Bed bugs
 

I was curious what measures any of you are doing to prevent coming in contact with Bed Bugs? In our profession, it seems it isn't a matter of if but when.

My step mom recorded the Dr. Oz (???) show on Bed Bugs. The exterminator (I can't think of his name but he has his own reality TV show) had some good tips.

1. When you first walk into the room, prop the door open with your bags. DO NOT bring your bags into the room. Bring a flashlight with you.

2. Turn on all lights.

3. First check the bed and linens. Look for rust, brown, or dark colored spots on the sheets and mattress. The spots are actually feces and human blood. The bugs are no larger than a sesame seed. Pay particular attention to fabric folds or mattress folds, they hide there. Lift the mattress and look underneath. Check between the sheets and pillow covers.

4. Look at the headboard. The exterminator actually suggested lifting it off the wall (apparently they all lift vertically). Do one side at a time. Look for them hiding in any cracks or crevasses. Personally I think he's nuts doing this. I try to look along the edges and behind.

5. Check under the desk and the desk drawer (use the flashlight). Pay particular attention to where the wood makes a fold, edge, or corner.

The exterminator said that if you checked these areas and didn't see any signs of the bugs, you can rest up because the room is most likely not infested.

6. Once all clear, bring your luggage into the room and ALWAYS use the luggage rack. NEVER place any clothing or your bags on the floor, bed, or furniture. Try to keep everything on the rack.

7. When you get home, DO NOT BRING YOUR BAGS INTO YOUR HOUSE. Leave them outside or in the garage. Clothes are to go straight from the luggage and into the washer. The washer and dryer will kill the bugs.

Things to ponder. 30% of humans show no reaction to the bites and never know they've been bitten. The bugs can live up to a year between feedings. They are most likely found in dark places ... movie theaters, hotel rooms, etc. The bugs tap into your capillaries and suck your blood. :eek:

It would be interesting to see how many pilots flying international routes vs. domestic routes bring bed bugs home. I've been flying Asia for the last 15 years and have never had a problem. Either I'm really lucky, or those little suckers dehydrate after 8+ hours aloft.

Here's a post I made several years ago (the last time that the media freaked-out on bed bugs).

http://www.airlinepilotcentral.com/w...071230300.html

If you bring them home they are hard to eradicate but there is a heat treatment method that is supposed to be effective. On the road all you can do is ask for another room IF you see them in time. I brought a few home and caught the infestation before it had a chance to spread one time, had to use pillow and mattress encasements to stop that one.

All you need to know about those little creatures and more.
Complete with colorful pics. :eek:
http://commdocs.alpa.org/Portals/Com...lFlyer0910.pdf

Home Depot sells a spray. Just bought some. I fly to NY a lot, unfortunately.

Man, if you do all of that, the other pilot will be calling you from the lobby telling you the van is waiting.;)

Very good video. The professor in the YouTube video was also on the show I watched.

I'm a domestic pilot and I've been regularly checking my rooms and have never found any evidence of bugs.

Hahahahaha ... it only takes me 3-5 miutes. I'm just checking the bed and the furniture with a flashlight.

I try to do only out and backs...

My old man brought some home after an overnight when I was a kid. Little bastards got into the parents mattress. He sealed the mattress up in black plastic garbage bags, and put it outside in the summer sun for two days. Baked them retarded (dead). Cleaned the mattess afterwards and never saw another one.

I sleep on the bathroom floor sometimes;)
fbh

Bed Bug Registry - Check Apartments and Hotels Across North America

Received this in an email -- good for domestic

I brought these little bastards home about 3 years ago. They are nearly IMPOSSIBLE to get rid of on your own. As some others have mentioned, some people do not react to being bitten, thus you will not realize you have a problem until you have a BIG problem. I never showed any bite marks, but my wife got eaten alive.

Signs that you have bed bugs vs. spider or mosquito bites (like we originally thought were the culprit):

-the bite marks look like mosquito bites, but are usually in a line of 2-5 bites

-the rust colored blood marks on the sheets are a dead giveaway. the exterminator didn't even lift the mattress when he saw the sheets. He knew that we had bedbugs.


We tried everything from putting EVERYTHING in the dryer, throwing my old rollaboard away, putting the mattress and boxspring outside for a week in the winter - we live in Wisconsin and supposedly anything below 0 degrees F will kill them, but it didn't. None of this worked. My wife finally got sick of my ineptitude and called several exterminators (Orkin was the worst). We started with mattress encasements and heavy sprays. Finally we went with an independent exterminator specializing in bedbugs. After 3 biweekly treatments we were able to get rid of them. We have them come back once a quarter to spray just for grins.

