"In fairy tales and legends, the things that matter come in threes. Three little pigs, three bears, three witches."
I just wanted to nod to that sentence, because it charmed me. I love the connections you make.
As for the rest of this tragic and funny (dark funny, not so much ha-ha funny), I've never experienced a bedbug infestation, but I've gone rounds with fleas, thanks to an infestation of dogs and cats who made my home theirs over many years' time. Or are fleas considered bedbugs, too? They're quite indestructible, and they feed on people, too.
I was saved last summer from bedbugs by my almost AirBnB host, when she called me the day before my scheduled stay to cancel because the guest prior reported the little flaxseed-shaped invaders. So, phew!
I hope you never have to contend with that nightmare ever again. xo
Long ago we had a terrible flea infestation that used to wake us in the night. We would vacuum frantically to no avail. Thanks to flea prevention meds, neither of our dogs has brought home fleas. Some travelers think fleas are a bigger problem than bedbugs in hotels. They refuse to stay in a hotel that welcomes pets. Oh, the things you learn in a New York Times discussion thread!
I've used flea prevention methods for years and they work very well for the most part, but sometimes they can still get carried in and hop off their dog taxi's backs. I'm mindful, haven't had a problem in years, which is great, because I'd prefer to not have to wear a flea collar too! And we have a problem with tick here too. Creepy crawly things in bed are the worst. I'll pass. xo
Barging in to say that I, too, am fascinated by the number three (hence the title of my new memoir, Troika, which means a group of three in Russian). And that I, too, am charmed by so many of your turns of phrase and your connections, Rona.
We have not had bedbug infestations (at least not yet, and I hope never, because they really do sound like a recipe for madness) but we did have wildlife (rats, mice, a raccoon) traipsing through our house for several months while our yard was being landscaped. During this time, we also found half a squirrel in the garage, probably courtesy of one of our cats. We never found the other half, which still disturbs me.
I'm never going anywhere ever again, and never having anyone visit ever again, and never eating anything or wearing anything that comes in any kind of packaging ever again. Let's see a bedbug invade my home!
I do indeed have a story and some day I will tell it properly. For the moment, my story is about my having 80 itchy bites on my body, while my husband had none. My daughter also had them. Panicked and getting different answers from professionals. Nope, no bed bugs in this apt, they told us. We spend the 4K bucks bringing those giant machines in anyway. The heated the apt to kill them if they were there. Didn't stop the bites. I was beside myself. What we discovered weeks later after moving out with 2 cats to various friends' homes: They were RAT MITES! microscopic organisms that were coming up thru floor boards from rats in the basement (we live on ground floor). Only some people get bitten (hence my immune spouse). The rats came over to our building because of a huge construction project across the street. It was all solved in due time, but what a nightmare. Wish I had en emoji for this. :)
Good grief! I’ve never heard of rat mites. You’d think the so-called experts would identify the pests before sweeping in for a multi-thousand-dollar job. Insects do indeed prefer some people to others, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that sensitivity varies. My husband is a mosquito magnet and got bedbug welts when I did not.
Twice, many years ago, my family had a bedbug adventure. The first was in a hotel near Baden Baden, Germany, where my father took us on a little vacation from the Army base where he was stationed in Stuttgart. It was an old luxury hotel, commandeered post-war by the US Army. I was bitten and covered in welts. I remember my mother bagging all our belongings and taking them to an incinerator-like device to be dry heated to the point of killing the pests and eggs, but leaving our clothing stiff and scratchy.
The second encounter was when I was 10, visiting Amsterdam from a different US Army base in Kassel. My thrifty parents reserved us a hotel called the Old Nickel. Unfortunately, their desire to save money landed us in the Red Light District, and I awoke once again covered in welts from my neck to my butt. I didn't reveal my discomfort to my parents until the end of the day, after sitting on a tour bus with my hand down the back of my pants scratching until I bled. The humiliation of having my mother pull down my pants to show my backside to the hotel desk manager and the local chemist lives on to this day, just as vivid as our visit to the house of Ann Frank.
Oh, Kathryn. I ache for young you. No one is more easily embarrassed than a little girl. As for the red-light district, these pests can make themselves at home anywhere.
You are so right, but at the time, sleeping in beds that are rented by the hour seems like an unwise way to save money. By the way, that hotel is still in operation in the same spot, as a popular tourist hotel. I captured it in a photo when I stumbled through De Wallen on a recent trip to visit my grandson.
