I lie in bed, reading a book. The warm night air wraps around me like a fuzzy blanket as I peacefully turn the pages. The light buzz from my tabletop fan is the only thing that breaks the silence on an otherwise unusually tranquil night. Suddenly, in the corner of my eye I see a scurrying dot, taking a casual evening stroll on the tiled linoleum. I twist my upper body in reaction and fix my vision on the dot. A bed bug.

Despite the cozy dimensions of my bedroom I still have a hard time chasing the tiny beast. I slam the toe of the sneaker three or four times where the bed bug is, but it continues to flee after each attempt. It climbs up the wall and slips behind a large piece of furniture. I crouch nearby, waiting for the intruder to come out from behind. I remain still and listen, as if waiting to hear tiny footsteps but my tense, nervous breath is the only sound I hear. That, and the tiny red bumps on my legs and arms that itch so badly they almost seem to make a noise of their own.

If I were a Cherokee in colonial North America or a Bushman in the Kalahari, this position would be appropriate for hunting an enormous, ferocious wild animal like a bison or lion. But here I am, a slightly freaked out New Yorker crouching in an apartment in Queens, pledging death to a weightless creature no bigger than the nail on my smallest finger. Despite its tiny stature, their presence brings on a psychological attack most of us cannot stand. At least roaches run away from you; with bed bugs, it’s you they’re running after. A hunter that waits for its prey to sleep before sitting down to a supple blood meal. The itching, the sleepless nights, the itching, the antiseptic scrubbing rituals, the itching, the fear of friends and family finding out, the itching, the throwing out of furniture…did I mention the itching?

My knees grow weary from being in this position, so with no sight of the beast I stand up and consider the hunt a lost cause. I return to my bed and to my book only to see five minutes later another bed bug, or perhaps the same one from before. I spring into action and on this attempt, successfully slay the tiny beast. I lift up my sneaker to see the tiny corpse flattened and pressed into the treads of the rubber soles. I warily prepare a wad of toilet paper, half-afraid the insect may come back to life and extract its revenge upon me. Allow me to better explain the source of this fear.

Sometimes, when hit with an object such as a sneaker, you find the beast’s seemingly lifeless body underneath, as still as a spot on the floor. Confident in your success, you turn to grab a tissue to pick up the corpse. In that fraction of time in which your attention is turned elsewhere, the bed bug “comes back to life” and scurries away. Although the insect may have simply been stunned by the blow and not killed at all, it is this illusion of immortality and/or invincibility that, along with the whole blood sucking thing, strikes fear into the hearts of so many humans.

Though this beast is now nothing more than a hairy brownish-black paste stuck to my sneaker, the fear of its possible immortality is still present. The hairs inside my nostrils stand on end as I smell its distinctive musk. I’m not sure whether it is a pleasant aroma or a foul odor; the scent’s instant association with bed bugs has already turned my stomach a bit. I quickly scrape the remains off with the tissue and rush to the toilet to flush it all down. My paranoia wouldn’t let me throw it in the trash and risk it coming back to life, crawling out of the trash can and seeking revenge.

It’s encounters like these that truly make me question the superiority of the human species. How great can humans be if our confidence and sense of security can be blown away not by an attack but by the mere presence of a creature, on average no bigger than a fingernail? Dogs and cats, which we consider to be lower than ourselves would never panic at the sight of a bed bug. Even a well-fed pet would lick its lips in delightful anticipation of trapping any insect in its jaws and enjoying a light snack. Ironically these are the same animals we allow to lick our faces.
All these thoughts about bed bugs have caused me to forget all about my sordid little murder mystery. I climb back into bed and resume flipping through the pages of my book. Suddenly, I feel something crawling up my leg. In reflex I jump and wildly fling my leg from side to side. The beast flies off and onto the floor, fleeing faster than most bed bugs I’ve seen in a long time.

Grabbing my trusty sneaker, I slide off the bed and give chase. But it’s too fast for me, slipping into an air vent. My paranoia blazes outside the realm of logic. Could the beast I assassinated earlier have swam back up the pipes to my toilet and charged towards my bedroom, vengeance in mind? I soon shake off the fear, give up and resume once more to my book. A few seconds later I feel the faint weight of tiny legs on my left thigh.

I react the same way I did before, shaking myself wildly as if in a seizure. I look frantically at my immediate surroundings, but the beast is nowhere to be found. As soon as I calm myself and lie back down, I feel three more bed bugs on my back, making me jump. I try to shake off and kill the beasts, but they, too have vanished.

It’s then I realize I am being attacked by the one creature more menacing than a bed bug. The imaginary bed bug, born in a nest of sheer paranoia. With my biological alarm system set on high sensitivity, my senses are plagued by the onslaught of countless imaginary bed bugs, crawling on any given part of my body at any time.

I spend the next half hour sweeping up and down my torso, legs, arms and even my privates with my hands, “feeling” the beasts’ presence. Although the book is right in front of me, I don’t think I’ve read more than a page since my first bed bug sighting. Convinced that no more reading will be done tonight, I put the book aside and force myself to go to sleep. This only fans the flame of paranoia that burns inside. The absence of bright light leaves me vulnerable to those bed bugs I cannot see.

