Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Adventures with bedbugs, episode 2

 For the riveting Episode 1 of Adventures With Bedbugs, see this link.

In this post, I'm going to write about how much I love my new heat gun, so I think I need to say right off the bat that

  • heat guns are not a recommended bedbug tool anywhere I can find on the internet;
  • heat guns can damage the finish on your furniture (after all, they're used to strip paint, so if you use them, you might end up stripping paint);
  • heat guns can start fires (I've haven't started fires myself, although I've set off a few smoke detectors, I think because of crispy dog hair);
  • and I LOVE MY HEAT GUN anyway.
With that said, let's resume the story in progress.  When we'd left off, an exterminator had agreed I'd correctly diagnosed the bed bug problem, but said the company couldn't come to treat them for a while (even if we'd signed the contract, the first treatment wouldn't be until a few days from today), and it'd cost $800.  So we decided to try to deal with this ourselves in the meanwhile, realizing we could go back and hire a professional in the future.

I have come to really appreciate the role of heat in eradicating these beasties.  For example, if we do hire pros, we're going to get some folks who can raise the temperature of the entire home to about 130 degrees.  Bedbugs and their eggs die at 122, so this treatment is reportedly very effective and non-toxic to boot, and it doesn't require coming back again and again (our local exterminators, who use spray, say they'd have to treat the home three times).   Another advantage of the heat treatment is that you don't have to bag up linens and clothes -- just open up your drawers and closets and let the heat do its work.

If bedbugs ever made an appearance at, say, my daughter's home, I'd urge her to go with this service immediately (she is a knitter, and has shelf upon shelf of yarn, and she also just generally likes being in a home where she has things piled on things).  But a whole-house heat treatment is also expensive -- like hundreds-to-a-thousand-dollars expensive -- and the nearest place that offers this service is an hour or so away.   So for me and my husband, who have wooden floors decorated with only the occasional floor rug and intermittent seasonal dog hair, and who have recently and happily pared down our earthly possessions, we're willing to try for a while with a more labor-intensive route.

Here are some things we've bought/tried since the bedbugs woke me up on the night of July 31/August 1.
  • Hypoallergenic mattress covers and pillow covers:  A+.  They don't let new bugs into the mattress; they don't let existing bugs out of the mattress; they're non-toxic; they make it easy to search for bedbugs (and I haven't seen any on them).  I wish I'd gotten these long ago.
  • Flashlight:  B.  Because if there are bedbugs somewhere in the house, you kind of wake up in the middle of the night wondering if that tickle means they're crawling on you -- but ever since that first night, all the tickles have been hair, or a wrinkle in the sheets, or my imagination.   Since bedbugs only come out at night, having a flashlight really helps with identifying where they are.  Nightmare inducing, but also useful.   
  • Oven:  A.  Bake bedside books at 130 degrees or so for a half hour.
  • Dryer:  A-.  I've emptied out my drawers and heated all my clothes.  I leave the dog bed in the bedroom at night to serve as "bait" so I can see whether we still have bugs, and then I toss the dog bed back in the dryer each morning.  Our small area rugs got the dryer treatment.  Basically, anything fabric we run through the dryer.  We use this a lot, and I'm not generally a fan of dryers.  The minus in the "A-" is because it uses a bunch of energy.
  • Plastic Garbage bags: C.  I broke down and bought a bunch of plastic garbage bags, even though I hate plastic.  But I really wanted to get the non-essential fabric things out of bedbug range, so now our rugs are in those; my summer dresses are in there; extra dog beds are in there . . . I'll try to give them away to someone who would actually use garbage bags for other things when this is all over.  In the meanwhile, they're really helping with peace-of-mind.  
  • Diatomaceous earth:  B.   This is non-toxic powder that dries the bedbugs out so they die . . . eventually, so they say.  I've sprinkled it kind of all over my bedroom floor and a couple of other places, into many cracks and crevices.  It's not nearly as effective as I thought it might be, but I'm still giving it a B because it's nontoxic and partly reusable (eventually, I'll sweep up the excess powder and stick in a jar for potential future use).  
  • Spray Poison:  D.  I bought it; I wish I hadn't.   There are multiple articles about bedbugs adapting resistance to these sprays; the spray comes in a plastic bottle, and it's toxic enough that you're not supposed to have pets or kids around while you're spraying or until after it dries.  
  • My heat gun.  A.   More on this later.

