- Panic is in the air after reports of a bedbug infestation in Paris.
- I've lived in New York City for 34 years, and have had the abysmal misfortune of getting bedbugs four times.
In the summer of 2018, I woke up in the middle of the night to find a tiny bug sitting on my pillow, staring at me. I yelped, squashed it with a tissue, and took a closer look.
Yep, it was a bedbug.
This was not my first go-around with the bloodsucking crawlers. In the 34 years I've lived in New York City, I've been unlucky enough to make this stomach-dropping discovery four separate times in three different apartments.
The first time, I refused to believe it was true until the bedbug-sniffing dog had a field day in my bedroom. The second time, I found a bug behind my bed on Valentine's Day. The third time, a new roommate moved in with them. The summer of 2018 was the fourth time — and I'm not so naive to think it will be the last.
The bugs themselves are mostly harmless — they don't spread disease, and their bites generally don't cause serious health problems. But there is a unique and acute paranoia that accompanies a bedbug experience. Each time, for days and weeks after they were gone, every bodily sensation and speck of dirt sent me into a spiral, convinced they had returned.
More recently, I started having dreams about them again after reading about Paris's apparent infestation.
Amid Fashion Week in the French capital, reports emerged of sightings in movie theaters, trains, and even Charles-de-Gaulle Airport. Videos appeared to show the tiny brown bugs on public transportation, and man-on-the-street interviews reflected creeping hysteria. "I paid close attention while stepping on the train today, to see if there were crawlers on my seat," one commuter said.
French officials haven't done much to tamp down the fear, and sightings have been reported in other French cities. "No one is immune," Emmanuel Grégoire, the deputy mayor of Paris, tweeted ominously in late September.
Now, residents of the UK and US are wondering if they're next. It's understandable: Bedbugs suck — in more ways than one — and the thought of them making their way across the Atlantic in thousands of Away carry-ons can make your skin itch. But let me be the first to assure you: The bedbugs are already here. They've been here for a long time. And they're going to stay a while.
Here's what I've learned from my time in the bedbug trenches — and remember, don't panic.
Prevention is key, but bedbugs are mostly just bad luck
The best way to deal with bedbugs is to avoid getting them altogether.
They love to hitch rides in used furniture and clothing. High heat is the single best way to kill live bugs and eggs, so if you buy clothes from a thrift store, throw them in a dryer for 30 minutes to an hour when you get home. If you find upholstered or even wooden furniture — yes, they can make a home in those crevices, too — on the street, I suggest leaving it there, no matter how nice it might look in your living room. (Metal furniture is a safer bet, although it's not immune.) Don't even think about getting a used mattress.
Bedbugs are enthusiastic travelers, and they can crawl into your suitcase in a hotel room or Airbnb. But if you're worried about bringing bedbugs back from, say, Paris, there are some things you can do to protect yourself.
Lou Sorkin, a bedbug expert and entomologist who worked at the American Museum of Natural History for more than 40 years, told Insider you might want to keep your suitcase in the bathtub.
"Suitcases are best not to be placed on furniture or on the bed," he said. "If bedbugs are in the room, they may crawl over onto anything placed on the bed. That could happen on the smaller sofas and upholstered chairs, too."
When you get home, Sorkin said, isolate your suitcase and throw all your clothes in the dryer for an hour.
Still, even if you do everything right, sometimes bedbugs make their way into your home anyway. They are just as likely to infest fancy new homes as older residences, and they like immaculate spaces as much as messy ones.
Sometimes, you just get screwed — your neighbor gets them, you bring one home on the train, God decides to smite you — and it's no one's fault.
Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to wait them out
If one of the scenarios I described above happens, do not engage in a battle of wills with the bugs. You will lose.
Bedbugs are scary, embarrassing, and incredibly annoying. If you suspect you have them — or, worse, find a bug — you might be compelled to wait and see if the problem simply goes away on its own.
But as Sorkin advised, "If bedbugs are found early, they're much easier to get rid of."
If you find feces (it looks like this!) on your mattress, sheets, or bed frame, find a live or dead bug, or regularly get bites, call an exterminator for an inspection, like, immediately. Exterminators will do a thorough inspection to assess the extent of the infestation. You can even get a bedbug-sniffing dog to come in to suss out exactly where live bugs are located, which makes the experience somewhat cuter.
