Short Stuff: Bedbugs

we're doing short stuff, it's bed bugs. Time to rise and shine. Right. So back in the day, um, there used to be bed bugs. And then for a while there, like in the nineteen fifties, um, we didn't have bedbugs because we were pumping D d T into the house, like basically dousing homes with poison. It wouldn't even bother to leave. You just sit there and bake a cake. Yeah yeah, and and everything would die and they were like,

that's great, everything's dead. And then people would be like, right, I don't have any hair on my body, right, I have cancer. So they said maybe we shouldn't pump D d T into homes anymore, and they were like, you know, that means bed bugs are going to come back, and they're like, okay, we'll just deal with that. I saw I saw mention somewhere. I think it was on a

history article. I can't remember that that some people didn't believe they were real, like generations who were born after they've been basically eradicated, but it never actually seen a bed bug. I think they thought it was like a

jack loop or a snipe or something. Right, Well, if you've been to New Yorker Philadelphia in the last like twenty years, there's a chance that you know firsthand that they're real, because those cities developed real problems with bed bugs, and they think that they came back for a combination of two reasons. One, the pesticides like DDT that we were using were banned, not just discontinued, straight up band You will be put in jail if you're a pest

control person using DDT. And then secondly, international travel became more and more widespread. It wasn't just like a boat trip anymore. It was a plane trip, and you could spread bed bugs pretty fast. And the reason why they're able to spread and um become a real problem is because they are very very tough to get rid of these days, since we've given up our number one enfource or against bed bugs d d T. There's we'll get to some ways to get rid of them later, just

suffice to say for now, they're very difficult to kill. Yeah, so bed bugs, if you listen to our shows on fleas and ticks, um, just get ready to be creeped out again because, uh, they drink your blood, they eat your body, uh, in your in your sleep. Uh, it's really horrifying. They call them bed bugs because you can find them a lot of times in your bed. But

they're not exclusive to beds. They can be anywhere. Are in your apartment, they can be in your couch, Um, they could be in the walls, they can be in your clothes. Uh, they can be pretty much anywhere. Um, if you're living in an apartment or you're staying in a hotel in your next door neighbor has bed bugs, then chances are they're going to make their way over into your place as well. Yeah, because they're real tiny, like adults are about a quarter of an inch long,

and they're real flat too. Yeah, like you can't, um, you may not even see bed bugs. If you're like, let me look on my sheets, you may see their poop, which is a dead giveaway. It's rust colored. But these these are these are tiny little things. Yeah, and so they get everywhere they can hide very easily. And again because you can't as fumigate um, like like baits and traps don't work. Um. Most of the stuff we used to kill them we don't use anymore. They're just really

difficult to get rid of. But they're really easy to pick up. And one of the places where you pick them up is a tell room. You can pick them up for everywhere from the the mattress and the sheets, um, to the luggage rack or the floor. UM. So you want to be really I think a lot of people investigate their hotel room before they unpack, and one of the things you want to look for is along the seams of the mattress and in the folds of the sheets. Are looking for that rust colored poop or the former

shells of these things. Because they scurry away pretty fast when they are found out, So you might not see them, but you can see those telltale signs of them. I have never looked for bed bugs in any hotel room. I haven't either, But now that I know all this, I don't know that I'm not going to do very certainly, yes you will, um so while you're sleeping they um

like it tick or flee. They they will stick their little syringe uh in their mouth and they will stick it into your skin and they will suck your blood for three to ten minutes. It's about all it takes. You're not gonna feel it necessarily. It's really an annoyance. It's not gonna like um like, it doesn't give you a disease, but it uh, it can give you like a rash, and it can make you itchy, and it might swell up just a little bit, but a little

anahistamine and you're probably fine. So it's not like some big disease vector. But it's still creepy. Nonetheless, No, and that, but that's really important to say. Like they've never traced the transmission of a disease from bed bugs humans. We have never found it, but they they do. They are a pain and they are a kind of mosquito bity like you're saying, um because of that allergic reaction, but they're they're just kind of I think one of the things that you're like, I don't want to live with

bed bugs, even if I'm immune. Some people are immune to their bites, but um, like they they at least don't have an allergic reaction, right, Um, which I guess is the same thing. But nobody is going to find out that they have bed bugs and be like, well, what are you gonna do? I guess I'll just live with it. So you've got to get rid of bed bugs.