So, two Tuesdays ago, when our exterminator said he wouldn't be able to treat the home anytime soon, we panic-bought the spray and the diatomaceous earth.  I applied the spray to all the cracks/crevices I could think of in my room, and when it had dried, I sprinkled diatomaceous earth all around.

Friday, I moved back into the room.  I'd been "camping" down the hall; a reader Amanda pointed out that this might encourage the bugs to follow me, and several internet sources backed her up.  That Friday night, with my flashlight, I saw bedbugs crawling up my bedroom wall, coated in the white diatomaceous earth.  I saw them boogie-ing on my bedside stand.  I didn't get any in my bed, but earth-covered bugs did crawl into the dog bed with Prewash and snuggle up there.  I didn't get much sleep, needless to say.  Saturday, I had a return of my anxiety attacks -- yuckers.

However, I *did* figure out, thanks to my trusty flashlight and my nocturnal sleuthing, that the bugs had made a tiny little nest in the crack between the top of my bed stand and the sideboards of my bed stand.  This is a *really* nice piece of butcher-block furniture, so when I say "tiny crack", I am not exaggerating.  I smacked them with poison spray.  Yuck.  That helped a lot, as I haven't seen any bugs crawling up my bedroom walls since, although I have seen them in a few other random places.

I did more research.  It was clear from the wall-crawlers that the diatomaceous earth wasn't killing the bugs instantly.  I'd been hoping for something like the Wicked Witch of the West encountering water, or slugs with salt -- watching the bugs shrivel before my eyes.  That wasn't happening, alas.  It turns out, says the internet, that the desiccating (drying out) effect takes hours or maybe even days.  

We also dug more deeply into professional services that might use heat, because I wanted to be ready to bring them in if the bugs spread to other rooms or got out of control.    As I said above, the nearest place we could find is over an hour away, but now we have the number.  A nearby franchise of a national chain uses spot heating, we discovered, kind of like a steam heater, but without the steam.  My husband and I were talking about this option, wondering if we could DIY it.  A hair dryer, for example, gets things hot, but it also blows a lot.  I mentioned that I used to use a heat gun to strip paint, and I'd be happy to try that . . . 

. . . and $25 later, my husband had bought me a new toy.  

So, here's how I've used my heat gun --- with the usual caveats that this is NOT something I've seen recommended elsewhere.   
  • When I do see bedbugs (there were some under a floor rug, or in the dog bed), I aim the heat gun at them.  And they shrivel up and die like the Wicked Witch of the West, and it's VERY satisfying.  Then I heat up anything that's nearby that might have been a hiding place.  I can't begin to tell you how much I enjoy that.
  • When I get paranoid about "maybe the bed bugs might move to the couch", instead of staying paranoid, I just go use the heat gun (carefully) on the couch, slowly heating up places where wood meets wood, cautiously toasting the seams and such.  I don't know if there were bedbugs there, or even if I successfully got the ones that might have been hiding in places that I ignored, but I'm doing *something*, and it's good for my brain.
  • I've preemptively gone over baseboards, bedroom furniture, etc, just to try to kill ones that I missed before.   I'm not doing the whole house, so I know I could be missing some, but I do feel like doing SOMETHING is better than nothing.
For what it's worth, last night (one Tuesday after the exterminator confirmed we had an infestation), I went upstairs with my flashlight and did a slow, careful search of the entire floor.  I couldn't find a single bedbug, and I admit I was a little bit disappointed because I really wanted to melt one with my gun.   In the morning, I found one tiny bug in the dog bed; so I gunned for that and then tossed the bed in the dryer for extra measure.

And that's where we are with Episode 2 of "Adventures with Bedbugs".   The saga isn't over yet . . . I don't know whether we're actually beating them, or whether they're planning a surprise reemergence in a totally new place in the house. But I'm feeling better armed and more informed daily about how to thwart them, so that's good.

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