Bedbugs Menaced the Dinosaur Age Before Moving Into Our Mattresses

One more thing to worry about: Don,'t lie with bats or dinosaurs.

Great story. It is amazing that scientists can track an insect species over such a long time interval. And in a way a testament to the persistence of the bedbug; 100 million years is a long time.

My sister got an infestation in her home in Brooklyn after buying an antique bed in a high-end antique store and having it delivered. She tried the “natural” exterminators but, of course, the bugs came back. They are resilient critters. After throwing out beds, chairs, linen, carpets and taking each and every book off the shelves to treat their many bookcases, the bugs were finally killed off. It was absolutely horrible and shockingly expensive - well over ten thousand. The thing was - even though my sister knew she and her family are clean and tidy people - there is still a stigma attached to bed bugs. They are wrongly associated with poverty, poor living conditions and bodily filth. She cried many a tear and was embarrassed to tell her friends. After witnessing my sister’s ordeal first hand, I was terrified of getting them in one or both of our two homes. When my sister and her kids came for a weekend, I requested that their suitcases stay in their car and not be brought into my house. The whole awful drama went on for close to a year. My father, raised in genteel poverty in the early 1900’s, was reminded of his dear mother and her absolute refusal to have bedbugs in her home. He remembered all the efforts she made to keep the house sanitized and free of vermin. He said it was practically a full-time job. One wonders if cavewomen went through the same machinations for their families or if they just went around covered with bug bites!

My oldest daughter and her then-husband and baby got them in their apartment when they acquired second-hand upholstered furniture. DO NOT DO THIS. They fought them for six months, with very little help from their landlady; then they moved out when their lease expired. Between leaving that apartment and moving out of town, they moved in with us for the summer. Despite all their efforts, the bedbugs came too. The author is dead-on about some people being much more allergic than others. Of the five adults and one baby living in our house that summer, only my oldest daughter and myself really suffered from the bites. I turned out to be so allergic to them that when the little beasts bit me on the hand, my fingers swelled up so much that I had to have my wedding ring cut off my finger. With a baby in the house, we were limited in what kind of chemicals we could use. The whole thing was a major trauma for my daughter, and seriously impacted her enjoyment of her first year of parenthood.

I am amused by people who think it is paranoid to be concerned about bedbugs. As bedbugs evolve and we travel more it is only a matter of time. I am talking about travel within the US, because other countries still use DDT to kill them. They have less of a problem than we do. Think about it next time you go to Las Vegas or New York or Las Angeles or any other US city.

This time last year my studio apartment became infested. The first morning I woke up with two bites on my arm, I thought, wow must be a big mosquito! Within several days it became apparent what was going on. I am one of those individuals who is highly allergic to bed bug bites -- only 1/3 of folks react like me. It took multiple treatments of my abode over three months and several expensive trips to the dermatologist to eliminate them. I know it sounds hyperbolic but I was traumatized. One year later I still sleep with the lights on and on top of the linens. I could have guessed that these little monsters have been tormenting animals since the dinosaurs!

Frankfurt international airport in Germany offers a bed bug detection service in its arrivals hall where they check your luggage with dogs. If they find any bed bugs, they'll give your stuff the heat treatment so you don't bring any home. Every major airport should offer this. I would use it every time. I've brought bed bugs home from vacation on three separate occasions and it's a costly and stressful ordeal to get rid of them.

If the timeline for bedbugs was incorrect for many years, what other scientific data provided to laymen to accept without question is also awaiting correction....

My kids brought home some bedbugs from school. The bugs attacked our little dog, who slept on the floor. The flea/tick treatment, that kills fleas and ticks when they bite the dog, was effective in killing the bed bugs also. She had a couple of nights of misery but then it was over.

My husband and I were unlucky enough to bring home a couple of bedbug hitchhikers from our annual trip to NYC this past winter—in spite of my routine but “annoying” preventative measures. I always check all sheets, bedding, baseboards, etc in our accommodations for evidence of activity AND screen clothing when it goes in and out of suitcases, which stay closed, and never leave suitcases open or clothing out, screen everything when we return before it goes in the wash. Well, wouldn’t you know. Prior to this I might have had a bite elsewhere (fact of urban living!) but had felt pretty amazed that in so many years in a city I’d yet to have them in my own home. While waging war against the one or two bugs hiding out in our apartment we often asked ourselves, how did these resilient little suckers make it this far? Now we know. PS. It’s not the end of the world if you do get them, just be on top of it and don’t wait to get an exterminator in. The cost and labour required to deal with them increases exponentially as time goes on, as will the number of bedbugs.

I read a science fiction story a long time ago where a time traveler kills a dinosaur and is then killed by its equivalent of lice, which turned out to be large and deadly. So, the story was correct about the existence of pests in the age of dinosaurs.