10. Keeping Your House Clean Does Not Protect You
When you are dealing with your average pestilential insect, such as the roach, keeping your house pristine is often an excellent way to keep them away. However, with bed bugs, the cleanest house in all the land will not avail you. Bed bugs care only about your warm, delicious blood, and the air you exhale. Though bed bugs may be more dangerous to those who cannot afford an exterminator, your cleanliness will help you about as much as shouting at them in a cold fury, at the horrendous invasion they have beset upon your humble abode.
9. They Prefer To Attack When You Are At Your Most Vulnerable
Bed bugs are nasty little miniature vampires, who wait until you are at your most vulnerable to strike. They wait until you are sleeping, however, changing your sleeping habits to daytime will not defeat them. They are normally nocturnal, but only because that is when you sleep. However, they will attack whenever, and wherever, you remain dormant for long periods of time. So if you have a habit of sitting motionless on the couch watching television for hours, after getting stoned and falling into a Cheetos-induced mini-coma, they may choose that as the most appropriate time to strike.
8. If You See One, It’s Too Late
Bed bugs reproduce very quickly; with just one male and one female, in a few weeks it could go very quickly from, “huh, I think I saw a tiny, almost microscopically invisible bed bug,” to “Holy #^&*(&^%$#$%^&*(*&^%$^ they are crawling all over the walls God have mercy on our souls the pestilence of a thousand demons is upon us!”
You see, bed bugs are very sneaky and hard to detect so, unless you are an expert at looking for the signs, they will likely be extremely hard to control or eradicate. By the time you detect even one of these foul hellspawn, even if you found the signs early, it is still very likely that the problem has already escalated, and you will need an exterminator and multiple visits to get rid of them.
7. They Have Mutated, And Developed A Powerful Resistance To Pesticides
Back in the earlier days of bed bugs, many pesticides like DDT were used. Unfortunately, they have mutated due to the use of these chemicals, and come back stronger than ever before, not only that but they have developed multilevel resistance to insecticides. According to science, they achieved this by simply changing two of the two hundred amino acids that make up part of the sodium pore, making them two hundred and fifty times more resistant to commonly-used pesticide. These evil buggers have actually taken our weapons, and used them to strengthen themselves. The bed bug takeover is well on the way already, and we may literally be powerless to stop it.
6. Their Feeding Habits Are Incredibly Disturbing
“But how bad can it really be? They just feed on your blood while you sleep,” said no one ever. The thing is, their feeding methods are both extremely horrifying and completely disgusting. They first give you an anesthetic so you won’t notice their presence and unseat them from their perch on your skin. They eat until they have gorged themselves, their carapace bloated from the blood that oozed forth from your wound. This process takes about ten full minutes. Bed bugs are also known for depositing their feces shortly after they have eaten, which means they may be pooping on you while you sleep. This process can also cause inflammation, which brings us to your next point.
5. You Can Develop A Serious Allergic Reaction To Them
The good news is that only an unlucky few are naturally allergic to the saliva the bed bug injects in your skin as it feeds on your blood. The bad news is that anyone can develop an allergy, if a bed bug feeds on them enough times. As they continue to come back numerous nights for a taste of human jerky, their bites can cause itchy, red welts, which can easily become infected from the scratching. You may not even realize that the itching is caused by bed bugs; after all, it could be a venereal disease, with all the things that you get up to that you wouldn’t want your mother to hear about.
Truth be told, the whole thing is much worse because, by the time you realize that the itching, nasty welts covering your skin are caused by bed bugs, it is probably already far too late. And, of course, there are the really unlucky people who have had such symptoms as anemia, anaphylactic shock, asthma, and blister-like skin eruptions.
4. Bed Bugs May Be Transmitting MRSA
Much popular belief says that, though bed bug bites suck, at least they do not transmit diseases. Turns out, popular belief is incredibly naive and stupid. A group of scientists at St. Paul’s Hospital recently made our nightmares much worse, by doing a bunch of science-y stuff that revealed the super-virus MRSA in several bed bug samples. They now believe that, because all it takes is an open wound or cut for MRSA to be transmitted, a bed bug could easily pass it along to the humans upon which it feeds. According to one entomologist from the University of Kentucky, he has been “predicting this for years,” which is probably comforting to his ego, but not particularly comforting to those of us who lay awake at night and all into the next day, fearing the staph infection that will be transmitted to us while we are sucked dry by these Godless monsters.
3. If You Get Infested, Your Life Will Change For Weeks, Or Longer
Dealing with a bed bug infestation is a horrific nightmare that will destroy every vestige of reason left in your brain. By the time the last bed bug has been removed, if you can even defeat them at all, the constant paranoia of every little itch going forward will be the last sane thought in your head … if that’s your idea of sanity.
You see, to fight bed bugs, you first need to call in an exterminator, and you can count on at least 2-3 follow up visits, usually spaced apart by weeks at a time. You will also have to encase your mattress, box spring, and pillows in special bed bug protectors, which should be kept on for a full year-and-a-half for full effectiveness. This means that it will be over a year before the last physical reminders of their awful presence have been removed.
To make matters worse, until you have completely cleared the infestation, you will need to keep everything tightly sealed in strong plastic garbage bags to prevent further infestation, and dry clothes constantly on extremely hot settings to kill the buggers. In conclusion, defeating bed bugs involves living out of plastic bags, scorching your belongings, and rubbing every surface raw with rubbing alcohol. And even then, due to their small size, it is hard to be sure if they have ever been truly defeated.
2. Bed Bugs Can Survive For Ages Without Feeding
Remember how we mentioned in the last entry that you need to keep the mattress protectors in place for a year-and-a-half? That’s because bed bugs can survive for ages without any food at all. The older ones can stay alive longer than a year without feeding at all. But it gets even more horrifying; not only can they survive without food, but what wakens them from their ancient slumber? Your body heat, and the very CO2 that you exhale, especially when you sleep, This means that bed bugs are essentially vampires except, instead of Robert Pattinson’s sparkly nature and dreamy creep-o eyes, it’s a dirty foul insect that deposits its feces all over you and your bed while you sleep.
1. Bed Bugs Have Evolved Solely To Suck Your Blood
But worst of all, bed bugs have evolved, over the course of millions of years, for the sole purpose of feeding on your flesh. We know by now you are probably feeling quite itchy; it’s natural after reading about bed bugs, so don’t worry. It’s probably nothing.
Anyway, bed bugs started off as nest parasites, inhabiting the nests of birds and the roosts of bats. However, they eventually decided that they needed bigger prey to satisfy their demonic appetites, and set their sights on the biggest of all, humans. You know what humans call their nest? They call it a bed, and that’s how the little nightmares got their name. They adapted their habits to a new kind of nest, and the rest is awful, bloody, disturbing history.
All we are saying, is that bed bugs could be hiding in your mattress right now, waiting for you to doze off so they can violate you while shattering your sense of safety and sanity, and you might not even know it. Pleasant dreams!