OH, GROSS!

Found on the Longmont, Colorado Library website today:

Public Notice: Bedbugs
August 19, 2011: Please be aware that an exterminator has confirmed bedbugs in 5 upholstered chairs at the Library. The chairs have been treated. Bedbugs are not a public health hazard and do not carry disease. This information is shared with you so that you may make an informed decision in visiting the library. Visit the CDC website on Bed Bugs FAQs and read more about this notice in the recent Press Release.

Now how awful is that?! Ain’t no place sacred anymore. Yep, the bedbugs’ll getcha if you don’t watch out.

I hate bedbugs, and I hate the idea of bedbugs. Actually, I hate the idea of bed mites even worse, but there doesn’t seem to be anything one can do about the mites. The bedbugs? Yes, you can call an exterminator who will make a valiant attempt to rid your house of them, but they are apparently just as hard to get rid of as lice in a kindergarten classroom. And if you’ve ever gone through that process, you’ll understand what I mean.

Bedbugs and cockroaches always seem to mean that one is not keeping a very sanitary house, but that isn’t the case, at least with bedbugs. Bedbugs don’t need a dirty house. All they need is a mode of transportation to get to new feeding grounds, and that can be a matter of hitchhiking on anything going anywhere. Hence the critters on a library chair. Did you ever in a million years think that plopping your behind down on a library chair might mean that you unknowingly deposit a bedbug or two in your own house and unwittingly start an infestation. (Methinks it probably takes two bedbugs to start a single infestation, unless the lone hitchhiker is pregnant.)

I do not ever want to see a bedbug in my house. If I do, I will first call an exterminator, but from my readings I will have little faith that every last bug will be found. So then I will buy an air mattress, which at night will be blown up and placed on my kitchen’s linoleum floor. There I will sleep. Or maybe I’ll sleep on the back seat of my car. I’ll certainly not sleep in my bed any more, that’s for sure. Or I might choose to move to a new apartment complex. I’ll decide which, if and when the time comes.

Now this may be an over-reaction, but I have a very hard time sleeping anyway, and if I thought there might be a bedbug or two waiting in my bed, I NEVER would fall asleep.

And now that I think of it, since Thursday will be wash day this week, I think I’ll turn my mattress over when I strip the bedding and give it a good inspection. I have some suspicious red bumps on my forearm, and I just wonder…….