Bedbugs

[BridgeTroll]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129345182

Bedbugs Aren't Just Back, They're Spreading
by NPR Staff

August 21, 2010

At first, they appeared in places that you might expect: dense city centers such as New York, where officials may seek a bed bug czar, and San Francisco, which is trying landlord-education programs to keep the pests away.

But now, there are reports of bedbug infestations in homes and hotels from Ohio to Texas.

The stories are downright creepy. Exterminator James Self, who owns Ameritex Pest Control in Beaumont, Texas, says he was called out to one bedbug-riddled site that was like a scene from a horror movie.

"There were spots all over the walls, and I didn't know what that was," Self recalls. "I thought maybe it was some wallpaper decoration or something. But as I approached it, it was totally covered in bedbugs â€" more than I've ever seen. And that's the one where we had to rip up the carpet, throw away all the furniture. It was terrible."

'You Should Be Worried'

This business of feeding on other people... I think we all know some people like that do that, don’t we now? ...Maybe bedbugs aren’t so awfully different than somebody we know.

- Michael Raupp
Infestations like that are popping up across the country at an alarming frequency.

"You should be worried â€" very, very, very worried," says Michael Raupp, an entomologist at the University of Maryland who spoke with NPR's Audie Cornish about the bedbug resurgence. Raupp runs a website called "Bug of the Week," and this week's star is â€" you guessed it â€" the bedbug.

"They're really not just for bedrooms anymore," he warns. "They really have become widespread almost in any kind of establishment where people live and sleep, throughout both small and large cities."

Raupp says bedbugs go where the food is. And for these critters, the "food" is sleeping human beings.

"The problem is, as people go about their daily act of going to an office or going to a movie theater, for that matter, the probability that they are going to bring bedbugs with them increases," he says. "As people move about," Raupp says, "they are unwittingly bringing bedbugs with them."

There was a time in American history when bedbugs were just accepted as a part of life, he notes.

"Prior to the First World War, prior to the DDT era and the time of our synthetic/organic pesticides, bedbugs were commonplace," Raupp says. "That old rhyme, 'Goodnight, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite,' harkens to the colonial era in the U.S., when bedbugs were commonplace in taverns and inns."

It seems they could achieve that same ubiquity in the U.S. once again.

Borderless Bugs

"We're now in the era where people travel everywhere," Raupp says. "They just don't go to major cities like London or Paris. We have people going to second world countries and third world countries where, frankly, bedbugs are commonplace. And these guys are real troopers â€" they're hitchhikers and stowaways."

"Whenever we travel, there's always a possibility that we can bring bedbugs home with us," Raupp says. "And bedbugs don't discriminate. This is not a matter of poor sanitation or poor housekeeping or uncleanliness."

So how do people know if they've got a bedbug infestation? Raupp says your skin can tell you.

"One of the first symptoms that you'll see of a bedbug infestation is unusual bites," Raupp says. "And these bites aren't going to be on your ankles, where the mosquitoes usually bite you, or on your arms. These bites could be on your neck, they could be on your shoulders, they could be down on your legs somewhere. They could be anywhere on your body.

"These are gonna be small, itchy red welts â€" unusual bites," he adds, noting that people should call in professionals if they see these warning signs. "This is not one that you're going to want to tackle yourself," Raupp says.

In spite of the distress bedbugs bring, Raupp says he's still a fan.

"I find all bugs mysterious, wonderful. These ones I tend to find a little bit despicable. But they're fascinating in their own regard.

"This business of feeding on other people â€" the ectoparasitic life â€" I think we all know some people that do that, don't we now? And maybe bedbugs aren't so awfully different than somebody we know," he says. "So, there's a little bit of us in them, perhaps."

Any one heard of this anywhere in Jax?  Florida?

[uptowngirl]

I saw a big billboard on 95 about them, it has since been relaced with a cockroach add so maybe they aren't that bad here? Yet.. I also just watched a story about a guy in NYC that has specially trained dogs that sniff Bedbugs out. He is quite busy, they are in store like Victoria Secrets, GAP, etc (thank God Barney's is still clean!). These bugs scare the hell out of me and I hope to never encounter one, but I travel so much for work :-(

[Ocklawaha]

I barely escaped with my life from a flea-bag rental in the Andes, the sleeping area was up in a sort of loft with mattresses which fairly moved with the little bastards. Even with that, I couldn't convince some of the others to leave and head back to the city until one of the women went in to make beds and some 4 legged critter ran up her PJ'S...  WEEEEEHAWWWWA!

