when the table is turned.
The females still get impregnated, no matter
where they are stabbed. They lay about five eggs
at a time, and several hundred in their
lifetime.
Bed bugs resemble a lentil, but don’t think of
that the next time you eat lentil soup. I doubt
there are any bed bugs in it.
Bed bugs can’t fly, and neither can their close
relatives, “bat bugs” and “bird bugs.” They can
crawl like a bugger, though.
DDT, which is toxic to all living things, wiped
out billions of bed bugs and tons of other
things in the middle of the 20th century. It was
finally made illegal in the USA in 1972, and
bald eagles, for one thing, started making a
comeback almost immediately.
So did bed bugs, though they did not really
begin to flourish until the 21st century.
Their numbers continue to grow yearly, and New
York City is the capitol of Bed Bug Ville. The
rest of the world is scratching along with them,
but supposedly all the air traffic through New
York keeps them well supplied.
One hotel employee, told to search a New York
hotel room after a bedbug complaint, searched
the bed closely and found none. Then he turned
he looked at the suitcase on the floor and over
200 bed bugs had already moved up on it.
It was like one of them gave a little “Toot,
toot, the taxi is here!”
My Grandma was renowned for her bed bug sniffing
talent, which is not a common gift. They are
said to have a peculiar coriander-like odor in a
heavily infested residence, which makes me itch
to think about, but apparently most folks can’t
smell the fiends.
Grandma didn’t need an infestation to smell
them, she could sniff out even small numbers.
During the depression, it was almost a daily
occurrence for tramps and transients to stop by
the farmhouse to look for a day’s work or bum a
meal.
Grandma was not one to shy away from a chore,
and she considered it her duty to give strangers
a good sniffing to see if they passed the bed
bug test.
If they didn’t they never even got on the porch.
She still fed the transients, but they stayed
well away from the house. I can’t imagine it was
much fun sniffing them even if they had no bed
bugs.
She came from sturdy stock.
Bed bug sniffing dogs are getting popular now in
the big cities, though they are said to be
expensive. How much is an itch worth, anyway?
I’ve never seen nor been fed on by a bed bug,
and I probably just cursed myself by saying it.
It has been said that I have a bad habit of
doing that. |
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