Bedbugs in Your Pocket

If you're worried about bed bugs and have an iPhone, there's an app for you: Bed Bug Alert. (If you're not worried about bedbugs, I want to have whatever you're drinking.)  If you're on the go and want to keep apprised of where bedbug outbreaks have been report, pick up this $1.99 app.

Bed Bug Alert will also let you report bedbugs infestations wherever you spot them be it a hotel, movie theater, office or anywhere.

Bed Bug Alert has one flaw: In addition to displaying push pins on the map for where there are nearby infestations, the app also displays a push pin for your current location to anchor your location. That can cause, in the technical vernacular of psychology, a panic attack.

All Life Is Local's Tuesday tech column by Bill Adler is moving...to any day. Rather than be locked into one day a week, we wanted the flexibility to bring you relevant technology news any day of the week.

Bed Bugs Are Back (They Never Left)

I think that if Obama supporters were given a choice between bed bugs and voting for Sarah Palin supporters they'd choose Palin. And diehard Republicans would sooner see Obama reelected than a bed bug in their house. That's the level of fear surrounding bed bugs.

What can you do, especially when you travel?  As this report below shows, taking a few minutes to look over your hotel room before you snuggle up in bed is to examine the bed and furniture for stains, spots, and even dead bed bugs. You're not being paranoid by doing that. You're saving yourself from lots of agony and expense later on. Should you travel with a magnifying glass to get a good view of things? It couldn't hurt.

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Is It News? Colbert, Stewart Cancel DC Rallies Due to Bedbugs

This just in: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have canceled their October 30th rallies in Washington, DC because of "the clear and present bedbug epidemic in the nation's capital." Speaking for both Comedy Central stars, Stephen Colbert said, "When I titled my rally March to Keep the Fear Alive, it certainly wasn't my intention to actually scare the pants off everyone by bringing them to bedbug central." Colbert added in an uncharacteristically somber tone, "I'm scared, too."

Bedbug incidents have been increasing in Washington, DC over the past weeks, with reports coming in of bedbug sightings in neighborhoods and even government buildings. "There's no hiding from this threat," Colbert said.

Arianna Huffington, who was going to provide free bus transportation from New York to Washington, agreed with Stewart and Colbert's decision: "It's not just the cost of having to de-bug the buses afterward, but it would be wrong to subject people to this scourge."

Bill O'Reilly, host of The O'Reilly Factor, said, "I always knew that deep down Stewart and especially Colbert were chicken. Glenn Beck brought in thousands and Colbert and Stewart are just yellow-bellied wimps, running for the hills."

Is It News? by Bill Adler is All Life Is Local's humor column.

More Bedbugs Found in DC, Oh My!

Bedbugs have been spotted in the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center and US Agency for International Development building.  No need to include a link to those addresses:  If you work there, you already know.  And if you don't work there, you probably don't want to know.

And if that's not scary enough, here's a thought that makes me very glad I'm married.  (Well, that's not the only reason I'm glad I'm married.) What if the person you're dating has bedbugs that are getting a free ride to your place on his or her clothes? And the corollary problem: How do you know that your date's apartment doesn't have bedbugs?  MSNBC brought this issue up in a recent online article, quoting one single woman as saying, "I consider bedbugs to be in the same category as murderers or drug addicts."

Maybe the thing for single people to do is to carry around a sleep sack all the time, just in case you end up somewhere that's not your place. Sleep sacks might take the romance out of spending the night with a stranger, but it sure beats getting bedbugs.

The Examiner Home Delivery: Love It or Hate It?

Did you involuntarily get the Examiner this morning? Did you want it, along with your Washington Post, New York Times and Wall Street Journal? Judging from the buzz on numerous neighborhood listservs, the Examiner is some kind of modern day plague...like bedbugs.  People complain that they didn't want the Examiner, it's just more paper to recycle, it can't be easily stopped during vacations, and they don't care for its conservative perspective.

