Sleep tight

Burn the sheets: bed bugs are coming

By: Web Master

Posted: 1/22/08

Bed bugs exist! They are not only a way for grandmothers to advise children to sleep vigilantly.

Bed bugs have been found in residence halls on campus, in apartment buildings and in hotels in the College Station area. Texas A&M is infestated with Cimex Lectularius, or the common bed bug, a creature that was thought completely eliminated in the 1940s and 1950s. Officials and students are forced to evaluate how the pest spreads itself, how humans spread it and how to curb the proliferation.

In order to know the enemy, it is important to know how it reproduces. According to A&M's Center for Urban and Structural Entomology, or CUSE, bed bug copulation involves a rather violent process called traumatic insemination. This happens when the male stabs the female in the abdomen with his genitalia to release sperm.

Entomologists say that this evolved from the female's resistance to copulate with the males. The females will produce around 200 eggs during their lifetime, averaging three to four eggs a day, CUSE reported.

Bed bugs live for several months, allowing for several generations to pass in a year. Life spans depend on the availability of warm, sleeping human bodies. Bed bugs puncture the skin, anticoagulants in tow, and feed for the three to 15 minutes it takes to fill them up.

In addition to the bed bug's feeding schedule, their means of transporting include baggage, clothes, furniture and linens. International travel to locations where bed bugs were not wiped out by Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane, or DDT, in the early 20th century is a possibility for the influx. CUSE found that the U.S. never completely eliminated the pest.

The Center traced bed bugs back to sleeper cells of bed bugs in poultry farms in Texas and Arkansas. It is common to find bed bugs in residence halls, apartments and hotels. These spaces are hot beds because of the density of the living situations. The bed bugs can travel elsewhere, but the close quarters of hundreds of warm, carbon exhaling human bodies attracts them.

According to an Associated Press article, the city of New York saw the amount of reports of bed bugs triple to 7,000 in three years. The situation is similar across the country.

Mosquito bites and bed bug bites look similar, advised Texas A&M Residence Life. Bed bugs are known to carry diseases, but there is no empirical evidence that they transmit. The worst looking bumps occur when allergies are involved. Residence Life provides handouts with bed bug information and contact information for students who find bed bugs in their hall.

The CUSE has a website with information on bed bugs and other pests, such as cockroaches, ants or spiders. These resources can be of use to off-campus Aggies as well. Institutions recommend against secondhand couches and furniture. McFadden Resident Advisor Whitney Morehead said, "This summer [one of her residents] had to throw out their couch because it was infested."

Used and freebie couches are breeding grounds for these pests and a center-piece in many college students' living rooms. Many apartment complexes warned tenants of the commingling of on-campus and off-campus Aggies, with reference to spreading bed bugs. The Luxor Management Group told tenants to avoid visiting residence halls and "if someone who lives in the dorms must come to visit you in your residence, [we] strongly recommend that they do not sit or put their belongings on your beds or even enter your bedrooms and to just stay in your living or dining rooms."

Minimizing areas where bed bugs can hide, frequent vacuuming, washing of clothes and bedding and monitoring for patches of eggs, fecal matter or castaway molten skins, are ways to prevent or assess an infestation from spreading.

Knowledge about bed bugs is recommended, especially since there is little evidence that our means of extermination are effective, stated CUSE. When questioned, few students knew about the bed bug problem, which could lead to the spreading of bed bugs.