Dark Banquet - Bill Schutt [70]
Similarly, the actual dispersal of bed bug colonies (aka spread of the bed bug infestation) has developed a significant human element.
According to Bloom, there are two ways that bed bugs can be introduced into a home: actively and passively. In active introduction, bed bugs migrate from one place to another under their own power. Since bed bugs don’t have functional wings, active dispersal of the colony depends on walking (or running) to a new home.
Migration from one room to another is easy enough to visualize but what about between apartments or floors? As Bloom tells it, bed bugs can easily relocate within a building via pipes, phone wires, or cables.
Humans can often pick up an assist in these active introductions and here’s how. Let’s say your neighbor upstairs has figured out that his apartment is infested with bed bugs. He decides to ditch his bug-filled bedding curbside and proceeds to wrestle his mattress out into the hallway. Some of the bed bugs might fall off as he tips the mattress on its side, while others are jostled off as the bugged bed is dragged down the hall or thumps its way down the stairs (think of that scene in King Kong with the sailors clinging for their lives to a giant log as Kong tries to shake them off ). Rather than falling to their deaths, though, the displaced vampires hit the ground running, heading for the first crevice they can find. In all likelihood, this means scooting under doors and into new apartments. Once they get themselves settled (think about how those aggregational pheromones work), females will start pumping out five or so eggs a day (several hundred in a lifetime) and a new colony can form almost as fast as you can say, “Honey, check out this red spot on my arm.”
The role of your neighbor in this scenario leads us to the second method by which bed bugs can infest a residence. Passive introduction pretty much covers any transport method that doesn’t employ the bed bugs’ own locomotor abilities. In cimicids that do not feed on humans, this generally occurs when bugs are delivered via airmail to new locals by unsuspecting bats or birds. In Cimex lectularius, passive introduction relies primarily on humans—their products and their wonderful efficiency at moving from one place to another. As we’ll see, this ability to exploit our habits as well as the things we use on a daily basis has become one of the major factors in the current spread of bed bug populations.
Let’s say your neighbor has succeeded in humping that mattress down five flights of stairs (and potentially spreading the bed bugs to five new floors) before dumping the thing curbside. If a college student or someone in the market for cheap bedding picks it up, the bed bug infestation will start spreading as soon as the new owner lugs the mattress into his or her apartment. It may even spread to her neighbor’s apartments as the mattress gets dragged up a new set of stairs and down yet another hallway.
But what if that scenario never takes place? What if people are smart enough not to pick up someone else’s old bed? Perhaps the curbside mattress has been labeled by its former owner as being infested with bed bugs. In that case nobody in his or her right mind would touch it, right? Unfortunately, this just isn’t the case—and not by a long shot. All too often, discarded mattresses and box springs are quickly snagged by companies that specialize in collecting and “reconditioning” these old mattresses before offering them for resale. According to several sources (who wish to remain unnamed), these secondhand mattress companies send around trucks manned by sharp-eyed crews. Their job is to pick up any box springs or mattresses they encounter—even those that are clearly marked by their former owners as harboring bed bugs. Supposedly, these bedding items are then “sanitized” before being “rebuilt.” But according to one New York City exterminator, unless “sanitizing” means baking at 150°F for forty-five minutes, or treatment in a fumigation chamber, the bed