The imaginary bed bugs continue to invade me, but now in multitudes. I feel dozens of them in my hair, legs, arms and the rest of my body. They crawl on me, and I jump up, toss and turn wildly. I keep telling myself that these attacks are simply a figment of my imagination, with little success as my paranoia rages on.

Suddenly I jump out of my sleep and to my horror, I find myself covered with bed bugs. So many atop my body they must crawl on each other just to move around. My sight is impaired due to the bed bugs that squeeze in and out of the tiny space between my eyeballs and their sockets. They lay nests in my eyes, and millions of babies hatch, born trapped between my lens and retina. My body throbs with the pricks of hundreds of simultaneous bed bug bites, their sharp little beaks piercing through my insides.

I’m getting some imaginary bed bugs right now just writing this.

I try to scream, but my mouth is crammed with bed bugs. My tongue cannot even move, my mouth is so packed with beasts. The bed bugs find their way into every orifice in my body, even in the tiny slit at the end of my penis. I try to breathe, but my lungs are filled with them. I can feel babies being born down there as my lungs burn from lack of oxygen. The beasts crawl up my anus; I can feel them exploring my small intestine and stomach. I can only pray that the stomach acid dissolves them.

I feel the beasts swimming inside me. My b
rain, devoid of oxygen, breaks down. Everything goes black. Just before I die I feel the bed bugs tearing through my flesh before finally bursting through to the surface. Bloodstained beats spill out of my chest and stomach through the enormous crimson gash.

I wake up from the nightmare, flinging my body into an upright position, hyperventilating and eyes bulging. The imaginary bed bugs are still there. I shake my legs and arms at their touch before turning on the light. I pick up the remote and aim it at the TV set. Maybe a little 24-hour cable news will put me at ease.

Just nothing involving bed bugs.

Copyright 2009 Bugged Out

The first job I’ll blog about later, but my morning job is for AM New York, a free daily newspaper here in New York City. My job is basically to stand near a subway station and hand out copies to passersby (mostly commuters) from 6:30 am to about 9:30.

AM New York doesn’t pay much, but when I haven’t been able to find work anywhere else, I’ve relied on AM New York to at least provide me with a steady paycheck until I can find something better. This is like my third time working for the company in three years. I don’t make a lot of money, but at least my supervisors and the public treat me with more respect than when I worked as maintenance at a supermarket or as a cashier at a wholesale club. Plus I’m located within walking distance from my other job.

If you want to stop over and say hi, I’m at the 116th Street station near Columbia University in Morningside from 6:30 to 9:30. I can talk and hand out newspapers at the same time, so you can tell me about your own bed bug experience and take a newspaper, too.

About the bed bug alert, maybe it’s just me but the 116th Street station smells like bed bugs. Maybe you can come down and tell me for yourself if the station smells like bed bugs, if you’re familiar with their pungent odor.

Later.

It amazes me how dogs’ powerful sense of smell-which can be as much as 2,000 times stronger than that of a human-can be capitalized on to detect so many different things. There are even dogs who can sniff out bootleg DVDs!

But I am not interested in hiring Advanced K9 or any other similar company; I want to know how a dog can be properly trained to detect bed bugs. I would love to buy a beagle or any other breed that could accurately pinpoint the secret locations of the bed bugs in my home, because although I haven’t been bitten in a long time, I do occasionally come across a dead bed bug or two, which makes me believe they’re still out there, like Al-Qaeda, silently waiting to execute their next great attack.

Would anyone know if this is possible for a civilian to own a detection dog? M loves dogs and I know a trained bed bug sniffing dog would be an incredible bonus to having a dog living with us.

I must be really desensitized to the disgusting concept of bed bugs as I am blogging while eating a sandwich of leftover turkey. Are bed bugs a good source of protein?

Came across this article in the Knox News Sentinel in Tennessee that describes the odor that bed bugs emit as smelling like coriander. For those who don’t know what coriander is, it is an herb more commonly (at least in the U.S.) as cilantro. The article claims to have gotten this and other bed bug factoids from bedbugresource.com and the University of Tennessee, but I couldn’t find any mention of a coriander-scented odor coming from bed bugs on either website.

I personally think the odor that bed bugs emit are like a musk, the scent created by an animal’s (deer musk is used in many fragrances) stink gland between their stomach and their genitals.

My question is, if the smell is in fact a musk, and deer musk and pig pheromones have been used in perfumes for thousands of years, could the bed bug odor be bottled as a perfume? Could those of us living with bed bugs be sitting on a gold mine?

Probably not.

My other question is, what do you think the bed bugs’ distinctive odors smells like? Please participate in the new poll located in the sidebar. I’ve already asked six friends and family members and no one has given the same answer. Their responses as well as mine are listed as poll responses, but feel free to select “Other” on the poll if you don’t agree with any of us and then write in the comment area of this post what you think the bed bug odor smells like to you.

Happy Thanksgiving by the way.

Later.