Bed bugs on the eve of summer vacation: A mom?s guide [+video]

Bed bugs come to visit one Virginia family and Mom does a quick inventory of prevention methods ?? a helpful tool as you push off for summer vacation and beds others use.

By Lisa Suhay,?Guest Blogger / May 22, 2013

As the kids watched their beds, blankets, and dressers make their way to the curb, our son Avery, 14, said, ?Man, I never realized grandmothers meant it literally when they say ?Goodnight. Sleep tight. Don?t let the bed bugs bite.? ?

Skip to next paragraph Lisa Suhay

Lisa Suhay, who has four sons at home in Norfolk, Va., is a children?s book author and founder of the Norfolk (Va.) Initiative for Chess Excellence (NICE) , a nonprofit organization serving at-risk youth via mentoring and teaching the game of chess for critical thinking and life strategies.

Recent posts

' + google_ads[0].line2 + '
' + google_ads[0].line3 + '

'; } else if (google_ads.length > 1) { ad_unit += ''; } } document.getElementById("ad_unit").innerHTML += ad_unit; google_adnum += google_ads.length; return; } var google_adnum = 0; google_ad_client = "pub-6743622525202572"; google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '1'; google_feedback = "on"; google_ad_type = "text"; // google_adtest = "on"; google_image_size = '230x105'; google_skip = '0'; // -->

Subscribe Today to the Monitor

Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of
The Christian Science Monitor
Weekly Digital Edition

Bed bugs are real, easily transferred to our homes, and expensive to cope with. However, everything we need to know comes from my granny, her sayings, and some moms who went buggy over these critters.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, bed bugs ? blood-sucking insects that feed on humans while they sleep ? are literally everywhere. ?Everyone is at risk for getting bed bugs when visiting an infected area," the CDC reports. "However, anyone who travels frequently and shares living and sleeping quarters where other people have previously slept has a higher risk of being bitten and or spreading a bed bug infestation.?

Contrary to urban legend, bed bugs are not microscopic; those are mites. Bed bugs are reddish-brown, wingless, about the size of an apple seed, and can live several months without a blood meal.

I can tell you that while bites are painless, welts left behind are itchy, but they don?t transmit diseases. Some people are mildly allergic to them. The welts from bed bugs sometimes get written off as mosquito bites.

That was all the bad stuff. Now let?s talk about getting them to bug-off. I was perfectly serious about taking our cues from nursery rhymes and old wives' expressions because those old girls have forgotten more than we even know.

The bed bug, Cimex lectularius, was my childhood nickname given to me by my maternal grandmother, Anne. She called me ?My little vance (vants)? which is Yiddish for bed bug. This makes little sense because she was a blonde, blue-eyed, Roman Catholic to the bone. According to her, it was also a Polish expression of endearment. I looked it up and in Polish the word for bed bug is?pluskwa.

While she might have been a little off-base on nicknames, I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that Grandma Anneisms had some practical sense when it came to bed bug riddance.

?Some Like it Hot,??was one of my Grandma Anne?s favorite films and it works as an extermination plan for bed bugs because bed bugs hate warmth, according to Scientific American.

However professional heat treatments are costly, between $2,000 and $4,000 per single-family home, according to Scientific American, which also tells us that today?s bed bug has become ?pesticide resistant,? while heat remains effective.

The best and thriftiest solution comes from friend Theresa who had them through two moves until she learned to put things in the dryer for 25 minutes and then put the still hot items into a plastic bag in a warm place for a few hours. She actually had bags in her car in the sun for the day and that did the job better than chemical treatments that had repeatedly failed to get the job done.

That means if it can go in the dryer on high for 25 minutes you?re probably going to be able to keep it. If the bed doesn?t fit in there it?s time to call the trash guys for a bulk pickup or rent a dumpster.

?Snug as a bug in a rug.??Well that says it all for how we got bed bugs at our house after accepting a beautiful, but infested rug from a neighbor. Beware the magic carpet that will take you on a hellish ride through bed bug land.

We put it in the room shared by Avery and Ian, 18,? over the tatty old tan wall-to-wall carpeting to hide the stains and make the room bearably warm in winter.

At first we thought the plush oriental carpet was itchy because of its age and not being aired. Later we thought it might have mites so we sprinkled it with powdered insecticide. This had the effect of sending the bugs deeper into the carpet where they lay dormant through the cold winter as our furnace repeatedly broke down ? thus keeping the house quite cold.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/deA3y73kOks/Bed-bugs-on-the-eve-of-summer-vacation-A-mom-s-guide-video

branson mo monkees songs rail gun harrisburg top chef texas great pacific garbage patch ben affleck and jennifer garner