Thankfully our area is clean on the official bed bug registry.

http://www.bedbugregistry.com/location/fl/


OCKLAWAHA

[BridgeTroll]

Thanks for posting that link Ock... more specifically... my wife thanks you!! 

[David]

I just read about the bed bug epidemic in NYC a day after staying at the Chelsea Hotel on Friday.  Apparently it's pretty severe up here, they've even been found in the basement of the Empire State building.

I'm pretty sure i'm in the clear tho, but it's been on an going battle here for years. Jax should be alright because the commute from bed to bed is probably too long. Still though, just reading this story makes me insanely itchy.

[Ocklawaha]

Jax should be alright because the commute from bed to bed is probably too long.

HA HA Sort of brings a whole new meaning to JTA'S BRT plan... BEDBUG Rapid Transit.

OCKLAWAHA

[BridgeTroll]

They ARE in Florida...

Check the link... it is now in my Favorites...

http://www.bedbugregistry.com/location/fl/

[thekillingwax]

There's pictures online of the bedbug infestation rooms at the Hyatt downtown had. I've been freaking out about them for over 2 years now. First thing I do when I go to a hotel (I pretty much refuse to stay anywhere in Orlando) is do a thorough check for them. I haven't seen any yet but that doesn't mean much. This is seriously just the start- we'll see kids carrying them into schools and spreading them and they'll become a more common thing at offices and gyms too.

[BridgeTroll]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/30/us-bedbugs-epidemic-outdoor-pesticides_n_699745.html

U.S. Grappling With Bedbugs, Misusing Dangerous Pesticides

MATT LEINGANG | 08/30/10 11:40 PM | 

COLUMBUS, Ohio â€" A resurgence of bedbugs across the U.S. has homeowners and apartment dwellers taking desperate measures to eradicate the tenacious bloodsuckers, with some relying on dangerous outdoor pesticides and fly-by-night exterminators.

The problem has gotten so bad that the Environmental Protection Agency warned this month against the indoor use of chemicals meant for the outside. The agency also warned of an increase in pest control companies and others making "unrealistic promises of effectiveness or low cost."

Bedbugs, infesting U.S. households on a scale unseen in more than a half-century, have become largely resistant to common pesticides. As a result, some homeowners and exterminators are turning to more hazardous chemicals that can harm the central nervous system, irritate the skin and eyes or even cause cancer.

Ohio authorities, struggling against widespread infestations in Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton and other cities, are pleading with EPA to approve the indoor use of the pesticide propoxur, which the agency considers a probable carcinogen and banned for in-home use in 2007. About 25 other states are supporting Ohio's request for an emergency exemption.

The EPA rejected the request in June but said it would consider new information on it. An agency spokesman, Dale Kemery, said the EPA has pledged to find new, potent chemicals to kill bedbugs, which can cause itchy, red bites that can become infected if scratched.

In the meantime, authorities around the country have blamed house fires on people misusing all sorts of highly flammable garden and lawn chemicals to fight bedbugs. Experts also warn that some hardware products â€" bug bombs, cedar oil and other natural oils â€" claim to be lethal but merely cause the bugs to scatter out of sight and hide in cracks in walls and floors.

A pest control company in Newark, N.J., was accused in July of applying chemicals not approved for indoor use throughout 70 homes and apartments units, even spraying mattresses and children's toys. No illnesses were reported.

In Cincinnati, an unlicensed applicator saturated an apartment complex in June with an agricultural pesticide typically used on golf courses. Seven tenants got sick and were treated at the hospital. The property was quarantined, and all tenants were forced to move. Authorities are pursuing criminal charges.

"When you see the anguish that bedbugs cause these people, it's understandable why they might take things into their own hands, and some of it is very dangerous," said Michael Potter, an entomologist at the University of Kentucky and one of the country's leading bedbug experts.

Bedbugs, a common household pest for centuries, all but vanished in the 1940s and '50s with the widespread use of DDT. But DDT was banned in 1972 as too toxic to wildlife, especially birds. Since then, the bugs have developed resistance to chemicals that replaced DDT.

