This is the third and final part of my personal account of my experience with bed bugs, and how I finally got rid of them. To read my detailed account about how I discovered I had them in the first place, check out part 1 – my personal experience, and for some more detailed knowledge about bed bugs in general, I recommend you check out part 2 – knowing the enemy.

Now, the first and most important thing that you should do, after you are absolutely certain that you have bed bugs in your residence (hopefully, you’ve been collecting the ones you’ve managed to catch or kill), is call an exterminator. If you are living in a managed apartment dwelling, you will need to contact your building manager or owner instead. Your building owner is required, by law, to cover the cost of treatment for any apartment that has a bed bug infestation. So don’t be shy or embarrassed about telling him, unless you actually enjoy sharing your apartment with human blood-sucking insects.

Exterminators have a lot of experience with getting rid of bed bugs. They have more first-hand knowledge about the kinds of places bed bugs like to hide, and most importantly, they have much better chemicals then you’re going to be able to buy at your local convenience store.

When the exterminator came to our place, we had to leave for around 4 hours. He came in carrying this big sprayer, and I had no idea what was inside it, except that it was going to be filling our apartment with dangerous fumes for a few hours. I got to experience a bit of it when I had to come back to my apartment to get something around an hour later, and after the exterminator was already gone. I tried to hold my breath, but I inhaled a bit, and it was really strong and almost choking.

Well, we returned to our apartment at the end of the day, and the smell wasn’t too bad anymore. We wondered how effective it was. Our furniture was turned over, things were pulled away from the wall, and our bed mattresses were standing up on their ends. The exterminator had also said that his spray was residual, and should continue to kill bugs that he may have  happened to miss or that haven’t hatched yet, for the next couple of weeks.

The next day, we noticed something strange. Before our apartment was sprayed, we would never see a bed bug in the daytime, but all of a sudden, we were seeing them sometimes. A few of them climbed up the wall right in front of us, most likely because they were sick from the chemicals. Of course, we killed at first site, any bed bugs that happened to make an appearance.

We didn’t just rely on the exterminator, though. From our own experience, and after doing extensive research on the internet, we learned of things we could do ourselves to help prevent ourselves from getting bitten. One of those things was to make it almost impossible for a bed bug to reach us in our bed. We started collecting large coffee cans and used them for putting our bed frame legs inside. Then we put some oil inside the can. That would definitely stop them from crawling up our bed frame legs to reach us.

Maxwell House coffee cans make good bed bug shields

There is another way that bed bugs can reach you in your bed, too. They can crawl on the ceiling! I think it is a bit difficult for the bigger ones to crawl on a smooth ceiling, but I definitely saw the smaller ones crawling on the ceiling right above our bed, probably just getting ready to drop down. Our solution for this was to put double sided tape around the perimeter of the bed. I know that at least one time, this worked, because one morning I found a bed bug upside down right below the tape. If a bed bug is on its back, it can’t do anything except move its legs, and one of the only ways that could have happened is if it fell directly down on its back from the ceiling. Just make your own double sided tape using some cheap, wide packaging tape.

Looks ugly, but will stop anything from crawling above your bed

Besides doing all that, we spent a lot of extra time vacuuming the baseboards, checking and vacuuming under the couches and cushions, putting our mattresses up on their sides to vacuum them, and also vacuuming the crevices of the bed frame. Spraying with Raid was also part of the regular routine. We sprayed all the same places that we vacuumed. The kind of Raid we used was one that claimed it could kill bed bugs, and also said it would leave a residue for 2 weeks that would continue the killing.

This raid claims to kill bed bugs

Now, it has been more than two years since that night when I first discovered we had a serious bed bug infestation, and I’m completely confident they are long gone. I would say it took around two months after the exterminator’s visit, combined with our own efforts as described above, to finally feel comfortable living and sleeping in our apartment again.  However, even now, if ever I feel a tingling feeling, even if it is just one of my little toe hairs touching against my skin, I will still get down and check just to be safe. It’s best not to become careless and complacent, and I definitely don’t want to go through all the stress and trouble again.

One of the main reasons why I love Vancouver so much is because of the great natural beauty in and around it. There are also many good restaurants and shops, and if you can successfully shut out the frequent mumblings and harrassment from panhandlers, just walking around and taking in the sites can be a really pleasant experience. Looking down on the sidewalk almost anywhere, however, and you can’t help but be saddened by the incredible volume of cigarette butts everywhere.

A common site on Vancouver sidewalks

Anyone who has walked around long enough has seen them in the act. A smoker has been enjoying his cigarette for as long as possible, and then, instead of finding a garbage can or ashtray to dispose of the butt, he will simply drop it or throw it down on the ground with a cool flick of the wrist.  Now, I don’t have anything against smokers. I have many friends who really enjoy a good smoke. It is the intentional littering and polluting of our sidewalks that I have a problem with. Of course, not every smoker does that, but it sure seems like an aweful large number of them do.

Another item that can be seen polluting our sidewalks and lowering the overall quality of the city is chewing gum. Gum is not as frequently spit out on the sidewalk as cigarette butts are tossed there, but you will see a lot more gum stains because they are not something that can be picked or swept up. You will see a lot of gum stains, especially,in front of places where a lot of younger people line up, such as in front of a night club.

