Bedbug, babies and eggs-bedbug-Potter

Bedbug, babies and eggs-bedbug-Potter

Bed bugs used to be “incredibly common” in the early 20th century, and back then, people routinely checked for them and carried insecticide while traveling. However, the small, blood-sucking parasites are making an unwelcome return and those who know will agree it’s best to start taking them seriously.

Bugs have grown resistant to modern insecticides.

The introduction of potent insecticides effectively controlled, killed and kept them at bay from around the mid-1950s to the late 1990s. Along the line, they became so rare and adapted that people could no longer identify them and a new generation of pest control professionals  are hardly equipped to fight them, says  Roberto Pereira, a Florida research scientist

But then they returned ” in the last five to seven years,” , into our couches, used domestic items, our apartments and hotels, while pest control experts suggest that the global return of this creepy blood sucking insects would be because of increased global tourism and modern insecticides can no longer control the bugs.

A bed bug’s life begins with an egg, grain like and milky white in color. Female bed bugs lay between one and five eggs each day and may lie up to 500 eggs within one lifetime. Eggs are laid singly or in clusters and are placed within tight cracks or crevices.

They’re small, flat, creepy parasite

bedbug fecal marks
The black spotting on this blanket are fecal marks left by bed bugs. Such spotting is a tell-tale sign of a bed-bug infestation. M.F. POTTER

If you’ve never seen one, bed bugs are small, flat, reddish-brown bugs about half the size of a grain of rice. They can also be smelly. They have an oblong shell and a tiny head, and typically live around where people sleep in order to feed on  blood mostly at night.

Unlike ticks or fleas, bed bugs don’t latch on when they feed. They bite and scurry away to digest. However, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention claims they can live several months without a “blood meal.”

 

 

 

A bedbug can travel more than 100 feet in a single night.

You may find clusters of them on beds and recliners and congregate around the seams of mattresses, bed frames, door frames, headboards, dressers and behind wallpaper or clutter. A bed bug, notes the CDC, can travel more than 100 feet in a single night.

Not proven to carry diseases

Bed bugs are not shown to carry diseases, but their bites can be quite worrisome and are reasons for insomnia.

How not to be a spread agent.

You can introduce bedbugs into your home from an infested hotels, while riding busses and trains, vacationing on cruise ships and bunking in dorm rooms. Bedbugs only attach to stuff, bottoms of shoes, caps, seams of clothings and so on.

To protect yourself, check around hotel beds at checking in. Pull back the sheets, check the seam and corners of the mattress near the pillows and the headboard. Look for black spots, the bugs themselves or yellowish skins that bed bugs shed. Maintain your lane. Keep your items away from the wall or floor.

Above all, don’t be paranoid.

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