Also, exterminators have fewer weapons in their arsenal than they did just a few years ago because of a 1996 Clinton-era law that requires older pesticides to be re-evaluated based on more stringent health standards. The re-evaluations led to the restrictions on propoxur and other pesticides.

Though propoxur is still used in pet collars, it is banned for use in homes because of the risk of nausea, dizziness and blurred vision in children. Steven Bradbury, director of the EPA's pesticide program, said the problem is that children crawl on the floor and put their fingers in their mouths.

Critics in the pest control industry say that the federal government is overreacting and that professional applicators can work with families to prevent children from being exposed to harmful levels of the chemical, which is more commonly used outside against roaches and crickets.

"It's a knockout pesticide, vastly superior to anything else for bedbugs," said Andrew Christman, president of Ohio Exterminating Co., which is on pace to treat about 3,000 bedbug infestations in 2010, up from an average of two in 2006.

Christman said other in-home pesticides aren't as lethal as propoxur, requiring several treatments that can push extermination costs to $500 or $1,500, depending on the size of a home.

Marion Ehrich, a toxicologist at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, said the EPA is showing appropriate caution. She said other scientists who have studied the bedbug problem are not eager to see propoxur released in homes.

"Propoxur is not a silver bullet, and given time, bedbugs would likely become resistant to it, too," said Lyn Garling, an entomologist at Penn State University.

Experts say it is going to take a comprehensive public health campaign â€" public-service announcements, travel tips and perhaps even taxpayer-funded extermination programs for public housing â€" to reduce the bedbug problem.

People can get bedbugs by visiting infested homes or hotels, where the vermin hide in mattresses, pillows and curtains. The bugs are stealth hitchhikers that climb onto bags, clothing and luggage.

After the bugs were discovered this summer in a Times Square movie theater and some upscale clothing stores, New York City began a $500,000 public awareness campaign.

Last week, the pest control company Terminix listed New York, Philadelphia and Detroit as the three most-infested cities, based on call volume to its 350 service centers. Ohio had three cities in the top 10.

For Delores Stewart, 76, bedbugs have been a nightmare, infesting her Columbus home since last year.

"It's awful, it's disheartening and it's a terrible way to live," Stewart, 76, a retired meat factory worker who discovered the vermin crawling in her bed and her living room recliners.

Her house was treated by a reputable exterminator for the fourth time Wednesday. She has warned neighbors and others about the problem and doesn't blame them for staying away.

"I feel isolated," she said.

Darrell Spegal, a property manager in Columbus who oversees four apartment complexes, said he has spent thousands of dollars to exterminate units.

"We have to try something different," Spegal said. "I mean, look around. The bugs are winning this war."

[finehoe]

They Crawl, They Bite, They Baffle Scientists
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Don’t be too quick to dismiss the common bedbug as merely a pestiferous six-legged blood-sucker.

Think of it, rather, as Cimex lectularius, international arthropod of mystery.

In comparison to other insects that bite man, or even only walk across man’s food, nibble man’s crops or bite man’s farm animals, very little is known about the creature whose Latin name means â€" go figure â€" “bug of the bed.” Only a handful of entomologists specialize in it, and until recently it has been low on the government’s research agenda because it does not transmit disease. Most study grants come from the pesticide industry and ask only one question: What kills it?

But now that it’s The Bug That Ate New York, Not to Mention Other Shocked American Cities, that may change.

This month, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a joint statement on bedbug control. It was not, however, a declaration of war nor a plan of action. It was an acknowledgment that the problem is big, a reminder that federal agencies mostly give advice, plus some advice: try a mix of vacuuming, crevice-sealing, heat and chemicals to kill the things.

It also noted, twice, that bedbug research “has been very limited over the past several decades.”

Ask any expert why the bugs disappeared for 40 years, why they came roaring back in the late 1990s, even why they do not spread disease, and you hear one answer: “Good question.”

“The first time I saw one that wasn’t dated 1957 and mounted on a microscope slide was in 2001,” said Dini M. Miller, a Virginia Tech cockroach expert who has added bedbugs to her repertoire.

The bugs have probably been biting our ancestors since they moved from trees to caves. The bugs are “nest parasites” that fed on bats and cave birds like swallows before man moved in.

That makes their disease-free status even more baffling.

(The bites itch, and can cause anaphylactic shock in rare cases, and dust containing feces and molted shells has triggered asthma attacks, but these are all allergic reactions, not disease.)

