Bedbugs/history/2022

2022-02-23

It had been weeks since the last live bug sighting, and months since anyone was bitten -- but both B and I both got bitten while sitting on the living room couch. He found a near-adult-size bug, not looking especially gorged. I'm refraining from heat-treating the couch in order to determine if there are any more (i.e. does he get bitten more overnight), with the plan to heat-treat it tomorrow in the daylight.

(P.S. I ended up not doing any heat treatment, but there have been no more bites on the couch since then -- so I have to think it was a single rogue, not a sign of a regrown infestation.)

2022-03-15

Found two more medium-sized bugs at bedtime, after I felt a bite on my elbow:

• One on the pillow, right after I realized the bite was more than just a random itch; it looked fairly desiccated still
• One under the mattress a few minutes later, when I got suspicious that maybe I had been bitten again. This one looked much better fed.

It seems likely that I somehow stirred these up by moving around some of Mel's stuff in the same corner of the room I'd been in the last time a bug appeared (2/23). There were signs of infestation in a floorboard crack under a box I picked up.

2022-03-16

Found one more under the mattress, head of my side, at pre-bed check. Gave the underside of the bed a heat-treatment.

Felt like something bit me on the back after that; will have to heat-treat the topside as well tonight.

2022-03-22

Got bit several times around 1am. This morning, found 3-4 medium-sized bugs living at an intersection in the bedframe; none anywhere else. Heat-treated the area and my pillows and corner of the mattress/frame.

2022-03-25

At bedtime, after looking under the mattress and the fitted sheet (finding nothing), found a medium-sized bug on top of the fitted sheet, slightly engorged with fresh blood. (Seemed like it fell from somewhere -- pillows? Heat-blasted both of my pillows, and the edges of H's.) I don't think I went into Mel's room today, so maybe I brought it in last night and just didn't notice getting bitten. (I did have my suspicions at one point, but the itch never seemed substantial enough to be a bug. Perhaps I disrupted it partway through.)

2022-03-29

Got bitten on the back at least twice around midnight. Today, ran all of the bedclothes and pillows through the dryer, and turned over the mattress -- whereupon I found a medium-smol bug on the underside. Heat-treated my side of the frame and most of the mattress. Checked the mattress zipper pretty carefully.

2022-04-01

I think I got bitten again last night, on the back. Will have to heat-treat tonight.

2022-04-02

Found 2 medium bugs on the TV couch when I checked (left side, toward front of house). One was engorged, but it might have been old blood: when I tried to pop it, I didn't see anything come out... but I didn't check carefully.

2022-04-04

Got what felt like a single bite in the middle of my back, but nothing more. Wasn't sure if bedbug or not.

2022-04-05

Bitten repeatedly on right arm and shoulder last night.

Fig. 1 That's my blood you got in there, dude. Personal space!

Evening: pulled out the bed and pretty thoroughly heat-treated the pillows and head-side, especially underneath, and under my side -- and then I noticed a suspicious-looking spot on the wall which turned out to be this guy (see Figure 1).

2022-04-06

Found three small bites on my arm in the morning; possibly not a bedbug, or possibly there's another smaller one still at large. Will see what happens tonight.

2022-04-07

Bitten repeatedly -- but then it made the mistake of heading towards my feet and biting near my knee, where I was able to find it by touch and squash it. So hopefully no more tonight.

Found a medium-size bug on the left side of the couch again, under the skirt. Brown engorgement.

2022-04-09

Solitary bite on the back, a little after midnight, just like on 4/4. We'll have to see if the pattern repeats...

2022-04-13

About a dozen bites, but they all seemed to be sequential -- so I think it was just one very hungry bug.

Fig. 2 It was this guy.

At bedtime, we flipped my half of the mattress over and started heat-treating underneath. I actually smelled the bug before I saw it -- it hit my nostrils right after I had blasted a joint between a 2x4 and the cedar joist on my side, so I doubled back, and saw it on the floor (see Figure 2).

They're pretty easy to catch, but they can be very tricky. When I picked this one up, I thought for a second I had dropped it -- but it had crawled to the back of my hand. When I turned my hand over, it crawled into the joint between two of my fingers. Lesson: they are good at clinging to any kind of skin, you can't feel them, and they will instinctively find the places you're least likely to see them.