About 30 some years ago, I developed a relationship with an exterminator that I wouldn’t exactly call an affair since he definitely was not my type but in retrospect was much more than what one might consider a normal business relationship. You had captain exterminator I had Dr. exterminator. He was my therapist and I relied on our 30 minute or so phone calls every morning to get me through the day. It began when I returned home one day to find two rodents staring at me in my garage. Doctor exterminator informed me that I had a rat infestation. My husband didn’t believe him and certainly did not want to pay the absurd amount of money he was asking for to rid my home of these monsters, but I secretly fell slave to his every demand since his reassurance that my life would return to normal if I followed everything he said meant so much more to me than my non-exterminator husband. What did he know anyway??
This one sent my heart racing with remembered panic over two flea infestations in our house. I thought I would lose my mind. Your situation was far worse, of course — trying to sell a house while battling the invincible would have sent me howling to an undisclosed location.
OMFG!! I don’t know why, but I never, EVER, put luggage on the bed. If my husband does I remove it immediately. A sixth sense. As I sit and write this I am huddled in bed in an Airbnb 😱 I don’t have a bedbug story but a similar one with three cats and fleas that had me in tears. This was more than 30 years ago before that stuff you squirt between their shoulder blades. I remember bathing angry cats and crying. We only got rid of them when we moved from Pennsylvania to high altitude New Mexico. That’s what it took😸 Yours is a true horror story!
Well, Martha, now I know what to do if our dog ever picks up fleas (not likely; she’s on prevention meds). We survived a truly awful flea problem years ago. We were living in a furnished apartment and the problem didn’t end until we moved.
Fleas suck, no pun intended. Now we have horrible ticks but they live outside and are easy to spot and remove plus again there’s the toxic topical. It doesn’t always work though. Having had Lyme twice, a cat with Lyme, and a dog with erlichiosis I am keen to move someplace without ticks.
My husband and I recently went through a 3 month battle with bedbugs and I've been thinking of writing the funny/not funny story of that misadventure. I do believe we know everything there is to know about bedbugs now. I might even go so far as to say we know how they think. If bedbugs can be said to think, I suppose how they operate is more accurate. Our summer was non existent last year, such was the extent of our battle, confined to home so as not to be seen as potential bedbug spreaders, similarly unable to have guests over. They seem to have been banished as of early October. We still check regularly though and probably always will.
While you’re in the thick of it, you have to be careful who you tell. You don’t want to become a pariah. The myth persists that bedbugs follow dirty people. It’s true they thrive in messy places with lots of cozy corners to hide in.
Exactly. One of our daughters still has not visited. Most people have no idea if they haven't gone through it. But my thoughts went to the poor souls who never travel but picked up a bug from a movie theatre seat as you mentioned, or were invaded from a neighbouring apartment. I can't imagine fighting the battle we did without my washer and dryer with the sanitary settings. Imagine having to take all your laundry to a laundromat? Or having to go to work everyday unlike we retired folks who could vacuum and do laundry and search every nook and cranny everyday if necessary? Not to mention paying the big bucks to have an exterminator come in. 🙄
If you follow all the recommended steps, there truly is no end to the prevention routine. Many people quarantine their luggage in the garage after a trip. Where does that leave us condo-dwellers?
My husband used to travel and stay in hotels (nice ones too) a lot for business. One time he came home with several bug bites on his back. I made sure i disinfected everything he had on the trip. After that incident, I always made sure that his suitcase was never brought to the bedroom. After each trip I always unloaded it, sprayed it with tea tree oil and sprinkled it with diatomaceaous earth. As for the clothing it was tossed in a plactic garbage bag with diatomaceous earth and tied shut before it was washed in hot water.
Some people leave the luggage in the garage to freeze before unpacking. Others put everything through a hot dryer. It sounds as if these hotel stays are now safely in the past. Sleep well!
I love that you sent a suspected carcass taped to your letterhead. That reminded me of a woman I feared may have been mistakenly diagnosed with dilusional parasitosis. I always insisted on looking under a microscope at whatever bit of fuzz and dander she brought in. Look! Is that a leg? There! I see an antenna.
My first encounter with the biting bastards was in a youth hostel in London. I awoke with one eye swollen shut and bites all over my body. The next time was a half-century later in a horrible motel in Folkston, GA. We were driving home from Fl. I have pictures.
I am now in the habit of flipping mattresses and cringe whenever a guest puts their suitcase on the bed. I have a floater in my left eye that has made me jump out of a warm bed.