Bats are sources of rabies, Ebola, SARS and Nipah virus. And other biting bugs are disease carriers â€" mosquitoes for malaria and West Nile, ticks for Lyme and babesiosis, lice for typhus, fleas for plague, tsetse flies for sleeping sickness, kissing bugs for Chagas. Even nonbiting bugs like houseflies and cockroaches transmit disease by carrying bacteria on their feet or in their feces or vomit.

But bedbugs, despite the ick factor, are clean.

Actually it is safer to say that no one has proved they aren’t, said Jerome Goddard, a Mississippi State entomologist.

But not for lack of trying. South African researchers have fed them blood with the AIDS virus, but the virus died. They have shown that bugs can retain hepatitis B virus for weeks, but when they bite chimpanzees, the infection does not take. Brazilian researchers have come closest, getting bedbugs to transfer the Chagas parasite from a wild mouse to lab mice.

“Someday, somebody may come along with a better experiment,” Dr. Goddard said.

That lingering uncertainty has led to one change in lab practice. The classic bedbug strain that all newly caught bugs are compared against is a colony originally from Fort Dix, N.J., that a researcher kept alive for 30 years by letting it feed on him.

But Stephen A. Kells, a University of Minnesota entomologist, said he “prefers not to play with that risk.”

He feeds his bugs expired blood-bank blood through parafilm, which he describes as “waxy Saran Wrap.”

Coby Schal of North Carolina State said he formerly used condoms filled with rabbit blood, but switched to parafilm because his condom budget raised eyebrows with university auditors.

Why the bugs disappeared for so long and exploded so fast after they reappeared is another question. The conventional answer â€" that DDT was banned â€" is inadequate. After all, mosquitoes, roaches and other insects rebounded long ago.

Much has to do with the bugs’ habits. Before central heating arrived in the early 1900s, they died back in winter. People who frequently restuffed their mattresses or dismantled their beds to pour on boiling water â€" easier for those with servants â€" suffered less, said the bedbug historian Michael F. Potter of the University of Kentucky.

Early remedies were risky: igniting gunpowder on mattresses or soaking them with gasoline, fumigating buildings with burning sulfur or cyanide gas. (The best-known brand was Zyklon B, which later became infamous at Auschwitz.)

Success finally arrived in the 1950s as the bugs were hit first with DDT and then with malathion, diazinon, lindane, chlordane and dichlorovos, as resistance to each developed. In those days, mattresses were sprayed, DDT dust was sprinkled into the sheets, nurseries were lined with DDT-impregnated wallpaper.

In North America and Western Europe, “the slate was virtually wiped clean,” said Dr. Potter, who has surveyed pest-control experts in 43 countries. In South America, the Middle East and Africa, populations fell but never vanished.

The bugs also persisted on domestic poultry farms and in a few human habitations.

One theory is that domestic bedbugs surged after pest control companies stopped spraying for cockroaches in the 1980s and switched to poisoned baits, which bedbugs do not eat.

But the prevailing theory is that new bugs were introduced from overseas, because the ones found in cities now are resistant to different insecticides from those used on poultry or cockroaches.

Exactly where they came from is a mystery. Dr. Schal is now building a “world bedbug collection” and hopes to produce a global map of variations in their genes, which might answer the question.

Experts say they’ve heard blame pinned on many foreign ethnic groups and on historic events from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Persian Gulf war to the spread of mosquito nets in Africa. Every theory has holes, and many are simply racist.

(For example, Dr. Potter said, he has heard Mexicans blamed, but Mexican pest control companies he contacted said they rarely see the bugs except in the homes of people returning from the United States, often with scavenged furniture.)

Pest-control companies say hotels, especially airport business hotels and resorts attracting foreign tourists, had the first outbreaks, said both Dr. Potter and Richard Cooper, a pest-control specialist.

Whatever the source, the future is grim, experts agreed.

Many pesticides don’t work, and some that do are banned â€" though whether people should fear the bug or the bug-killer more is open to debate.

“I’d like to take some of these groups and lock them in an apartment building full of bugs and see what they say then,” Dr. Potter said of environmentalists.

Treatment, including dismantling furniture and ripping up rugs, is expensive. Rather than actively hunting for bugs, hotels and landlords often deny having them.