We gave the rest of my side of the bed a pretty thorough blasting. By the time we went to bed, I noticed I had several bites, so I was concerned that maybe B or Z had brought up another bug from downstairs and I would get bitten anyway...

2022-04-14

...but no, I didn't get bitten at all.

Heat-treated my sweater (which I had been wearing most of the evening, and feeling possibly bitten in), on the theory that a bug might have been hiding there.

2022-04-15

About a half-dozen bites last night.

Found more than six bugs -- all about the same size as the ones found upstairs -- on the TV couch. Gave the couch a pretty thorough heat-treatment. We obviously need to resume doing that regularly.

Fig. 3: 2022-04-15

Bedtime check: found and disposed of one bug (Figure 3), saw another fall off (probably sufficiently in line-of-fire of the heat gun, but who knows). Both were in wooden understructure, near my head.

2022-04-16

Got about 4 bites last night. The kids won't be coming up for reading for awhile (finished reading series), so that should make it easier to isolate the source and figure out what areas our heat-treating regimen needs to focus on.

Evening: found one bug sitting on the rafters, when I lifted my corner of the mattress. I decided not to do a heat-treatment because I wanted to see if that was all of them, or if that smaller number of bites could have been more than one bug.

2022-04-17

Got about 3 bites overnight. So I guess there is another bug. Will heat-treat if I can't find it visually.

Heat-treated under my side of the bed at bedtime.

2022-04-18

Got bitten 4-5 times overnight.

Found one in the doorframe at bedtime. Didn't continue heat-blasting after that.

2022-04-19

Did get bitten again, aplenty -- but it started a good hour or two later than usual. Hm.

Also experimentally did a bit of blasting during the night, after I'd been bitten several times. I think I still got bitten once or twice after that, but I probably waited too long to try the experiment; will try doing it right away, as soon as I notice biting, henceforth.

2022-04-20

Got bitten twice, and did an in-the-dark heat treatment. I felt another bite after that, but I'm getting the sense that the feeling of the bite happens a few minutes after the actual bite, when the bug's anaesthetic wears off. After that there were no more major bites, though some time later I did get a couple of itches (they felt more substantial than skin irritation but less substantial than bug bites). So we'll have to see what happens happens tonight.

It did feel like the heat-treatment was effective, though.

2022-04-21 Thu

More small bites last night, but they're starting to feel more intense. My theory is that some eggs got laid, during the time when we had more than one adult bug at large, and those have hatched and are getting larger. I ended up doing three treatments last night -- there was maybe an hour respite after the first one, then just a couple of bites; after the second one, there was another respite of maybe two hours, and then a single bite... and then no more bites after that one. Maybe I've got them all this time? I hope so, because it turns out that doing those treatments is too disruptive to S's sleep.

I'll probably do a trial tonight of not doing anything before bed, but if that doesn't work out I'll have to go back to doing the rather laborious full area-treatments before bedtime.

At bedtime, I felt like doing a semi-thorough blasting, so I did that -- floor, lower wall, all around underside of bed.

2022-04-22 Fri

Got bitten, but only on one arm and legs/feet. The real problem is when they get areas I can't scratch. Anyway, that suggests where I need to focus the blasting tonight.

2022-04-23 Sat

(retro-entry) Got three bites overnight, I think? One was on back, but not as bad as on previous nights... and that was the last bite, so I was able to get to sleep.

Since it was a shower-day, we washed all the sheets and pillowcases, and ran the pillows through the dryer. While the mattress was bare, I also heat-treated the whole surface and most of the frame (especially the runners).

2022-04-24 Sun

No bites last night.

2022-04-25 Mon

Much bitings, around 1am, though it still felt like only one bug (there was always a time-lag between bites). Either another one hatched, or another refugee came in from Mel's room.

Also, B reports seeing a bug on the TV couch at or before 12:12 am.

Pulled the bed away from the wall and heat-treated the head, my side, and the floor and wall.

2022-04-26

Got eaten alive last night, but I have a plan:

• have a beach-sized towel on hand
• when they start to bite, I spread that out under me.
• when they find their way around it and start to bite again: I get up, bundle up the towel, and go into the bathroom to see if I can catch any bugs.

