Where Bed Bugs Hide In The Home?
“Bedbugs are immensely attracted to the scent of blood, warmth, and carbon dioxide, so their favorite hiding place is your bed. Their flat bodies allow them to hide within the seams of a mattress, the fold of sheets and pillows, and most frustratingly, inside the cracks and joints of a bed frame. Because of their attraction to sleeping subjects, the bed is also the easiest place to spot an infestation, and also to eliminate them. However, for the same reasons, they are clever enough to hide and breed in clothing and closets, which leads to how they spread around the globe so easily. Bedbugs find the same seams and joints in closets and clothing, which have the same, albeit lesser, smell of humans. People unknowingly travel with them inside suitcases, another hiding favorite, before there realize there’s a problem.
My favorite place where I found bedbugs was a hostel in Vienna, which looked almost shut down when my two friends and I arrived. There was another group staying there my first evening, but it made it the more eery when they were gone and we were alone the rest of the weekend. When we woke up the first morning, the three of us were covered in bites, with blood stains and bug skin all over our sheets. Filthy!!! We all realized rather quickly what happened, and we looked at the damage. I had nasty bites along the vein trail on both my legs, fresh wounds before any scabs could form. One friend of mine had minor bites as if a mosquito bit her, and they were gone by afternoon. The last girl looked like she had an allergic reaction, and bites swelled up the skin on her neck and shoulders, covered in blood marks, and she did all she could not to scratch it.
I could not find the bedbugs. I looked in the sheets, tore up the mattress, I shook the bed frame. These little devils hid so well that even after knowing they existed, I couldn’t find one near the bed if my life depended on it. Maybe there is no way to find them when they hide.
In truth, bedbugs are more of a nuisance than a health problem, so reacting to them should be appropriate. Skin infections, sleep deprivation, and constant scratching are not issues to scoff at, but to the CDC’s best knowledge, they do not spread transmittable diseases, which is good because Zeka was a big issue when I visited that hostel. Regular cleaning of your home is sufficient to stop most cases before they begin. Looking inside your bed, clothes, etc. for tell-tell signs will help you spot the problem. And if you do find them, vacuuming, hot washing, and isolation of infested materials is the first step to fix this mess. Afterward, proper fumigation should be used for extermination to alleviate the risks of the eggs hatching in the future. After all, the pesticide will be used in a bedbug’s favorite hiding place, your bed.”