Many people are not alert enough. (Both Mr. Cooper and Dr. Goddard said they routinely pull apart beds and even headboards when they check into hotels. Dr. Goddard keeps his luggage in the bathroom. Mr. Cooper heat-treats his when he gets home.)

Some people overreact, even developing delusional parasitosis, the illusion that bugs are crawling on them.

“People call me all the time, losing their minds, like it’s a curse from God,” Dr. Miller said.

The reasonable course, Dr. Goddard said, is to recognize that we are, in effect, back in the 1920s “Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite” era. People should be aware, but not panicky.

However, he added, “I don’t even know what to say about them being in theaters. That’s kind of spooky.”

Well, he was asked â€" can you feel them bite?

“No,” he said. “If I put them on my arm and close my eyes, I never feel them. But I once got my children to put them on my face, and I did. Maybe there are more nerve endings.”

Why in the world, he was asked, would he ask kids to do that?

“Oh, you know,” he said. “Bug people are crazy.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/science/31bedbug.html?_r=1&ref=homepage&src=me&pagewanted=all

[Jason]

DAMNIT!!  Just hearing that word makes me all itchy!

I think I would have to nuke my house if those things ever found their way in.

[hooplady]

South African researchers have fed them blood with the AIDS virus, but the virus died. They have shown that bugs can retain hepatitis B virus for weeks, but when they bite chimpanzees, the infection does not take.

So why the heck aren't we studying these amazing characteristics instead of trying to kill 'em?

[BridgeTroll]

You could see this coming a mile away...

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/09/02/bedbug_fears_putting_the_bite_on_hotel_industry/?page=full

Bedbug fears put bite on the hotel industry
Reports of bedbug infestations have been on the rise. (Matthew Cavanaugh for The Boston Globe.)
By Linda Matchan
Globe Staff / September 2, 2010

Boston’s luxurious Eliot Hotel offers its guests perks such as free use of a sports club and a complimentary shoeshine. But one recent guest thought she saw a little something extra that was not on the list of amenities: a bedbug in her bed.

It turned out to be a false alarm â€" “a tiny little speck of black lint,’’ said Pascale Schlaefli, general manager. But it momentarily sent the hotel staff into a panic in what has turned out to be bedbug summer.

These are anxious times in the hotel industry. The pests â€" which hide in mattresses and bite people while they sleep â€" are constantly in the news, and no place feels safe anymore. Bedbugs have been reported everywhere from basement apartments to college campuses to the Empire State Building. Suddenly everyone is tearing off sheets and turning over mattresses.

“I think the only people who were paying attention before were those who were dealing with it personally,’’ said Jeffrey White, an entomologist with BedBug Central, an online bedbug resource and host of “BedBug Central TV,’’ a weekly webcast. “With bedbugs popping up on buses and trains and theaters â€" places which everybody tends to use â€" it’s driving the media.’’

Hotel and inn operators are feeling particularly vulnerable. Bedbugs have a habit of hitchhiking from place to place in suitcases. And disgruntled guests have a habit of broadcasting their bad experiences. A single negative posting on the likes of tripadvisor.com making a charming inn sound like a bedbug-and-breakfast can bring an establishment to its knees.

“Everyone has a right to voice their opinion, but it’s disheartening,’’ said Paul Sacco, president and chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Lodging Association. “It’s just awful that people can make claims that it takes forever to substantiate and forever to get them off when they’re false.’’

Another scourge in the industry is The Bedbug Registry, a public database of sightings in hotels and apartments in the United States and Canada. It was started four years ago by Maciej Ceglowski, a California computer programmer seeking revenge on bedbugs after being bitten by one in a San Francisco hotel. The sightings aren’t verified and are usually submitted anonymously. There have been 51 reports of bedbugs in Massachusetts hotels, Ceglowski said.

Boston recently landed 11th on Terminix’s list of the most bedbug-infested cities in the United States; the list was based on the number of bedbug reports called in to the pest control company and on confirmed cases by inspectors.

Not that bedbugs are anything new. Though they were virtually eradicated from the United States at the end of World War II, thanks to the now-banned pesticide DDT, they started finding their way back about a decade ago.

Determining the extent of the problem is tricky, though. The state’s Department of Public Health doesn’t collect data on bedbug cases, because bedbugs don’t spread infectious disease. The two major stakeholders â€" the hotel industry and the pest control industry â€" have very different points of view.

