Are Bed Bugs the New Brooklyn Scourge?

We've been reading way too much about bedbugs lately. Way, way too much. This weekend, a neighbor sent a breathless email noting on Saturday that she had the Sunday Times and had already read the story on bedbugs. In the detailed article, an entomologist predicts that bedbugs "will be the pest of the 21st century — no question about it." (The online version of the story includes a creepy video report.) Take precautions neighbors, she wrote. Don't bring bedgbugs home.

There is something unspeakable and gross about Cimex lectularius, blood sucking bugs that come out in the dark and bite you. Especially because they are very, very hard to kill. Roaches are bad enough, as are our monstrous Brooklyn "water bugs." But, now, infestations of blood suckers that feast on you while you sleep?

In any case, there's a good post over at Daily Slope on the topic, with the headline, "My Boyfriend Gave Me Bedbugs" that has some good Park Slope angles on the bedbug problem:

Are bedbugs becoming the “communicable disease” of this decade? Infestations have been rampant throughout New York over the past year or two, and there are few other parasitic “infections” that are so persistent.

Crabs?? Come on… A quick shave and some 1% permethrin shampoo will take care of that. Nothing says “forever” like a Cimex lectularius colony setting down roots in your brand-new Tempur-Pedic pillowtop bed set. Oh… and those critters feast on human blood. You knew that, right?

The latest evidence on the Park Slope Message Board suggests that bedbugs are becoming the bedroom plague that yields to no prophylactic. idealist writes:

“My boyfriend had bedbugs at his apartment in Prospect Heights and I think he’s brought them over to my apartment. It could just be paranoia, but I am analyzing every black/brown piece of dust, etc. on my bed.”

“I stayed at his place before he realized he had bedbugs, and I got bitten really badly. 3-4 big welts that hurt for days. Yesterday I woke up with a tiny welt on my arm, and freaked out….”

“My boyfriend’s exterminator said that there had been a lot of bed bug incidents on 8th ave…”

We'll leave you with a quote from an exterminator that we remembered and just fetched from a story posted on the Bay Ridge Conservative in July . “This year it is out of control. Brooklyn is under siege,” said Brooklyn President of Ecology Exterminating Services Jeffrey Dworkin. “In my thirty years of business we have never seen anything like this.”

Nifty.