Hey, did you hear that bedbug infestations are down over 50 percent in Manhattan this year as opposed to last year? Let’s celebrate, we won! No, let’s not celebrate actually, because we didn’t win. Let’s just say a silent prayer of thanks for a brief respite in the battle and then stay vigilant. The only thing you should be thinking about when it comes to bedbugs is that nothing is over until they decide it is.
You know who thought they had bedbugs whipped? Our grandparents’ generation. My grandmother told me her generation never really had a bedbug issue, but that they also slept on mattresses with pesticides sprayed on the springs. And yet the sons of bitches still came back. Want to know why they came back? Bedbugs literally eat blood, and we are full of blood. This is like cows seeing an upswing in vegetarian restaurants opening and deciding that “Oh hey, guess we can graze here like a bunch of full-belied slow moving idiots, we’re totally safe now.”
WRONG. We are not safe, and we never will be safe as long as a man bedbug and a lady bedbug live within screwing distance of each other. Don’t take that couch off the street. Leave that wooden shelf on the corner. For the love of god still don’t buy that mattress from Craigslist.
Here’s a short tale from when my roommates and I had bedbugs to illustrate how ultimately unbeatable bedbugs are. After ditching our mattresses, our wooden bed frames, keeping all of our cloth items bagged up in the yard in the hot sun so as to bake the bugs and getting a certified expert bedbug killer to get the sons of bitches where they were hiding, we thought we were finally safe. After two nights of restful sleep, I was sitting at my desk wasting time on the internet when a bedbug did a kamikaze drop OFF THE CEILING, into my lap. I squished it good, but needless to say, it was back to the laundromat for another wash cycle right after that. Followed by a couple more sleepless nights before finally accepting that we were maybe safe. Maybe.
The moral: We never can win. We never will win. Not on our terms anyway. Nothing is over until they decide it is.