Eileen, if I am ever a guest in your home, I promise not to put my suitcase on the bed. And I'm chagrined to admit that my suitcase has sat on quite a few beds of friends and family.
Not that you'd be wanting to cross the border any time soon, but if you put your bags on the bed I'd just cringe silently, as I do when my son visits on his way home from exotic places I've never been. Your visit would be worth the cringe.
I, too, was a victim of bed bugs. I, too, went the intense heat treatment route. It basically worked but, in the process, broke windowpanes, melted paint off of surfaces and create a scene of presumed vandalism in each room where the treatment personnel had emptier drawers onto the floor. A handful of days later, I awoke with bites again. Calling the treatment manager, I asked about the need for another visit. Instead, he suggested using a vaporizer filled with diluted neem oil. Supplemented by full strength alcohol sprayed on the matrasses and baking soda around the footing of the bedframe. After taking these actions, the eradication of the infestation seemed to be complete. Just saying, folks...do your research. There are non-chemical treatments available which you can administer yourselves. Of course, these don't make $$$ for those in the business to assist desperate clients so they are difficult to uncover. Good luck and don't unpack your suitcase when traveling, which is a very proact way to prevent bringing them home.
It took me twice as long to fashion a comment on this terrifying-but-can't-look-away story, given the need to investigate, mid-word, every hint of an itch. Gah! All the characters have faces in my mind -- the cheerful receptionist, the confident head technician, the team of workers, the crusty super, and Jane. Dear Jane! Perhaps your next publication will be a guide for those of us looking at upcoming hotel stays (I'll be at a conference in less than two weeks!). Gaah!
The closest I've come to this is a flea infestation on the ground floor of a rented apartment, a second one above and both with wall to wall carpet. No amount of treatment for our two cats made a hint of difference. We only found relief by moving.
I hope this never happens to you again, Rona, and I appreciate knowing to go straight to chemical warfare should I ever have the misfortune myself. Gaaahh!
Elizabeth, I'll take it as a compliment that you can picture all these characters, some of whom I never actually saw (like the captain himself). We travel quite a bit less these days and rarely eat in restaurants or go to movies, so I think we're relatively safe. Maybe that's just cockiness talking.
I remember this one so well (maybe because I was itchy for almost three years straight for unrelated reasons). This story and your post about swallowing a fish bone have stuck with me like Bazooka gum in my kid sister's hair!
I think of you every time I dare to have fish abroad! Ceviche has become my go-to in lieu. Or, when in Africa, the Nile perch or tilapia have bones as big as toothpicks making them a worry-free order.
We had bedbugs once in NYC... an apartment with toddlers. It was the most harrowing experience you can imagine that's not an actual tragedy. My husband travels often for work: I make him strip and leave his suitcase in the bathtub so I can inspect it before anything gets reintroduced. You sit on a public chair, you wash your clothes. Bedbugs are how a relaxed person loses any semblance of chill.
Wash my clothes every time I sit in a public chair? Not going there, ever. "Harrowing but not a tragedy" is the way to describe an infestation that leaves a deep imprint on the mind.
This brought me back to the lice years, which I don’t ever want to return to. The long hours I spent meticulously combing through our kids’ hair with the lice combs, the olive oil and shower cap routines, the washing and tumble-drying of EVERYTHING, the blame I heaped on another family who seemingly couldn’t be bothered to get their lice under control and would start the whole cycle again…oy.
Re hotels, I don’t put a suitcase on the floor anymore, especially if there’s carpet. Bedbugs seem to enjoy a good hotel carpet…
And there’s only one luggage rack to fight over. Why any family would be casual about head lice I can’t begin to imagine. Somehow we escaped that scourge.
I think it’s easier for boys with their short hair to escape lice than girls…and apparently most lice have become resistant to chemical lice killers and need to be removed by hand…TMI on lice, I realize!
"In fairy tales and legends, the things that matter come in threes. Three little pigs, three bears, three witches."
I just wanted to nod to that sentence, because it charmed me. I love the connections you make.
As for the rest of this tragic and funny (dark funny, not so much ha-ha funny), I've never experienced a bedbug infestation, but I've gone rounds with fleas, thanks to an infestation of dogs and cats who made my home theirs over many years' time. Or are fleas considered bedbugs, too? They're quite indestructible, and they feed on people, too.
I was saved last summer from bedbugs by my almost AirBnB host, when she called me the day before my scheduled stay to cancel because the guest prior reported the little flaxseed-shaped invaders. So, phew!