Prevention is the key as they are very hard to eradicate once you get them in your house. Use the luggage rack in the hotel rooms. Leave the rollaboard in the garage, and take your clothes directly to the washer. Don't put your bag on the floor of a hotel room, this just invites them in.

If you do get them in your house, get aggressive early. You don't want them spreading around your house into the couch, chairs, carpet, etc.

I wouldn't wish these little bastards on anyone. They supposedly don't transmit disease, but will annoy your wife who will, in turn, annoy the crap out of you! :p

Everything Leine said above. My wife is PARANOID about me bringing them home. STD, no problem..........."bed bugs, your a dead man":D <--only a slight exaggeration.

Best one liner I heard on a TV show talking about how to avoid/get rid of the little ba...rds.

"The BAD news is they don't transmit disease". "If they did, there would be more of a priority by chemists, etc to find something that would kill them" (now that DDT is illegal).

As Buzz stated Home Depot has a spray. It was on sale last month so I stocked up.

Try REI or another online camping store. They sell sleeping bag liners that are relatively cheap and keep a barrier between you and the sheets. I use to carry one in my rollerboard. Rolls up into a cola-can size bag. Very light and as soon as you get home throw it in the wash. I also never used the comforter since they never clean those, and the liner helped keep me warm if it was cold.

Go out and buy a memory foam mattress. They can live on top, but cannot live inside the foam mattress. Wash your sheets and blankets frequently and you should not have to worry about bringing them home to your bed.

Be advised on New York overnights, that feces and blood on the sheets are not necessarily evidence of bed bugs.

You guys suck. ACL posted something on my facebook wall about bed bugs last night and then I read this thread right afterwards.

Of course I'm on the downtown NYC layover, so I was tossing and turning freaking out at every little itch that my now paranoid brain created or thought it got.

On my last layover at the short layover hotel at LGA, I found two porno mags underneath the mattress. haha

I'm sorry 80ktsclamp that we freaked you out.

Thanks for posting all the intel KC10. One more thing I do nowadays...I take the free plastic hotel room laundry bags and wrap all my clothes in them as pack them in the roll-a-board each week. I probably have dozens of extra bags laying around the house. That way, in theory, I keep the clothes-if infected-out of contact with my luggage.

Sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite
 

80 here is some back ground info enjoy:D:

A Staff Report from the Straight Dope Science Advisory Board
What's the origin of the expression, "sleep tight"?

Dear Straight Dope:

A Japanese student once asked the meaning of the phrase "sleep tight" (as in "sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite"). I have always been interested in word origins but I have yet to come across this one. I haven't even found anyone who could make a good guess. Can you help solve this riddle?

— Guy Nolan, Washington, DC

There are two possible explanations for this expression. We'll start with the one I personally like, because it's a lot more interesting, and then we'll get to what in all probability is the real one.

Explanation #1. Here in Cajun country where I live, before the days of mattresses, beds were square frames elevated from the ground, with ropes tied across in a sort of weave. It was similar to a hammock in concept. Anyway, in order to sleep well, the "mattress" couldn't sag, so the bed had to be "tight." (And free of bed bugs, but I thought that went without saying.)

For further insight I spoke to Dr. Jerry Lee Cross, a historian with the state of North Carolina. He confirms that the beds were, in fact, made of ropes tied across a frame. He adds that the origin of the phrase "sleep tight" is almost common knowledge among historians, simply because the modern bed is a little over a hundred years old.

But first a little about bedbugs. The 1996 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, under "bedbug," shows a critter not unlike a flea. Known to others as Cimex lectularius, this beast is a blood-sucker (literally). It is further described as nocturnal and capable of consuming its body weight in blood in five minutes. This one meal can provide nourishment for the insect for six months! This flat, oval, wingless bug measures about 0.6 cm long and produces irritating bites but is not known to carry disease. How comforting.

Dr. Cross's wife, Carolyn, adds that she remembers her mother telling her stories about how she slept on such beds. Mrs. Cross recalls how her mother said she had to put the bedposts in small cans (like tuna cans) filled with kerosene, in a sort of moat-like fashion to keep the bedbugs from climbing into the bed (the bugs being wingless and all). Mrs. Cross also says that there were "rules" for sleeping: you couldn't let the sheets hit the floor or have the bed too close to the walls, lest the bedbugs could climb into bed that way.

In Charles Panati's Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things (sorry, Cecil), he writes that mattresses were made of organic materials such as "straw, leaves, pine needles, and reeds" and tended to rot, mildew, and harbor rats and mice, who were hunting for bugs! Inorganic materials didn't appear on the scene until about the 1870's or so, when conical springs came into use. Cylindrical springs, which had been attempted earlier, had problems with no support, too much support, as well as spring failure from the poor metallurgical methods of the time. (Personally I say if it doesn't have Magic Fingers, it ain't a bed.)

