text: Nobody Likes Bed Bugs
  Even entomologists are hard pressed to find the company of bed bugs stimulating or enjoyable. The little blood suckers will give you sores, and can be transmitted to others’ beds unknowingly. Following is some advice on how to spot bed bugs to know if you have acquired an infestation, and just what you should do about it should worse come to worst, and it develop that your bed has become residence to insect interlopers.
  Tips On Spotting The Little Blighters
  Check for their leavings. Bedbug feces looks like tiny little bits of brown across the mattress. If you find this in you or your child’s bed, you could have bed bugs and should probably get things cleaned. If you are in a hotel, then switch rooms. This method is especially helpful, because bedbugs are known to hide out during the day. That said, if you’ve got a flashlight at night, it is possible to spot the bugs themselves. While babies can be essentially invisible, red/brown brethren will be oval-shaped and can be seen. Another good bit of advice on spotting them is to monitor where your pets sleep. They are more likely to have such pests than you or your children.
  Image Courtesy of wikipedia.org
  What To Do When You Find Them
  If you’re on the road and you discover that bed bugs have made an unwelcome stowaway appearance, or tramped on with you on the sly, the first thing you want to do is clean out everything that you’ve brought with you. Suitcases, clothes; everything. Vacuum the suitcases if you can, and get those clothes washed–in hot water, if that is something you can swing. A tip to avoid bed bugs as you travel generally is to leave cases, backpacks, trunks or what-have-you on hard surfaces rather than carpet, or furniture which has been upholstered; either of which offer bed bugs ample space to hide.
  If you find bedbugs in your home, it may not be immediately necessary to get pesticide involved. Most over-the-counter options aren’t going to do the job anyway–bedbugs are resilient, and lay eggs in all manner of disparate places. Why get a bunch of toxic chemicals all over your house, and yet have pests maligning your sleep? Also, you want to be positive you’re dealing with bed bugs before you go to “def-con 1”, as the saying goes. You could be dealing with ticks, fleas, skin lesions, or even allergic reactions. Popular advice on ensuring you’re chasing the right pest is to trap them, and there are a variety of ways to do this. You can either go with an established method, or hire out a bed-bug sniffing dog.
  Once you’ve confirmed you’ve got bed-bugs, you actually have a number of options. For bed bugs in New Jersey, sometimes the best option is to use a pest control service. Before they come, clear all the clutter in your home and clean where it was. Vacuum everything. While services designed to kill bed bugs and treat your area, it’s not good advice to leave messy areas without cleanliness. The dirtier an area is, the more likely it is to incur natural pests like bed bugs. It’s their ecological function to break down things already in decay.
  There are also heating/cooling methods which can be used to kill bed bugs in a non-toxic way. For example, you could use a steam cleaner. Bed bugs can’t take temperatures over 113 degrees. You can also freeze ’em out by keeping the thermometer between 32 and 48 degrees; but that takes thirty to fifty days.
  Image Courtesy of bedbugtreatmentsite.com