I hope you never have to contend with that nightmare ever again. xo
Long ago we had a terrible flea infestation that used to wake us in the night. We would vacuum frantically to no avail. Thanks to flea prevention meds, neither of our dogs has brought home fleas. Some travelers think fleas are a bigger problem than bedbugs in hotels. They refuse to stay in a hotel that welcomes pets. Oh, the things you learn in a New York Times discussion thread!
I've used flea prevention methods for years and they work very well for the most part, but sometimes they can still get carried in and hop off their dog taxi's backs. I'm mindful, haven't had a problem in years, which is great, because I'd prefer to not have to wear a flea collar too! And we have a problem with tick here too. Creepy crawly things in bed are the worst. I'll pass. xo
I can still smell those awful flea collars.
I use Seresto collars for my pups, and they work great, and they last for 8 months. No smell. xo
Barging in to say that I, too, am fascinated by the number three (hence the title of my new memoir, Troika, which means a group of three in Russian). And that I, too, am charmed by so many of your turns of phrase and your connections, Rona.
We have not had bedbug infestations (at least not yet, and I hope never, because they really do sound like a recipe for madness) but we did have wildlife (rats, mice, a raccoon) traipsing through our house for several months while our yard was being landscaped. During this time, we also found half a squirrel in the garage, probably courtesy of one of our cats. We never found the other half, which still disturbs me.
Ewww. xo
Cats do like to leave mangled trophies around and about. Ours specialized in mice.
I'm never going anywhere ever again, and never having anyone visit ever again, and never eating anything or wearing anything that comes in any kind of packaging ever again. Let's see a bedbug invade my home!
Yep. That’ll show ‘em.
I do indeed have a story and some day I will tell it properly. For the moment, my story is about my having 80 itchy bites on my body, while my husband had none. My daughter also had them. Panicked and getting different answers from professionals. Nope, no bed bugs in this apt, they told us. We spend the 4K bucks bringing those giant machines in anyway. The heated the apt to kill them if they were there. Didn't stop the bites. I was beside myself. What we discovered weeks later after moving out with 2 cats to various friends' homes: They were RAT MITES! microscopic organisms that were coming up thru floor boards from rats in the basement (we live on ground floor). Only some people get bitten (hence my immune spouse). The rats came over to our building because of a huge construction project across the street. It was all solved in due time, but what a nightmare. Wish I had en emoji for this. :)
Good grief! I’ve never heard of rat mites. You’d think the so-called experts would identify the pests before sweeping in for a multi-thousand-dollar job. Insects do indeed prefer some people to others, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that sensitivity varies. My husband is a mosquito magnet and got bedbug welts when I did not.
Aaaarrrggghhh! I live on a ground floor above cellar space. Now I have a new thing to obsess about. Yikes 😱
Caryl, I don’t know that it has much to do with cellar space. You can get bedbugs on any floor. Truly, there is no safe floor.
Oh, I know. It was the story about the rat mites that set me off!
Twice, many years ago, my family had a bedbug adventure. The first was in a hotel near Baden Baden, Germany, where my father took us on a little vacation from the Army base where he was stationed in Stuttgart. It was an old luxury hotel, commandeered post-war by the US Army. I was bitten and covered in welts. I remember my mother bagging all our belongings and taking them to an incinerator-like device to be dry heated to the point of killing the pests and eggs, but leaving our clothing stiff and scratchy.
The second encounter was when I was 10, visiting Amsterdam from a different US Army base in Kassel. My thrifty parents reserved us a hotel called the Old Nickel. Unfortunately, their desire to save money landed us in the Red Light District, and I awoke once again covered in welts from my neck to my butt. I didn't reveal my discomfort to my parents until the end of the day, after sitting on a tour bus with my hand down the back of my pants scratching until I bled. The humiliation of having my mother pull down my pants to show my backside to the hotel desk manager and the local chemist lives on to this day, just as vivid as our visit to the house of Ann Frank.
Oh, Kathryn. I ache for young you. No one is more easily embarrassed than a little girl. As for the red-light district, these pests can make themselves at home anywhere.
You are so right, but at the time, sleeping in beds that are rented by the hour seems like an unwise way to save money. By the way, that hotel is still in operation in the same spot, as a popular tourist hotel. I captured it in a photo when I stumbled through De Wallen on a recent trip to visit my grandson.
And I thought I had the world’s most frugal mother!
Ooof, Rona, I feel a little itchy just reading this. Eeew. What an unwanted adventure.
The unlikely advantage of less frequent traveling: minimal bedbug risk. On one road trip, we might stay in 15 different places.