Cigarette butts and gum stains in front of Celebrities night club

Now I want to ask some questions to all the people out there who don’t seem to mind using our sidewalks as a garbage can. Why don’t you put your cigarette butt or gum in a garbage can instead of throwing it on the sidewalk? Don’t you realize how much of a mess you are making?

If you’re reading this, and you are one of the ones responsible for contributing to the mess on our sidewalks, please stop it. If you have a friend who does it, how about telling your friend not to do that? And if you see someone throwing their butt down in front of you, how about asking the person why he is throwing garbage on our sidewalks? The problem won’t be solved or improved if we don’t start taking steps to do something about it. Let’s try to keep our city clean, folks!

Just about anyone could have bed bugs and not even know it. I had no idea that I had them, and there were so many of them before I finally had to admit I had a bed bug problem, that obviously, they had been living with me for a while.

Bed bugs come in many different sizes due to the fact that they transform or molt between each feeding. Here is the best image I could find that shows the six different sizes that bed bugs can infest your home as.

Bed bug life cycle

The top two are actually at the same stage, except that one is empty and the other is completely full of blood. Don’t worry, this picture does not represent the actual sizes of the bed bugs.

Female adult bed bugs can lay roughly 200 to 500 eggs over their lifetime, so it’s easy to imagine how quickly they can spread if you don’t know that you have them.

One of my biggest surprises I got while doing my bed bug research was that bed bugs can actually go a long time without feeding. Some sources said that they can actually go a year and a half without a blood meal if the food supply is low.

Bed bugs also like to live as close to their food supply as possible, and they have been known to travel to other apartments if starving. They are quite similar to mosquitoes in that they are attracted to the body heat of warm blooded animals, and to carbon dioxide that animals breathe out. (Yes, that’s how they find you.) Their advanced senses for heat and CO2 detection will lead them to you, and then they’ll generally take up residence close to a good host as soon as possible.

If you suspect you might have them, you should check around the area where you spend most of your time stationary, like in your bed in the middle of the night. You should check around the mattresses and in cracks around the area, especially in areas that are on the opposite side of the sunlight. They hate light, and they’ll most likely be in places where the least amount of light is.

The space between your wall and baseboards: a favorite bed bug hiding place

Another sign you can look for — and it was one of the biggest pieces of evidence for me — is black spots on your bed sheets. This is actually bed bug feces that they leave behind after feeding. You might find blood spots, too, that could be the result of you crushing one by accident.

My situation was a bit unique in that I didn’t have them in my bed, really. My bed bug infestation was centered behind my computer desk in the baseboard, and there was also one in my computer chair, as hard as that might be to believe. I think I know how it probably happened, too. Well, I don’t know how the bed bugs got here to begin with, but I know how I could have raised an entire population of them once they got here. I had a habit of using my computer in the middle of the night with the lights off, and I was often drinking at that time, and many times, I fell asleep on my computer chair. I can just imagine them feasting on my feet and legs when I didn’t even realize it, and then crawling up my body and making a new residence in my computer chair. It’s actually quite embarrassing that I took so long to realize this was going on, despite the fact that they are amazingly sneaky.

Do you think you might have bed bugs? Well, I hope my post will help you to determine whether or not you do. Hopefully, your place is bed bug free, but if you end up realizing that you have them, and you have concrete proof of it, it’s time to call the exterminator.

In my next and final post about bed bugs, I will explain some the steps I took to finally get rid of them. Also, be sure to check out part 1 where I talk in detail about my experience in discovering I had a bed bug problem.

“Don’t let the bed bugs bite.” Everyone has heard the expression, and for most of my life, I thought it was a harmless way to wish someone a good night’s sleep. Well, 2 years ago, I got to experience those words literally.

Around a year before I got the first-hand experience, my apartment building manager came to my door one day with another guy, and said they were looking for bed bugs. They came in and checked my bed, lifting up the mattress to take a look, but didn’t find anything. I was confident there wouldn’t be anything there, though, since I’ve never experienced getting bitten, and thought my place was pretty clean.

Time passed, and around a year later, my girlfriend started to complain about being itchy on her arms and feet, and she showed me some red dots on her arm, usually two or three in one place. I just thought that maybe she was having an allergic reaction to something. After all, I didn’t have any marks on my body and didn’t feel anything.

Not long after that, I saw one. I used to get up pretty early in the morning to start using the Internet, usually right before sunrise. I was sitting, clicking my mouse and typing, and I saw something on my desk, pretty big and dark colored. I had a pile of photo envelopes, and it came out for a second and then went back under it. I lifted up the envelopes and saw it. I didn’t know what it was. I thought it might just be a harmless beetle of some kind, but I ended up having to crush it because I couldn’t catch it.

That got me thinking about my girlfriend’s bites, and also something else. I remembered seeing a small red bug on my hand a few days before that. It crawled on my hand while I was using my mouse. I just thought it was a cute little bug. It was around the size of a period (.). When I pushed my thumb against it, it exploded in a big smudge of blood. I remembered thinking, how could such a small thing have so much blood (now I know the blood came from me!)?

