Bed Bug Bedlam: Part II

Bedbug Bedlam

October 16 & 17, 2010

12:00 AM to 2:00 AM

When I taught high school I had a knack for finding plagiarism in student papers.  It all started with just a slight hint that something was amiss.  A clever phrase, a vocabulary word that didn’t quite fit the student, or maybe it was a series of well articulated facts.  I wanted to believe it was all original work, but just a few words typed into Google or AltaVista usually revealed the original authors.  It was just a knack, something I was good at.

                                                   

Well it seems I’ve got the same knack for bedbugs.  Yes, that’s right.  Bedbugs again!  It’s not that I didn’t trust the local economy chain, it’s just that the room didn’t seem quite right.  It wasn’t that the towels were small and thin, or that there was just a trace of mold around the handrails in the bathtub.  It wasn’t even the Hershey wrapper on the floor, or even that the sheets that were long past good use for the traveling tourist, it was just that nagging doubt.  So, I checked the beds.  On first inspection I just found one pair of very thin sheets with small holes on one bed and a better pair on the other.  We picked ‘the other’ for sleep and the first for suitcases as there were no luggage racks, counter tops or tables.  At first I didn’t see the pesty little critters.

Tired from a big day in Chicago and a couple hours drive to Wisconsin we carted our stuff in, brushed our teeth, checked the beds and went to the pool to just work out some of the kinks we’d collected in the car.  We returned to the room and propped ourselves up on the bed with the pillows and watched an old episode of Criminal Minds.  It ended and we turned the TV off.  Jack went to brush his teeth and I pulled the covers back.  YIKES!  EEK!  And OMG!  Sure enough.  A little coffee bean like critter scampered across the bed, another was under the pillow and then we spied one or two scurrying behind the headboard.  I yelped and Jack wandered back around the corner to see what freaked me out this time.  He could see the little nuisance as it streaked to his side of the bed.

With a mumbled “oh shit”, Jack pulled on his t-shirt , pulled up his jeans and went to talk to the manager.  He’ll put us in another room he says, but when he knocks on Room 214 someone answers. It turns out there’s no room at the Inn.  He dutifully calls around and there are no vacancies in the area as there’s a local dance competition.  Everything is booked.   It’s now 1:00 AM.  We’re fleeing the place just as fast as we can.  Now, we’re on our own to find a room tonight.  They offer to refund our room, obviously.  They’ll even pay for whatever room we find.  But I’m traumatized and it’s late and this is our second experience with bed bugs. 

NPR ran a story that we heard on the first day of our travels.  A national bedbug expert discussed the current ‘epidemic’ that was impacting not just hotels, but theaters, schools,  and other places where people gather in groups.  He said it can happen in the best of facilities as well as, obviously, the worst.  For us, it’s been in places that are a bit suspicious in the first place.  Bedbugs look like miniature coffee beans with legs.  They like to hang out at the head of the bed, in the mattress binding and between the mattress and the box springs.  They even like to gather behind the headboards.  They are attracted to heat and moisture, which is why they tend to gather at the head of the bed. The NPR expert said he’s been known to not only take the bedding off and look between the mattress and box springs, but that he’s gone so far as to take down headboards.  Hotels and motels don’t like that he warned.  And, if he doesn’t find bedbugs, but is still suspicious he rearranges the bedding and sleeps at the foot of the bed!  Another caution is to never put your suitcase on the floor or the bed, but to only put it on hard surfaces like tables and dresser tops or luggage racks.  All these hints we’ve been following.  An extra precaution is to put everything in your laundry room and wash everything that was in your suitcase when you get home, just in case you weren’t the only ones traveling.  The ‘epidemic’ isn’t really here yet he says, but I tend to disagree.  Lucky us!  We found a nice, clean Best Western.  They had a guest laundry right down the hall from our room.  We got a late check out and spent the morning watching Sunday new and doing laundry.