About 30 some years ago, I developed a relationship with an exterminator that I wouldn’t exactly call an affair since he definitely was not my type but in retrospect was much more than what one might consider a normal business relationship. You had captain exterminator I had Dr. exterminator. He was my therapist and I relied on our 30 minute or so phone calls every morning to get me through the day. It began when I returned home one day to find two rodents staring at me in my garage. Doctor exterminator informed me that I had a rat infestation. My husband didn’t believe him and certainly did not want to pay the absurd amount of money he was asking for to rid my home of these monsters, but I secretly fell slave to his every demand since his reassurance that my life would return to normal if I followed everything he said meant so much more to me than my non-exterminator husband. What did he know anyway??
Ah, yes. That familiar dynamic. You’re in so deep with your patient and supposedly all-knowing expert, you can’t imagine breaking up.
This one sent my heart racing with remembered panic over two flea infestations in our house. I thought I would lose my mind. Your situation was far worse, of course — trying to sell a house while battling the invincible would have sent me howling to an undisclosed location.
The house was sold but we worried about the deal falling through. Legal action seemed a possibility. We were lucky to have a reasonable purchaser.
OMFG!! I don’t know why, but I never, EVER, put luggage on the bed. If my husband does I remove it immediately. A sixth sense. As I sit and write this I am huddled in bed in an Airbnb 😱 I don’t have a bedbug story but a similar one with three cats and fleas that had me in tears. This was more than 30 years ago before that stuff you squirt between their shoulder blades. I remember bathing angry cats and crying. We only got rid of them when we moved from Pennsylvania to high altitude New Mexico. That’s what it took😸 Yours is a true horror story!
Well, Martha, now I know what to do if our dog ever picks up fleas (not likely; she’s on prevention meds). We survived a truly awful flea problem years ago. We were living in a furnished apartment and the problem didn’t end until we moved.
Fleas suck, no pun intended. Now we have horrible ticks but they live outside and are easy to spot and remove plus again there’s the toxic topical. It doesn’t always work though. Having had Lyme twice, a cat with Lyme, and a dog with erlichiosis I am keen to move someplace without ticks.
Lyme twice? Once is grim enough, according to friends still affected. Oh, the risks we take on when we share our lives with animals.
My husband and I recently went through a 3 month battle with bedbugs and I've been thinking of writing the funny/not funny story of that misadventure. I do believe we know everything there is to know about bedbugs now. I might even go so far as to say we know how they think. If bedbugs can be said to think, I suppose how they operate is more accurate. Our summer was non existent last year, such was the extent of our battle, confined to home so as not to be seen as potential bedbug spreaders, similarly unable to have guests over. They seem to have been banished as of early October. We still check regularly though and probably always will.
While you’re in the thick of it, you have to be careful who you tell. You don’t want to become a pariah. The myth persists that bedbugs follow dirty people. It’s true they thrive in messy places with lots of cozy corners to hide in.
Exactly. One of our daughters still has not visited. Most people have no idea if they haven't gone through it. But my thoughts went to the poor souls who never travel but picked up a bug from a movie theatre seat as you mentioned, or were invaded from a neighbouring apartment. I can't imagine fighting the battle we did without my washer and dryer with the sanitary settings. Imagine having to take all your laundry to a laundromat? Or having to go to work everyday unlike we retired folks who could vacuum and do laundry and search every nook and cranny everyday if necessary? Not to mention paying the big bucks to have an exterminator come in. 🙄
If you follow all the recommended steps, there truly is no end to the prevention routine. Many people quarantine their luggage in the garage after a trip. Where does that leave us condo-dwellers?
My husband used to travel and stay in hotels (nice ones too) a lot for business. One time he came home with several bug bites on his back. I made sure i disinfected everything he had on the trip. After that incident, I always made sure that his suitcase was never brought to the bedroom. After each trip I always unloaded it, sprayed it with tea tree oil and sprinkled it with diatomaceaous earth. As for the clothing it was tossed in a plactic garbage bag with diatomaceous earth and tied shut before it was washed in hot water.
Some people leave the luggage in the garage to freeze before unpacking. Others put everything through a hot dryer. It sounds as if these hotel stays are now safely in the past. Sleep well!
I love that you sent a suspected carcass taped to your letterhead. That reminded me of a woman I feared may have been mistakenly diagnosed with dilusional parasitosis. I always insisted on looking under a microscope at whatever bit of fuzz and dander she brought in. Look! Is that a leg? There! I see an antenna.