That was enough to prompt an investigation. I started to do some research about bed bugs. Actually, I didn’t really have any knowledge of them before that time, but it was easy to find information about them on the Internet. I read through the signs to look for:

• Bite marks on your body, sometimes a few in a row as they get disturbed by their sleeping host’s movements sometimes while they are feeding.
• Seeing dark spots on your bed sheets and around other places bed bugs have been — that is actually bed bug feces.

Well, my girlfriend seemed to have bites, and there were a few small black stains on the bed sheets. Could it really be that we have bed bugs? I asked myself. I still wasn’t sure. I only saw the one big one, the one baby one, and my girlfriend’s apparent bites.

Adult bed bug. Not a pretty site, especially when it's sucking your blood.

A few days later, I was on my chair again, and I put my knees up on the chair. When I did that, I felt something between my inner thigh and ankle (something tickling my ankle). When I checked my ankle, there was another red bug on it, but this one was bigger, perhaps the size of a sesame seed. I let him crawl on my hand and went to show my girlfriend. “Look what was on my ankle. I think maybe we do have something in here.” And we went out into the living room, and when we looked at my chair, we saw two baby white ones crawling on it. How did they get up on the chair? I thought. My chair was a pretty high quality office chair made of upholstery. I checked inside the folds, checked the back, and didn’t really see anything, but I gave it a good spraying with raid. (I soon after realized that the raid I was using was useless against bed bugs).

Then we went into the bedroom and checked the bed, but didn’t see anything. I took off the sheets, lifted the mattresses,  stood the mattresses up on their ends so it was just the bed frame, but we couldn’t see anything.

A few days later, my girlfriend caught one biting her while she was sleeping. We had been keeping a small pen light with a bright blue-colored beam near the bed after we became suspicious. She said she felt something biting her hand first, and then something biting her foot (the parts that weren’t under the blanket), so she turned on the light and was able to get it. Then I remembered hearing something about the time of the night bedbugs usually come out to feed. Most of the sources I came across said they usually feed an hour or two before sunrise. It was now close to that time, so I thought I would go out to my living room to investigate.

I was quiet, walking softly, and carrying the same little flashlight. I came to the corner that led into the living room, and slowly peeked around to see the wall. That is where my computer desk was, around one meter from the corner, and there is a baseboard there. I shined the light along the baseboard behind my computer desk, and that was when I got one of my biggest shocks since moving into this place. There were so many bugs there! Some were just standing there, and others looked like they were going on a leisurely stroll along the baseboard and wall above there. These were big, full size bed bugs, and probably around 20 of them. I kept sneaking around to the front of my computer desk. I saw an adult bed bug on my computer chair, just sitting there, probably waiting for it’s meal (me) to come to it like I guess I had been doing quite a lot without realizing it. My computer was sitting on the floor against the side of my computer desk. I quickly moved it away from the side of the desk, and I saw one adult bug and several babies running away. They had been hiding in the dark space between my computer and the side of the desk. Is this real or a nightmare, I remember thinking.

The space behind my computer desk where most of my bed bugs were

Well, that was the last straw! I went to get the new bottle of raid I had purchased recently — one that said it could kill bedbugs — and started the chemical attack. I unleashed a ton of it against the side of the wall, especially into the crack between the wall and baseboard, which can serve as a bedbug superhighway. I sprayed tons of it on my chair, under my desk, and all areas around my computer desk.

When I thought I had finally sprayed enough, I went back to bed. My girlfriend woke up a bit, and I told her that I saw something that she’s not going to believe. I started to tell her how many bed bugs I saw. All of a sudden, I felt something picking into the bottom of my toe like a burning needle (a bit like a mosquito bite), and I hit the bottom of my feet a dozen times. One of them must have crawled between my toes or something while I was walking slowly looking for them earlier. For the rest of the night, my girlfriend and I could barely sleep, wondering if there might be bugs crawling under the sheets with us.

The next day, I got up and checked the damage from my spraying, but didn’t see too much. Did I get any of them? I checked my chair again, but this time I checked under it and found a fold in the upholstery that I had never checked before. It was on the opposite side from the window where it would always be quite dark in there. I turned it around so I could get some light into the opening, and got yet another surprise. There were many sesame seed size bed bugs in there sticking against the side. Okay, time to say goodbye to my favorite computer chair, I thought; and I picked it up, carried it outside, and tossed the whole chair into the trash bin.

Right after that, I decided to call the apartment manager to report that I had bed bugs, and he told me that an exterminator would be there within the next day to try to get rid of my bed bug problem. By law, the building is responsible for getting rid of a tenant’s infestation problems. So we just decided to wait for the experts to arrive, and hopefully our problem would be taken care of.

My dead bed bug collection: useful in proving you have a problem

I apologize for the length of this post, but I wanted to describe my experience in as much detail as possible so that it might be of benefit to others who might be having somewhat similar experiences and suspicions. Be sure to check out part 2, where I explain a bit more about bed bugs, and about the signs to look for in determining if you might have a bed bug infestation.