Uncovering new bedmates

In the good old days of the agrarian past, humans and bedbugs likely lived together with somewhat less friction. Less horrified by the prospect of proximity with animal life, our bedbug-ridden ancestors might have been driven to search for a quick means to exterminate a common pest.

University of Kentucky entomologist Michael F. Potter writes in his article “The History of Bed Bug Management” that the European elite during the Middle Ages frequently changed their bedclothes and straw mattress stuffing to control the pests that relentlessly plagued the poor.

In my family, my grandmother tells stories of her own mother taking extreme caution to fumigate bedbugs before the family moved into a new house. Even before their extermination in the United States in the 1950s, bedbugs were evidently cause for distress.

Until the past month, I was blissfully unaware of the resurgence of cimex lectularius in the U.S. Then a few friends advised me to be on the lookout for any signs of the creatures as I searched the classifieds for a second-hand mattress.

Not long after, I spotted articles in national newspapers chronicling the rise of the pests. I sat in a horrified paralysis as I read of the bedbug’s mysterious return to the U.S. and massive infestations in places as unlikely as New York’s Upper West Side, the offices of Elle Magazine and the Brooklyn district attorney’s office.

I looked at my mosquito-bitten legs and wondered if the red bumps might have been obtained during the previous night’s sleep. I temporarily experienced the irrational panic hypochondria must cause its sufferers.

The fact that bedbugs are innocuous, at least as far as the spread of disease is concerned, offered little comfort as I lay awake that night, imagining the sensation of hundreds of bugs scampering across my legs.

As evidence of our post-industrial world view, we prefer to doze off amidst fabrics that have been assembled mechanically and uniformly. Unfortunately, the old stigma that bedbugs thrive in the supposedly dirty homes of people of lower socio-economic classes has revived alongside them.

Far more menacing than the Upper West Side’s stoic response to affliction by an embarrassing pest, the media have documented a number of more disturbing associations, many of them employing racist assumptions to explain the presence of bedbugs.

The chemical alternative to bedbugs probably presents more to worry about than the creatures themselves. I, for one, would rather live with the slight fear of contracting bedbugs in a hotel than what the Environmental Protection Agency has called the “unacceptable risks to the environment and potential harm to human heath” caused by the continued use of DDT.

For now, a lack of proven, safe extermination methods means the renaissance of bedbugs truly does welcome us back to the past.


E-mail: wallacen@indiana.edu