The point is, when people used to say, "sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite," they weren't trying to be cute. They meant it.

Explanation #2. That last one was a nice story, eh? Unfortunately, the Oxford English Dictionary, which knows a bit about such things, doesn't buy it. Here's what they say: "It seems that tight in this expression is the equivalent of the only surviving use of the adverb tightly meaning 'soundly, properly, well, effectively'."

I think anybody reading that would have to concede: It's boring and unimaginative, and thus probably correct.


My Grandmother used to say this my Sis and I when were going to bed. I never knew what she meant, I just figured it was another old country saying.

New York City's finest inhabitants:

http://bedbugger.files.wordpress.com..._lifecycle.jpg

Nice.......Need to call Billy the Exterminator

http://www.aetv.com/billy-the-exterm...lk-to-gulf.jpg

Billy & Ricky

Billy Bretherton discovered his love of entomology while serving with the US Air Force in his twenties.:eek:

Now I'm all itchy.

Haven't seen anything in Bogota, yet.

I bring my own rubber sheet and a tub of crisco to work, no problems so far:p

My hometown newspaper (Florida) said that bedbugs don't seem to do well in humid environments (like Florida). I don't know, maybe the mildew kills them or the lizards eat them. Anybody have a comment on that?

Dry, flakey skin = yummy

It's not just bed bugs - cockroaches are a serious problem too. Their eggs are very small and are typically found in many hotel / apartment carpet floors. The eggs are also very resilient and stomping and crushing them does nothing.

Talk to anyone who does work in peoples homes for a living (generally in the ghetto) and they keep a separate pair of work boots that STAY AT WORK.

If you go into your room in the layover hotel and find the telltale signs described, why don't you march back down to the reception and demand another room?

Does your airline's Hotel Committee know about this?

Are bed bugs found on airplane seats as well?

When staying in hotels, I'm sometimes more afraid of the cooties in the bathroom, on the remote control, on the curtains, telephone. Also afraid of viruses, mold and fungus. Making myself sick here.

could be worse:

http://www.opefe.com/images/Candiru_Pic1.jpg

Thats the South American Penis Fish.

‎Candiru (English and Portuguese) or candirú (Spanish), also known as canero or toothpick fish, are a number of genera of parasitic freshwater catfish in the family Trichomycteridae; all are native to the Amazon River. Although some candiru species have been known to grow to a size of 16 inches (~50 cm) in length, others are considerably smaller. These smaller species are known for an alleged tendency to invade and parasitize the human urethra; however, despite ethnological reports dating back to the late 19th century,[1] the first documented case of a candiru parasitizing a human did not occur until 1997.

The definition of candiru differs between authors. The word has been used to refer to only Vandellia cirrhosa, the entire genus Vandellia, the subfamily Vandelliinae, or even the two subfamilies Vandelliinae and Stegophilinae.[2][3][4][5]

Although lurid anecdotes of attacks on humans abound, there is only one documented case of a candiru entering a human orifice.[7] In this instance, the victim had a candiru swim into his urethra as he urinated while thigh-deep in a river.[8] Jeremy Wade, a British biologist investigated this incident for the Discovery Channel's River Monsters[9] The victim underwent a 2 hour urological surgery to remove the candiru. Dr. D. Scott Smith, Chief of Infectious Diseases at Kaiser Permanente described the candiru as having spikes to assist it clinging to its host. (see video)

It was also once thought that the fish was attracted to urine (as the candiru's primary prey emits urea from its gills, but this was later discredited in formal experimentation.[4][10]

Indeed, the fish appears not to have any response to any chemical attractants, and primarily hunts by visual tracking.[10] Bathers in the region are, however, warned not to urinate while swimming, out of concern that the expansion of the urethra during urination will allow the fish to enter the otherwise closed orifice.[8]

Traditional treatment for candiru is said to involve the use of extracts from the jagua or jenipapo plant (Genipa americana) and the Buitach apple, as it is thought that these two plants together will kill and then dislodge the fish.[11] However surgery is now generally the preferred approach.[12]

Cheerleader pics anyone? :D

I just had found some in DFW this weekend on my layover. Looks like DAL is going to buy me a new roller bag. I'm now quarantining in the garage when I get home from trips as I DO NOT want those little bastards in the house. Keep your eyes open guys, they're out there in large numbers now.:confused:

Bump


Bed bugs are becoming resistant to common insecticides