A note on bites: Some people erupt in welts the second they sit near a bedbug. Some might have them for months and never see any evidence on their skin. The first time I lived in a place with bedbugs, my roommate was the one who called the exterminator, because she was covered with bites. I had nary a mark and smugly assumed they were only in her bed. I was wrong, and I suffered for my arrogance.
If you live in multi-dwelling housing, alert your neighbors
No one wants to do this, but I promise it's necessary. Bedbugs love to move from apartment to apartment. If you have bedbugs, it's possible your neighbors do too. You might have even gotten bedbugs from them, the bastards. (I'm sure your neighbors are very nice.) And if your neighbors do end up with your bedbugs, their buggies might eventually make their way back into your apartment, rendering all your mattress-flipping and clothing-heating useless.
In some places, including New York City, landlords are obligated to have adjoining apartments inspected when they have a confirmed case. I've never heard of a landlord doing this; certainly, none of my landlords did it for my neighbors. In all likelihood, you will probably have to be the one to alert your neighbors.
It's the right thing to do, obviously, but not doing it can bite you in the ass (literally).
Consider your treatment options carefully
Bedbugs are stressful for a lot of reasons, including the obvious one: "dozens of teeny bugs snacking on me while I sleep."
But the treatment process itself is a huge pain. Some exterminators require extensive preparation before they will treat your space, which can include bagging and heating all of your clothing, washing and heating all your bedding, moving all your furniture away from the walls, vacuuming, lifting your mattress off your bed, taking your bed frame apart, and more. It's time-consuming, exhausting, and — if you live far from a laundromat — nearly impossible.
It's also, according to Sorkin, somewhat unnecessary and perhaps even detrimental. He told Insider that companies might not be able to treat the infestation properly if there's too much pre-treatment activity.
When you bag everything and move your belongings around, "You may be moving populations of bedbugs all over the place," he said. Indeed, when I had bedbugs the third time, my roommates and I mixed up all our stuff before the exterminators even arrived. The infestation eventually moved into my room anyway and all my work was for nothing.
Sorkin recommended low or no-prep treatments, which might ask you to leave everything in your house as-is, or ask you to heat and bag just your bedding before exterminators show up. Once they do, they'll be able to assess what's going on and treat more precisely. (If the bugs have managed to get into every drawer and closet, you may still have to heat and bag everything — all the more reason to be vigilant and catch an infestation early!) If I had to do extensive prep and cleaning, either because a landlord made me use a certain exterminator or because my infestation was too extreme, I'd opt to send my stuff out via a bedbug laundry company.
Different pest control companies employ different extermination methods, and these can change depending on the nature of your infestation. Some people say heat treatment — which seals up your home and heats the entire property at once — is the most effective, but it's expensive and only works if you live in a single-family home.
Others use a combination of pesticides, vacuuming, and cryonite, which freezes surface infestations. Sorkin recommended using Aprehend, a biopesticide that contains a bedbug-killing fungus.
However, some landlords will opt for the cheapest treatment options. In my experience, that was a few guys showing up and barely spraying anything. This did not work, and they had to come back many times.
If you can afford it, finding your own exterminators and putting $1,500 on a credit card can be worth the time and emotional despair. (You'll likely still have to hire them through your landlord, though, even if you're the one footing the bill.)
Invest in Climb-Ups, a mattress protector, and a Packtite
Climb-Up interceptors are little cups you stick under the feet of your bed; they catch bugs that fall from your mattress, so if you've got an infestation, you'll know pretty fast.
A mattress and box spring protector will keep bugs from infesting those items. And a Packtite, or a similar bedbug-heating contraption, will heat up books, papers, shoes, suitcases, and other items you can't put through a dryer.
Stay calm, no matter how impossible it seems
Having bedbugs is stressful and expensive. It can feel lonely and isolating. It can make you fight with the people you live with, whether they're roommates or a partner or your entire family. But a bedbug infestation is just one battle among many.
Take deep breaths, don't panic, and don't scream at anyone because they put their bug-infested pillow near the plastic bag full of clothes you just brought back from the laundromat.
And remember: You can always set fire to all your possessions and move.