My first encounter with the biting bastards was in a youth hostel in London. I awoke with one eye swollen shut and bites all over my body. The next time was a half-century later in a horrible motel in Folkston, GA. We were driving home from Fl. I have pictures.
I am now in the habit of flipping mattresses and cringe whenever a guest puts their suitcase on the bed. I have a floater in my left eye that has made me jump out of a warm bed.
Eileen, if I am ever a guest in your home, I promise not to put my suitcase on the bed. And I'm chagrined to admit that my suitcase has sat on quite a few beds of friends and family.
Not that you'd be wanting to cross the border any time soon, but if you put your bags on the bed I'd just cringe silently, as I do when my son visits on his way home from exotic places I've never been. Your visit would be worth the cringe.
I, too, was a victim of bed bugs. I, too, went the intense heat treatment route. It basically worked but, in the process, broke windowpanes, melted paint off of surfaces and create a scene of presumed vandalism in each room where the treatment personnel had emptier drawers onto the floor. A handful of days later, I awoke with bites again. Calling the treatment manager, I asked about the need for another visit. Instead, he suggested using a vaporizer filled with diluted neem oil. Supplemented by full strength alcohol sprayed on the matrasses and baking soda around the footing of the bedframe. After taking these actions, the eradication of the infestation seemed to be complete. Just saying, folks...do your research. There are non-chemical treatments available which you can administer yourselves. Of course, these don't make $$$ for those in the business to assist desperate clients so they are difficult to uncover. Good luck and don't unpack your suitcase when traveling, which is a very proact way to prevent bringing them home.
Broken windowpanes and melted paint? Geez, I guess we got off lightly. Yes to not unpacking your suitcase in hotels.
It took me twice as long to fashion a comment on this terrifying-but-can't-look-away story, given the need to investigate, mid-word, every hint of an itch. Gah! All the characters have faces in my mind -- the cheerful receptionist, the confident head technician, the team of workers, the crusty super, and Jane. Dear Jane! Perhaps your next publication will be a guide for those of us looking at upcoming hotel stays (I'll be at a conference in less than two weeks!). Gaah!
The closest I've come to this is a flea infestation on the ground floor of a rented apartment, a second one above and both with wall to wall carpet. No amount of treatment for our two cats made a hint of difference. We only found relief by moving.
I hope this never happens to you again, Rona, and I appreciate knowing to go straight to chemical warfare should I ever have the misfortune myself. Gaaahh!
Elizabeth, I'll take it as a compliment that you can picture all these characters, some of whom I never actually saw (like the captain himself). We travel quite a bit less these days and rarely eat in restaurants or go to movies, so I think we're relatively safe. Maybe that's just cockiness talking.
I remember this one so well (maybe because I was itchy for almost three years straight for unrelated reasons). This story and your post about swallowing a fish bone have stuck with me like Bazooka gum in my kid sister's hair!
Ah, the fishbone. That was way back in my blogging days and I am honored that you remember. Maybe I'll revisit it here.
I think of you every time I dare to have fish abroad! Ceviche has become my go-to in lieu. Or, when in Africa, the Nile perch or tilapia have bones as big as toothpicks making them a worry-free order.
We had bedbugs once in NYC... an apartment with toddlers. It was the most harrowing experience you can imagine that's not an actual tragedy. My husband travels often for work: I make him strip and leave his suitcase in the bathtub so I can inspect it before anything gets reintroduced. You sit on a public chair, you wash your clothes. Bedbugs are how a relaxed person loses any semblance of chill.
Wash my clothes every time I sit in a public chair? Not going there, ever. "Harrowing but not a tragedy" is the way to describe an infestation that leaves a deep imprint on the mind.
This brought me back to the lice years, which I don’t ever want to return to. The long hours I spent meticulously combing through our kids’ hair with the lice combs, the olive oil and shower cap routines, the washing and tumble-drying of EVERYTHING, the blame I heaped on another family who seemingly couldn’t be bothered to get their lice under control and would start the whole cycle again…oy.
Re hotels, I don’t put a suitcase on the floor anymore, especially if there’s carpet. Bedbugs seem to enjoy a good hotel carpet…
And there’s only one luggage rack to fight over. Why any family would be casual about head lice I can’t begin to imagine. Somehow we escaped that scourge.
I think it’s easier for boys with their short hair to escape lice than girls…and apparently most lice have become resistant to chemical lice killers and need to be removed by hand…TMI on lice, I realize!