One annoyed homeowner put it this way, "Every Sunday the Washington Examiner is delivered to my home. The problem is that I don't want it, have never wanted it and am not even curious about it." And it's not just a DC problem: From coast to coast there are complaints. Baltimore and San Francisco have their own "Examiner problems," too.

Bedbugs Strike Cleveland Park

We're sad (and a little terrified) to report that bedbugs have been spotted in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington, DC. This plea for help was posted on the Cleveland Park Listserv this afternoon. If you have any advice, you can post your suggestions as a comment here or on the Cleveland Park Listserv.

The Centers for Disease Control and the Environmental Protection Administration recently issued a joint statement on this growing problem. You can read more about bedbugs in our previous articles here and here.


Dear Fellow Cleveland Park Listserv Members,

I'm sorry to say we have bedbugs in our home.  I'm trying to remain calm though it's not easy.  I have a lot of questions, including "how the heck did they get in our home?" but I'm not sure that can ever be answered. Right now I need to know how to get rid of them, and then how to keep them from coming back.  I don't know if they're limited to/concentrated in the bedroom.  I suspect they may also be on the sofa where I slept last night.

Friday's Forecast: 95 F, But We Have Good News About That

That's right: 95 degrees. Maybe a few degrees cooler and some places and maybe a few degrees warmer in others.  That's hot for any day, but it's especially hot for the middle of September. Friday is not the day to show off your new, wool Armani suit. In case you're curious, we're only two days away from breaking the record for 90+ days: 67 in 1980, according to the Capital Weather Gang.

Besides using the heat as your excuse to eat lots of ice cream, you can also use Friday's searing temperatures to destroy any bedbugs that are inhabiting your sheets, blankets, stuffed animals, clothes or anything else, by putting that stuff in your car, rolling up the windows, and letting the heat work some wonders.

Of you could just mentally convert the temperature to celsius and imagine that it's a lot cooler.

Bedbugs Found in Library Book: End of the World as We Know It

Photo from Duke University Yearbook

I've been a proponent of electronic books for a number of reasons. But yesterday I learned about a new reason that electronic books are preferred to the paper variety, perhaps the most powerful reason of all:

Bedbugs have been found in books.

You heard that right. While Niketown was closed in New York City because of bedbugs, that's not nearly as significant as bedbugs finding a nice, happy home inside of books. A library in Frederick, Maryland found bedbugs inside of a book in one of its branches.

How to Win the Bedbug War

There's a simple tip for thwarting bedbugs that can save you from untold misery. Bedbugs are proliferating: And when you get them, getting rid of them is difficult and expensive. It's so much better to prevent a bedbug infestation than to deal with one.

Leave your luggage in a car in the sun after a trip. Bedbugs can't survive summer's baking hot car temperatures. (It's only September and we'll have enough warm days for this before autumn takes hold.) The trunk won't do the trick: You want to let the greenhouse effect work its magic on bedbugs, which have a hard time surviving temperatures above 120 degrees, a temperature that the interior of a car can easily reach in the summer. (That temperature is well beyond the melting point of M&M's, so before you do this, remove candy, medicines, lotions, shaving cream, souvenirs, and other objects that won't withstand the heat.)

Outwitting Bedbugs

As covered in previous articles, bedbugs, officially know as C. lectularius, are on the rise throughout the United States. Travel is often to blame for the spread of pests, and bedbugs are no exception: The more people move around, the more bedbugs spread. Bedbugs have a happy relationship with humans: The more of us there are, the more food there is for bedbugs. Bedbugs don't kill or cause disease, so there's no chance of their food source dying off.

Tomorrow on All Life Is Local: Outwitting Bedbugs

Bedbug toy by Jackie Gallagher

Coming tomorrow on All Life Is Local: Outwitting Bedbugs. Be sure to check this space for travel and returning-home-from-travel tips on dealing with bedbugs. The lovely hotel you stayed at over the holiday weekend may have given you extra company to bring home.