And like we said, it's really hard. But in true stuff you should know spirit, we say, never give up, and we're going to come back after this message and teach you how to get rid of bed bugs if you are an unfortunate soul who has bet bugs. All right, So, one thing we did not mention was that once a bed bug feeds, they can go a full year without feeding. So if you move into a place that like no one's lived in for eight months, doesn't mean there aren't

bed bugs there. Um, if you live in a place that's super clean, that doesn't mean there aren't bed bugs there, because it might help if it's really gross and trashy, but it's certainly not a prerequisite. If you stay in some fancy hotel, there might still be bed bugs. Yeah, because I mean they're not associated with filth. They don't feed on filth or trash. They feed on human blood and um, those that trash or whatever gives them more

places to hide. But it's not a requisite for a bed bug problem, right, So if you find out you have bed bugs. Um. And by the way, you can look up online generally and find out about hotels before you go into the room. Great, you can do some googling and be like, just type in bed bugs and like hotel blank. Oh, I'll bet hotels take that very serious. Think. Yeah. So if you do find bed bugs though in your home, um,

there's a lot of things you can try. Uh. If you if you can bake your home in an oven, there's a thing, you know, there's a thing at d and twenty degrees. They can come in there and and crank it up and essentially kill them with either heat or cold above one below thirty two fahrenheit. Yeah. So if you just have isolated a big bed bug infestation to like your clothes or your bedding or whatever, you can throw it in the dryer on high heat for like a couple of hours and you're gonna kill every

bed bug in there, um, in every stage of of life. Um, But you can't do that with like your whole house or your couch or whatever. So they actually sell machines that you can hook up to a house. You seal the house, and you pump peat into the house, and you bake the contents of your house for a couple of hours, and because you've raised the temperature of every nook and cranny in your entire house, you kill every single bed bug that's in that house. But it's quite

expensive to have done. Sure, Um, if you want to go the cheaper route, Uh, you should laund to your stuff. Sure, the dryer works, but I would wash it on. If you have a sanitize setting, definitely do that all your clothes, all your sheets, all your towels, all anything. Um. If you have like area rugs that you're not super attached to, maybe just throw those out. Sure, if you want to go through the trouble of cleaning them, that's fine. Um. You can also suffocate them so you can seal a rug.

I guess you can always do that with a rug or a mattress see loon plastic and that will supposedly suffocate them. If you have one of those euro sealers or a vacuum sealer things that you like store blankets in under the bed. If you have one of those, that helps a lot, because those things can go for a while depending on when they last eight without you know, a lot of air, And what seems like very small amount of air to us is a lot to a bunch of bedbugs. So you want to suck as much

air as you can out of the plastic. And even then, I didn't see anything definitive about how long they last or how long it takes to kill them. Yeah, that one seems a little like I don't know if I would depend on that one. Okay, Um as like the final solution you know, uh, you can use You can do all this stuff in concert with insecticides if if you're down with that stuff in your house, Um, that will help for sure. Um. There are dust insecticides, which

um generally aren't as toxic. Um. There are contact insecticides with are way more toxic. I would say, Yeah, ones made from chrysanthemums. Oh that's nice. Yeah, I thought so too. Which one the contact the pirate throids? Yeah, the contact in secticide. Uh, and then you could, like, if push comes to shove, like you should hire a person if you have the means. I don't know if I would tackle this on your own. If you have the money to hire a professional, just go that route and they'll

do all this stuff. But those are some tips, like if you want to go the less expensive route. Yeah, and there's one other thing that we need to say. UM, if you throw out that area rug or if you're like I just can't live with this this couch anymore, UM, don't just like put it out in the curb, because the people will come along and say, that's a pretty nice couch. I think I'll take that, it's a pretty nice area rug. I think I'll take that, and then they have a big bug problem of their own. You

don't want to wish that on anybody else. So it's common UM advice that if you're going to throw this out, throw out a couch or an area rug or whatever you want to make it unattractive, like slash it up, throw paint on it, do something to make it so that no one wants it any longer, maybe even right like bed bug infested or something on it, so that people. Notice, you're clear because you don't want to transfer your big bug problem. You're not that kind of jerky listen to

stuff you should know. Yeah, I'm not going to subscribe to that, uh, because I don't want to see furniture in a landfill. So what are you gonna do? Hang onto it and just kill the stuff? Yeah? Sure, okay, I'm with you on that, but I'm I'm not going to put a couch in a dumpster. Let's just s I'm with you, man. But for the people out there who are like, I can't deal with this, I have to get rid of it. Sure, make sure you make it so that no one would want that couch anymore. Okay,

make sure it has to go in a dumpster, right right? Basically, uh, chuck, you got anything else? I got nothing else? All right? Well, if you want to get in touch with us and say, hey, I really like these short stuffs, here's why. You can send us an email, Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, send it off to Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com.