2022-04-27

Couldn't find any on the towel, but they did seem to avoid it -- especially once I wrapped it around me.

Will try to run the bedclothes & pillows through the dryer today -- that seemed to at least stave them off for a night, last time. (Update: didn't have the energy for it. Maybe Saturday.)

2022-04-28

The towel continues to be at least somewhat effective; only got 4(ish) bites last night. On the 4th one (on my hand), I decided to try doing what I used to do with the no-see-ums in Arizona: pinch the area around the bite as hard as possible (usually there's a little blood, but in the dark I can't tell)... and, yeah, no more bites after that. Will try that sooner, tonight. This does make me wonder if these are in fact bedbugs and not something else (as Sandy also suspects).

2022-04-29

They got in one bite and were in the middle of a second one before I noticed (possibly asleep). I immediately squeezed hard on the second one -- and then found myself waking up nearly 2 hours later with no new bites. So I guess that worked.

Some time later I found a much lesser bite on my neck, and a similarly lesser bite on my hand -- nothing that would have been a problem unto itself -- so there may be more than one type of creature involved.

2022-04-30

More bites, as expected, around 2:30. The pinching technique wasn't helping much because I was having a hard time localizing them, but wrapping the towel around me did stop them (I... do not understand why that works).

2022-05-01

I actually caught a bug on me, around 12:30, but it seemed like the biting got worse after I disposed of that one.

Eventually it got to a point where it seemed likely the bug was on the towel, so I tossed the towel on the floor. No more bites after that, but of course the bug is still going to be at large.

If I find the energy, I'll definitely dryer the bedclothes today (big "if", tho).

2022-05-07

I've been bitten every night since 5/1, until last night.

The night before last, I ran packing-tape -- two strips arranged together so that the top one was sticky-side up and held away from the wall, with a third strip to ensure that bugs couldn't get underneath that one -- across the wall above the bed, ending at the doorframe.

Yesterday I noticed it had caught one juvenile bug over near the doorframe -- near enough to make me think that maybe I need to pay more attention to the doorframe. I gave the frame a more careful heat-treatment, and saw evidence of at least a couple of bugs being disturbed by that (hopefully zapped), and then I put up tape-barriers to prevent any remaining bugs from getting to the bed easily.

While I was reading, a bug started biting my left arm -- fortunately I was able to catch it. After that I did a slow and careful heat-treatment of my side of the bed's underside.

The only bite during the night was on my left knee (in dramatic contrast to the usual ceaseless barrage lasting 2-3 hours) -- a minor one, not sure it was a bedbug; will check that side of the bed again more thoroughly, and maybe put tape over possible hiding-places where the boards come together.

~10:00 After having felt like something was biting my left arm, I took off my sweater and heat-treated it. Some time later, I felt something biting the left side of my chest and I found a hatchling crawling around the inside of my shirt. I wasn't able to catch it before it disappeared (it was very fast and too close for the glasses I had on), so I took off the shirt and heat treated it (and also the sweater again). No bites since then.

2022-05-08 Sun

Apparently that bug was just getting started. From about 3am until it started getting light, it slowly worked its way up towards my head, finally stopping about half an hour before I got up. Fortunately, I found it (a near-hatchling) under my pillow and caught it -- so we'll see tonight if that takes care of the problem.

Bedtime: found/squished two engorged hatchlings, so I guess it wasn't just one nibbling on me.

2022-05-09 Mon

Did get nibbled a bit, but only about 20 minutes of discomfort. Found/squished a bug on the wall above where H sleeps.

2022-06-21 Tue

That was followed by about 2(?) weeks of nightly bug-attacks, followed by doing a more thorough heat-blasting of the bedframe, followed by several(?) weeks of not being bit. (I can't remember if the bugs went away immediately or were just drastically reduced; I do think I did a total of 2-3 nightly blasts, but some might have been precautionary.) The night of June 18th I got some mild bites, after having found a bug in Z's bed after he noted that he was feeling somewhat bitten. I blasted the frame again the next day (did not see or smell any bugs during that) and have not been bitten since.