This is our guide to identify the enemy . If you ’re certain you have bed bugs , read our guide to thehousehold equivalent of engage nuclear war to kill bed bug .
My roomy Dan confirmed our suspicions of a bed bug plague earlier that week , communicated to me in a serial of frantic texts fill with F - bomb and existential dread . His arm were cover in bite . His litter was dotted with dark , dry spots of stock . He ’d see them crawling , lento and inexorably , on his sheet . His mattress was our flat ’s ground zero , which is why when I demand him about it , he replied with a single text edition : " Kill it with flaming . "
Neither I nor Dan had a clear theme of what layer bugs really looked like or how they behaved before they obtrude upon our home . If we had , we might have foreclose them , or at least reacted with cooler heads . In the interest of helping others get through this unforgettable and often life - altering experience , here are a few basic fact about bed hemipterous insect unsuspecting victims should know before they front under the mattress . I bid I did .
Oren Aks/Thrillist
What do bed bugs look like?
bottom bugs are flat , round insect with a segmented exoskeleton , not unlike an armadillo . They can climb up walls and on ceiling , flatten their bodies to grovel through cracks and the crinkle of mattresses , and grow to be no bigger than an orchard apple tree seed or the top dog of a pin .
Bed bug eggs are an “F you” to basic decency
These varmint procreate viatraumatic insemination– which is a fancy way of say they proliferate through intimate violation – by click the female ’s KO’d shell and inserting spermatozoan instantly at heart . The females lie tiny dummy - sized eggs in your mattress or in tiny dark cracks where it ’s affectionate and safe . A single female germ is capable of delivering up to 200 - 250 eggs in her lifespan . In six to 10 days , those nut hatch and your problem multiply exponentially .
Bed bugs bite like the perfect vampire insect
You wo n’t feel seam germ crawl on your skin or prick you , because they interject you with a blunt , anti - clotting spittle before they commence to feed . It takes them just three to 10 minutes to fill out a alimentation cycle on your flesh , and they only need one blood repast before they shed their skin and grow into their next phase of aliveness . That intend if you wake upcovered in bottom bug bites , it ’s important to act quickly .
They have a list of (evil) superpowers that would put the X-Men to shame
That ’s veracious . Bed bugs can mutate to adapt to extreme status . Like Colossus from the 10 - Men they can inspissate their exoskeletons to kibosh toxicants from entering their systems . Like Wolverine , they have their own version of a healing agent , using enzyme to flush their systems and neutralize pesticides .
" And this is one of the reasons why they ’re so unmanageable to control , " says Paul Curtis ofTerminix , an extermination table service . What ’s more , they might even get off on it : " They can in reality change their bodies to make pesticide not only less good on them , but they can sometimes even be shake up by pesticides instead of hold in by them . "
Leaving your house for a while to lust them out wo n’t really work either . " layer bugs can actually survive for a long time without food , " says Tom King , field inspector forM&M Environmental , recalling a major liquidation he had done in a magnanimous New York City apartment and wall units .
Oren Aks/Thrillist
" Probably 10,000 bed bug get into the wall , " King articulate . " A year later , one of them found a way out because of the caulking and sealing . "
As a species, they snuck up on us
The real jocularity is that they were mostly thought to have been pass over out in the ' 50s , to the level where even entomologists learning about the varmint 20 or 30 years ago were trained to think of them as a problem of the past .
" At that point bottom bugs were not an return , " say Ron Harrison , a pest control expert withOrkin . " In postgraduate school we were shown vials of bed bugs but tell we would n’t need to care about them . "
It was only in the ' ninety that they lead off to re - emerge from the shadows , like Sauron in the beginning ofLord of the Rings , and wedon’t know exactly why .
Like Sauron, they get inside your head
" Oh , that ’s received . That ’s day-by-day , " King says when ask about the psychological toll bed glitch take on their victims . A author atThe Atlanticcalled it " bed glitch PTSD " a couple years back , point at the awful case of a fair sex stand from bipolar disorder whose seam bug infestation push back her tocommit self-destruction .
" Our customer divine service team , they ’re part technical support and part counselor , " King total . " We have clients that call out on a everyday basis . "
But don’t just take our word for it
You need only take care atsome online comment threadsto understand how emotionally damaging bed bug infestation can be . It ’s completely normal to experience anxiety , want of rest , and paranoia when bed hemipteron invade .
That ’s why you have to do something about it as soon as potential if you have them . For more selective information , please read ourfull guide to killing bed microbe . Do not wait .
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