My son is in the Bahams. He informs me he has bedbugs. I already have two large contractor sized garbage bags to put his ENTIRE suitcase into when I get him at the airport. Stripping him naked in the parking lot isn’t an option, which is a shame.
I AM tempted to bring a fresh change and make him change in the bathroom before we leave the terminal.
What do I do? What chemicals do I treat the suitcase with to kill eggs and bugs? How many times do I run his clothing in hot water? What will kill bugs and eggs on clothing? Colorfast bleach? Oxyclean? Ammonia?
Any thoughts on this ? I’m darned determined NOT to get them into the house.
*Clothing should be laundered in a manner to kill bugs and their eggs before or as soon as these items are brought back into the home. Suitcases should be carefully inspected, scrubbed with a stiff brush, and thoroughly vacuumed. Leaving such luggage for several hours in a closed vehicle in full summer sun may render the items bug free. *
I vote for the bathroom change. shudder
BedBugsGuide seems to have a bunch of reasonably good information.
It looks like hot water and detergent will kill the bugs. Chuck the luggage.
I got them from staying at a Clarion Inn in Manhattan when I was attending a funeral. The room was infested. Funny thing is my sibs were in rooms on different floors in the same hotel and didn’t have any issues.
I stripped in my garage. Only the things that I was actively washing entered the house. Everything that I was trying to save was garbage bagged while it waited for the wash. I washed each load of clothes several times with hot water and extra detergent. The clothes didn’t exit the washer between loads. Everything got dried on hot. If the clothes couldn’t take the treatment, they were tossed.
I just threw out my suitcase, my toiletry bag, my sneakers (which upon inspection had a crushed one attached even after crossing the country), and a couple of sweaters. I did leave an expensive pair of pumps in a doubled plastic bag in the garage through the heat of an Arizona summer and eventually wore them again.
I lost somewhere between $280 and $300 bucks worth of stuff, but I would do it again in a heartbeat. I’m sure that I would have spent far more than that if they had gotten into the house.
You’re VERY lucky to have caught them before they got inside your house.
I was not so lucky.
I suspect that a neighbor introduced them here, as there was no travel of any kind, nor anything other that might have brought bugs into the house that I can think of. Yet, there they are, sucking my blood in my sleep.
It is truly a physical and psychological nightmare to endure the presence of these vampiric insects. I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy. Could I afford the multiple exterminator visit that are necessary to get them completely out, I would, but that’s not the case. They only feed every nine days or so, so I’m not constantly under attack, but it’s still a nightmare to try and sleep in a bed/room that has blood sucking insects waiting for you to fall asleep in it.
My body is riddled with bites, thankfully they usually like the parts that are usually covered with summer clothing, but they seem to like my right calf recently.
If anyone else gets them, I’ll tell you what I tried, what kind of worked, and what was ineffective, but I know that the only real solution is professional extermination.
I hate those bugs so much. Thank goodness they aren’t big disease vectors, otherwise I might be a goner.
Last summer, somebody carried them into my house and I suffered an infestation. I didn’t find them as legendarily hard to kill as the intertoob suggests. I bought a bunch of Raid Fumigators and set a couple off in each room. I did take the time to open all the closets and dresser drawers, strip the beds and set the mattresses up on edge. The first application wiped them out. I waited a couple weeks to give any eggs a chance to hatch out and repeated the process, though I hadn’t actually seen any bedbugs. The house remains bedbug free.
I’ll second the changing in the bathroom idea. If possible, how about stopping at a laundromat on the way home? It may take a few hours to go through several cycles but you can’t be too careful with these vermin. No cite but I believe that the big commercial dryers get hotter than your average home variety. That might be more effective in the killing process.
If you do have him change at the airport, don’t forget to bring him shoes or sandals or something.
Don’t forget to inspect/treat other items. The only time I’ve seen one I was lying in bed reading a book from the library and looked down to find a flattened, dried-out one on my stomach. It had dropped from the book. (Which went into a bag and out to the garage until I could get back to the library.
I knew what it was due to some research I had done when my children were waking up with mysterious bites. Those turned out to be from fleas donated to our socks by the neighbor’s cats, though.
Bedbugs cause several bites at the same spot, unlike fleas or mosquitos.
I’ve been bitten by bedbugs in Brazil and Ethiopia. Didn’t take any precautions but never brought them home.
By the way, they aren’t insects. They are acarians. Damn bugs just the same.
Um, I guess that is true in the majority of cases, but there are exceptions.
I have a friend married to a pilot; he apparently brought the buggers home after one of his many overnights in a hotel somewhere in some country.
For whatever reason, the bites did not affect her a lot (she was pregnant at the time; perhaps that affected her metabolism or something). So, she didn’t realize that bedbugs had infested their bedroom.
Then, one day she decided for some reason to do a major cleaning/reorganization of the bedroom. And when she got to taking the bed apart…THERE THEY WERE :eek: :eek: :eek: Fat and happy.
Amazingly enough, she got rid of the bugs through sheer determination. Everything she owned got washed in bleach about 30,000 times, and I don’t know what else she did. But the bed apparently had some romantic value and she didn’t want to give it up. I believe she disassembled it and scrubbed the hell out of it (or had her maid do so, since she was in Egypt).
I swear, this kind of answer is what makes Cecil proud to have started the whole mess !!
Am writing off luggage. Will warsh and dry clothing in industrial laundromat dryer MANY TIMES before letting it enter home. Will put entire suitcase into 2 contractor sized garbage bags, to keep my car clean. Will spray Bedbug pesticide INTO bags in back yard. Let sit for 2 days in sun. ( Which will superheat the air inside ). THEN laundromat.
May bring Wahl professional hair shears and shave child’s head and body. ONE CAN NOT BE TOO CAREFUL.
Do any of your son’s possessions have any sentimental or extreme monetary value? I vote for bagging and tossing everything. It’s not worth the risk of even one of these blood-sucking b*stards entering your house. I would have him change at the airport, and just throw away what he’s wearing. Hmm, does he even have to bring his suitcase home with him? Why not just toss it where he’s staying?
I stayed at a lovely upscale hotel in NJ last summer, and brought them home with me. The rest of the summer was hellish - we tossed practically everything in our bedroom, and had the exterminator lay down massive amounts of poison (after sending my asthmatic son and cat away for more than a week). Truly, I would not wish them on my worst enemy.
Best of luck (and just so you know, they’re not like ticks - you won’t find them hanging on to your son’s body!)
