Return of the bedbugs

Virtually gone for generations, the bloodsucking pests have made a comeback

Chicago? Bedbug Capitol of the U.S.? Really? OMG! We were just there!

I had just accompanied my wife on a business trip to the Windy City in October, but only later, back home in San Diego, did I read the headline: Chicago Again Ranked as Top US City for Bedbugs. For the third year running! Our hotel room was clean and seemed quite posh, but I’m told that doesn’t matter; bedbugs are equal opportunity pests, striking both squalid and swanky places.

And not only hotel rooms, bedbugs can hide out and proliferate just about anywhere. They may have been hanging out in any of the taxis, rideshares, or buses we took. They may have been on any of the airplanes, too. So now I’m freaking out, certain that every latest itch is proof that we picked up a crew of these bloodsucking hitchhikers and now our whole apartment is infested with bedbugs!

But that’s just me freaking out.

There are two species of insects known as bedbugs: Cimex lectularius and its tropical cousin Cimex hemipterus. Both species feast on humans and only on humans, although there are other species in the Cimicidae family that feed on other creatures, mostly bats and birds. Bedbugs won’t bother your dog or cat. They are only interested in you. They are small, brown, nocturnal, and, like mosquitoes and ticks, suck blood. Unlike those other biting pests, bedbugs do not pass on diseases to their hosts. You may itch, but you won’t get sick. Besides Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Cleveland ranked among the worst infested U.S. cities.

Bedbugs have great survival strategies, as most pests do. They can live for months without a meal, allowing them great flexibility as they hitchhike around or wait in a cabin or timeshare for their next victims to stop in. A female can lay from one to five eggs in a day, or about 500 in her lifetime. They come out at night, while you’re sleeping, and their feasts are rendered painless by an anesthetic in their bites. Their bites also contain an anticoagulant, which can cause a small rash in a few days.¹ Curiously, not everyone gets a rash from a bite, leaving the possibility that a few folks may have bedbugs in their homes and not know it.