So what does it mean that I just killed one on the floor of my office (at work)?
That is where you got it and took it home.
What is a topical anesthetic? (brand) Do you need a script?
A topical anesthetic is a cream with a numbing agent to relieve pain or itching.
The one I bought was an over the counter generic store brand. I think I got it at CVS. Just go to a drugstore and ask the pharmacist what’s good for whatever problem you have.
You may be right that I picked them up here at work. My concern is that it’s the other way around. That they’re not gone at home and I accidentally carried that one to my workplace.
Am I wrong in thinking that it’s unlikely an office complex would have a bedbug infestation? Nobody sleeps in an office complex.
I suppose people do fall asleep at their desks, but no one sleeps here at night when bedbugs are active. Then again, this one was active during the day…
many offices have been infested with bedbugs. movie theatrs as well. you don’t have to sleep there, the bugs hitchhike in either through an infestation at a home or through someone traveling and bringing luggage to the office before going home.
talk to your office/building management, you want this taken care of quickly. get some de and sprinkle it around the office until exterminators can come in.
Actually, now that I think about it, we have people traveling and staying in hotels all over the country.
there you go. bedbugs in offices mostly hang around comfy chairs and couches. check out a few of those in the office to see if there are signs.
they can spread from area to area rather easily in offices.
Or it was on you a while back and jumped off. Those little bloodsuckers can go a long time without food.
That’s my fear. I don’t want to start a panic in the office if I’ve killed the only one. On the other had, if the office is infested it needs to be taken care of.
I read in NYC and Chicago they have been found in theaters and on subway. Anywhere you got upholstered furniture you can have them.
But as someone else said, bed bugs are easy to kill. Almost all incests are easy to kill. You can kill a roach with a shot of windex. I find it funny I lived in NYC in the mid 1960s and my bedroom was so full of roaches I slept in the living room. For some reason they weren’t in the kitchen or living area, just the bed room. I battled those roaches.
And Greenwich Village back then wasn’t the place then, it is today. I also battled mice in my NYC flats, but I never once knew anyone with bed bugs. They really have come back.
From what I read they can live up to 18 months without food. And the eggs can go dormate so you have to kill the eggs, which seems to be the problem. They thrive in clutter, so you should simply remove everything. Replace as much furniture with metal. In future I will only buy metal bedframes.
I haven’t had any yet, but I do recall those massive battles with mice and roaches from my Bohemian days in Greenwich Village and Soho and Chelsea. It’s funny how cheap those places were and how bad they could get but now they’re so upscale, well for the most part.
I would buy the DE, I used boric acid for roaches, and it does work but like boric acid, DE has to be walked over to work. And it doesn’t work right away. And you need to only dust it, coz if you use too much the incects just crawl around it.
Oh if you go to YouTube you can find how to make a bed bug detector out of dry ice. That might be interesting to try out at your office. Or everyone fork over for one of those bed bug sniffing dogs. But I hear they are only 95% effective, which means if they miss, the bed bugs will just multiply anyway
You mentioned roaches and a lack of bedbugs. I read somewhere that roaches eat bedbugs. If that’s true, maybe we’ve become so good at eliminating roaches these days that we’ve upset the balance. Wouldn’t that be ironic?
True but roaches generally live in kitchen and bathrooms,where there’s water. Bed bugs usually nest within 10 feet of their victim.
I never could figure out how the bedroom seemed to be the source and not the kitchen. Aw wonderful NYC, how I miss it, there was nothing like NYC in the 60s and 70s.
It’s fairly commonly found at garden stores, especially the ones that lean towards the organic. I get it by the 10 pound box for about 13 bucks at a local nursery. This stuff is invaluable around my house, and I always keep a box of it handy.
I use a ton of it in my organic garden (to kill/drive fire ants out of my raised veggie beds), as well as in the house to combat the odd roach, waterbug, and/or slug (our Texan drought keeps driving them inside for water sources this summer 
)
It’s also great for pet usage (We currently have 4 cats and a dog, almost all of whom spend time outside). We rub DE into the fur of our pets as a non-chemical flea treatment, as well as dust it on mattresses, pet beds, and furniture during flea season, and it’s also good for treating worms when fed to your pet daily.
So, davidm, how did it all turn out? I’m just now seeing your thread for the first time and I’m dying to know.
I sincerely hope you got rid of them all by now!
So far there’s no sign of them. I’m crossing my fingers.
This thread makes me itchy.
So… They’re back.
After disposing of my furniture and having an exterminator in several times, I bought an inexpensive futon and put it in my living room. I didn’t want to risk expensive real furniture. Also, the futon has round metal legs which supposedly they can’t crawl up. I’ve been using it as a sofa during the day and a bed at night.
Recently the itchy welts on my ankles returned. I examined the futon cover. It was during this examination that I realized that, depending on how you raise and lower the back of the futon, the rear flap of the cover can hang down onto the floor. :smack:
The thing has zippers and Velcro and seams and pockets that form lots of little nooks and crannies, many of which were full of bugs. :eek: I vacuumed them up as best I could, and placed the cover in a plastic trash bag. I also vacuumed the futon’s mattress even though an examination revealed no bugs and no obvious openings via which they could get inside it. I took the dust bag out of the vacuum, taped over the hole at the top and placed it in the same bag with the futon cover and sealed the bag and put it out for the trash.
I slept that night and since, in a lawn chair (metal legs, no upholstery) with my feet up on a hassock. The hassock has double-sided tape wrapped around it in the hope that any that try to crawl up it will get stuck. So for, no more welts, and no bugs stuck in the tape.
A couple of days ago, I sprayed all sides of the mattress with “Hot Shot Bed Bug Killer”. Then I let it air out for a couple of days because I don’t particularly want to sleep on insecticide.
I’ve also laundered all of the bedding, including the pillows.
I purchased some special bed bug pillow and mattress covers that will supposedly trap any bugs that are in the mattress (or pillows) and also keep any new ones from getting in.
I put them on this evening. Before covering it, I again carefully examined the mattress and saw no signs of bugs and no place where the could enter the mattress.
So what happens? Within 10 or 15 minutes of covering the mattress I noticed and killed 3 bugs that were crawling on it. They seemed to be trying to hide in the zipper and the seams without much luck. So it apparently does make things at least more difficult for them but… where the fuck did they come from and how did they get on the outside of the cover? I saw nothing when I examined the mattress, and I saw nothing while slipping the cover over it (which would have majorly stirred up anything sitting on it’s surface.)
That was about an hour ago and I just looked again and saw nothing (it’s a white cover so they’d be very obvious). Maybe those three got stirred up and ended up outside during the covering procedure and the rest are trapped inside.
My employment situation has improved of late and I’ve been considering moving into a nicer place. I would be considering this even without these damned vampire bugs. The bugs are pushing me closer to making that decision. I just have to figure how to make the move without taking my unwanted guests with me.
At the moment I’m trying to decide if I want to risk actually sleeping on the futon tonight. A lawn chair does not make for a good nights sleep but, then again, fear of bugs is also an effective sleep disruptor.
Such is my life. Damn.
Oh man that sucks.
You’re just going to have to take off and nuke them from orbit.
They need to find an answer to this. This can be a seriously disruptive situation.
Oh I know.
Are you in an apartment building? Maybe the bugs are moving from unit to unit.