“We believe that there probably isn’t a hotel in the United States that has not had bed bugs at least once over the last five years,’’ said Ron Harrison, director of technical services for Atlanta-based Orkin Pest Control. Bill Siegel, Orkin’s Boston branch manager, estimates that there’s been a 30 percent increase in bedbug cases in Boston’s hospitality industry over the past two years.

The hotel industry, on the other hand, seems underwhelmed by the problem, judging from a recent statement issued by the American Hotel & Lodging Association: “Although the National Pest Management Association . . . estimates there has been an increase in bed bugs in America over the last several years, the increase has had a minimal impact on the vast majority of hotels.’’

Lou Sorkin, an entomologist at New York’s American Museum of Natural History who has been studying bedbug behavior for 15 years, said the nationwide bedbug problem is as bad as he’s ever seen it, not only because of the decline in DDT use but because of increased international travel.

And since many travelers end up in hotels, these critters are giving guests the jitters. Guests are grilling the staff on their bedbug extermination policies, keeping their suitcases away from the upholstery, and pulling off the sheets to inspect the mattresses.

Sometimes they actually find bugs.

Jennifer Sipple of Rochester, N.Y., said she had a bedbug experience in a Newton hotel last week. She said she and her fiancé checked into the Crowne Plaza on Washington Street and woke up covered with bites. Hotel staff moved them to a new room, she said, but they found a bug in the second bed that she thought could have been a bedbug. Over the course of the week they were moved three more times, “and we were bitten in all of them,’’ she said.

The hotel’s general manager, Paul DiNapoli, said the hotel did not charge the woman for her stay and ordered a full investigation by a local pest control company. In the end, no bedbugs were found, he said.

Hoteliers are so skittish about the bedbug problem that only two out of 12 contacted by the Globe agreed to be interviewed for this story. “Who wants to talk about bedbugs? It’s like a curse,’’ said one man in the hotel business who asked not to be identified.

But the curse isn’t going away. Sue Kucharski, a nurse from the Berkshires, said she’s a victim of a Boston hotel bedbug. She spent a night in a hotel in Copley Square a few months ago and noticed two tiny black stains on the bedsheets before she went to sleep. She had a “fitful sleep’’ because she was worried the room had bedbugs, she said: The next day there were 42 bites on her arm.

Convinced the stains had been bedbug droppings, she called the manager, who insisted there were no bedbugs in the room. “I told him I wanted my money back, and he hemmed and hawed,’’ she said. “But then when I threatened to plaster the name of his hotel all over the Internet, he thought twice about it. He refunded the room rate but kept the charges for the food.’’

One frustration for both the hotel industry and hotel guests is the difficulty of proving bedbug bites. There have been plenty of false alarms, according to Bill Siegel, immediate past president of the New England Pest Control Association and a Boston branch manager for Orkin Pest Control.

“The publicity about bedbugs works two ways,’’ he said. “It’s a very good thing that it’s educating people. On the other side, it throws a fear into people and you start to see old wives’ tales come up . . . and paranoia, for want of a better term. They’re getting bit by something, and it’s no longer a mosquito and it’s no longer a flea. Now it’s a bedbug, and that does drive the hospitality industry crazy.’’

Just ask Rachael Solem, who owns Irving House, a bed-and-breakfast near Harvard Square. A month ago, she said, a guest came downstairs with a ring of red marks around her neck, insisting she’d been attacked by bedbugs. The cleaning staff tore the room apart, Solem said, but found no traces of bedbugs. She hired bedbug-detection dogs to inspect the room and those adjacent to it. They didn’t find anything.

But things got nasty anyway. A week later Solem got a letter from the guest demanding a refund for her two nights’ stay, along with her doctor’s report stating that the woman’s symptoms were “consistent with’’ bedbug bites. Solem countered by sending the guest the report from the canine inspection service.

It was a standoff. “She accused us of not taking her seriously,’’ Solem said. “But we’ve been doing bedbug training for 10 years. We look for them every single day.’’

In the end, Solem reluctantly refunded one night’s stay. “We’d like to hear a ‘thank you,’ ’’ she said.

[Dog Walker]

Do not!  DO NOT!!!  Read this thread.  You will get itchy all over  and feel things crawling around under your clothes.

See!  I was right!

I've got to go shower.

[danno]

Looks like they are here!
From:
http://www.bedbugregistry.com/location/fl/