In the meanwhile, you can read our previous articles about bedbugs here and here.  

Bedbugs typically feed on human blood at night (though if hungry enough they'll eat any time of day.) Sleeping only during the daytime with your bedroom lights on full bright is certainly one creative way to thwart bedbugs. But then you'd also have to avoid offices, movie theaters and retail stores, where bedbugs also lurk. And probably airplane seats, too, until airlines start charging extra for bedbug-free seats. Oh no:  Did I just give the airlines an idea?

The Top Ten Reasons to Join the Cleveland Park Listserv

Cleveland Park is an email list for people who live in Washington, DC and the Cleveland Park neighborhood. It's a way to meet, exchange news, and find out what's happening in the area. The Cleveland Park Listserv is Washington's most vibrant electronic community, the largest neighborhood email list in the country, and the only neighborhood email list with an columns and features.  Visit www.cleveland-park.com to join.

10.  It's an A-List that doesn't require you to be a major donor to any political party.

9.  You'll find out about new restaurants, secret parking places, neighborhood events, street construction, crime, and other activities that affect your life.

Another Shark Found in the Potomac River

Forget about the bedbug problem. Bedbugs are just a minor annoyance compared to what's lurking in the Potomac. The Washington Post reports that a second, man-eating bull shark was found in the Potomac River this week.

Second. Man-eating. Shark. Potomac River.

Those are words you don't ordinarily find together in the same sentence. And we don't want together in the same sentence.

Last Tuesday, a fisherman caught an eight-foot bull shark near Point Lookout.  You can read about that shark here.  On Wednesday an even larger, 8' 3" bull shark was caught in St. Mary's County.

Do Bedbugs Want You to Buy Used Furniture?

I recently wrote a column about bedbugs on All Life Is Local, but an article in today's New York Times inspired me to write this follow-up. The problem that the Times reported, quite simply, is what about all those used mattresses that crop up during the beginning of each school semester? The used mattress that you're getting for a song, or for free, might very well have some hitchhikers on board in the form of bedbugs.

To recap:  Bedbugs don't cause disease. That's the good news about bedbugs. Because of some unknown ecological quirk, if the bedbug bites, you won't get sick. The bad news is that bedbugs are proliferating. And they are very, very hard to kill. (The only effective way to get rid of them is to heat the room in which they are found to 140 degrees, in combination cleaning that room and using pesticides. DYI bedbug removal is almost impossible.)  More bad news: bedbug bites often hurt and itch like crazy. You don't want bedbugs. No way.

Bedbugs Aren't Just in Beds Anymore

Update:  One solution for thwarting bedbugs while on the road is to use a light weight sleep sack.  With a sleep sack you don't come into contact with the hotel's bedding and bedbugs can't come into contact with you.  


When the New York City Soho store, Epic Hollister, closed for ten days in July because of a bed bug infestation, the world changed.  What? I could get bedbugs just from shopping?

I was listening to a conversation about bedbugs on the Diane Rehm Show on NPR about bedbugs today and also learned that bedbugs are being found in offices and movie theaters, too.

I guess that's the final straw: I'm going to live my entire life inside of Facebook and never go out again. 

Why are bedbugs spreading beyond homes and hotels? Nobody knows for sure, but it may have to do with the classic predator-prey relationship: The size of the prey's population --humans-- is growing, so the size of the predator population, that lives off of the blood of humans, is also growing.  Bedbugs can easily hitchhike from person to place.

Thwarting and dealing with bedbugs isn't easy.  But having bedbugs isn't fun.  So, what to do? Other than scream, that is.  There are some treatments that you can deploy to get rid of bedbugs: Some of these involve heating your home or apartment to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature at which neither bedbugs nor wax figurines can survive. 

Before you travel, take a look at the Bedbug Registry, a database of hotels that have, um, problems.

And remember, if you get bedbugs, you're allowed to cry no matter how tough or unemotional you are otherwise.