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dt_toronto_geek said:
One night as I was smacking the bastards I saw this 4-5" long furry thing running across the carpet with about 60 legs and it gave me what was probably my first panic attack (for real). In a state of shock I finally caught up with it and smacked it with the shoe and nailed it, but the front half kept running. I'm not scared of bugs (that's my limited experience with bugs along with spiders), it's just the element of surprise that freaks me out.
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Exactly. With the house centipede, they move so fast and seem to be bigger than they really are, that the element of surprise is what freaks you out.

Do they really eat roaches? I've been lucky with those too, but I certainly wouldn't want to live in a place where I needed house centipedes to keep a roach or bedbug problem in check. Concrete walls and floors in highrises FTW!
 
Marko said:
Do they really eat roaches? I've been lucky with those too, but I certainly wouldn't want to live in a place where I needed house centipedes to keep a roach or bedbug problem in check. Concrete walls and floors in highrises FTW!
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No idea what they eat but your correct, the element of surprise is what gets me. Never had roaches, except once. I found one on the kitchen counter about 8 years ago so the pest control guy laid down some sticky stuff from a tube & never saw another. I think I probably brought it in with groceries or something and it was a one-off.
 
I have another update: I spent my first full night of sleep last night. I didn't put any bedding on my mattress, just a single sheet that I wrapped around myself and slept on... all night. Wow did I need that sleep.

I gathered up the courage to face my biggest fear: that the box spring was a veritable bed bugs nest with crawling bugs all over the inside -- which is what caused my biggest fear of sleeping just above it. I took a flashlight and ran through the box spring with increasing confidence, never finding anything that I could identify as living, clearly not a bugs nest. I put some double sided tape along the bottom of the box spring, not to prevent them from getting around but as a test to see if there are any left. I'll check in the morning for any stuck on the tape.

Knowing that the box spring is not in fact full of bedbugs will allow me to sleep a little more soundly tonight. Another source of fear was that the items that I had stored under the bed (seasonal clothing in a box, and zipped up cases with old stuff) was where they were hiding. I cleared everything out and threw out that clothing that I will never wear again. I vacuumed under the bed and washed the floors. There's not a single box nor dust bunny left.

I also moved my Roomba to the bedroom where it can now roam the entire room -- including under the bed -- unhindered. A multi-daily vacuum of the bedroom is now only a button press away.

I'm not ready to declare victory on these bed bugs but the initial pest spray along with the deep cleaning and the lack of any bug sightings has given me confidence to declare that I am winning. A second spray in two weeks could very well finish them off if there are any remnants or unhatched eggs.

Even if I don't see any bedbugs, I'm going to get some of that d-earth and spread it around obvious places under the box spring and in crevices along walls and electrical outlet plates. I'm also getting a bedbug grade box spring sealed cover so they have no place to hide if they do come back.

In the meantime, I'm still living out of plastic bags but I think that within a few days of the second spray, if I see no bugs, I'll begin to put clothing back in the closet.

Bed bugs were largely defeated in the 1950's by potent chemical controls but I think that their demise will come at the hands of the Internet this time around. Information is power, and in that us humans have a clear advantage. We know that they follow your CO2 and body heat, we know how to identify the telltale signs of blood spots and a sweet smell in cases of larger infestations. We know that heat kills them and how they spread. It's only a matter of time before artificial CO2 and heat emitting bed bug traps that can lure, then zap these pests becomes accurate and successful enough that bed bugs will become a thing of the past. Hotel chains can spend millions dealing with bed bugs, so a lot of power and money as well as motivation is there for a solution to become available.
 
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I realize that UT may not be the place to discuss my daily struggles with these pests so I've found a website and forum that has been very useful: www.bedbugger.com

I'll continue posting my experience there under the name "BuggerBeater". Discussion of the bed bug issue affecting Toronto at large can continue to to take place here.

That said, what is City Hall doing to confront this growing epidemic? Personally, I think that this is a public health issue and should fall under the jurisdiction of the province.
 
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Don't try to treat bedbugs on your own for long. If you can't fix the problem, then save yourself and everyone in the dwellings around you and hire a pest control team.

It's not very expensive, so do it, and follow their preparation and follow-up instructions and you'll be rid of the problem quickly. I think the problem with bedbugs is generally that people try to control the problem on their own, and usually, they cannot.
 
Hi Spire, I did have a pest control company spray my place on Wednesday. I'm looking for a way to lessen the population in between treatments. There's a second spray coming up in 2 weeks but you need to remain vigilant to prevent them from spreading. I'm at a stage where only the newly born bed bugs are showing up so it is likely that I'm one spray away from uhmm .... terminating this :)
 
In retrospect, a few pointers:

- First thing that you do: Call Toronto Public Health. I didn't call right away because I didn't want to seem to be complaining about the conditions in the building. Call them so that they can give you correct answers and procedures right from the get go. Once you get off the phone, then go tell your building management and tell them that you spoke with Toronto Public Health. They'll be a lot more cooperative.

- That spider spray will only kill them on contact but it has a non desirable residual effect: it's a repellant. You don't want to repel your bed bugs because that'll cause the bugs to spread into other rooms and into your walls, making them harder to treat.
Don't try to treat the problem yourself. Get an exterminator in there ASAP. This doesn't mean that you should be hands off. By all means, declutter your place, vacuum daily and be vigilant for any bugs. Hopefully you'll have an informative exterminator. If you don't, call Toronto Public Health again for tips on dealing with the bugs in between treatments.

- When you find individual bugs, kill them with tape and stick them to an index card. Vacuuming them will risk that they can escape if you somehow missed anything when you empty the vac. You don't need to keep every single bug that you catch, but try to keep an index card per day to show your exterminator how the population is evolving and as proof to your building that you're indeed finding them, even after the first treatment. Some landlords don't want to pay beyond the first treatment but if you have proof that you're still seeing bedbugs after the first treatment and if you've spoken with Toronto Public Health, they'll have no choice but to send in the exterminator again and again until your bug problem is fixed.
 
Thank you for keeping us up to date with posting your learning experiences & your journey as you go through this MetroMan, I'm learning some thing from your posts and I thought I was pretty well educated on these pests. Your experience here can become an excellent reference for those who are unfortunate enough to have to go through this in the future.

I was going to comment on the use of spider spray as it was my understanding that all over-the-counter pest sprays (including one's that are now being sold for bed bugs) are ineffective unless the spray makes contact with the insect. It never dawned on me that it could make them scatter into another area of your home or deeper into hiding, thanks for mentioning that!

When your battle is won I'm taking some of your information and updating the "bed bug" section of our Tenant's Association website if you don't mind.

Keep up the good fight! :)
 
dt, I commend you for being so informative to the residents of your building.

While my building management has been cooperative in terms of getting a pest control company in here and taking responsibility to pay for it themselves, when it comes to necessary steps that involve telling other residents, they've been very difficult.

They don't want to tell anybody else that there are bed bugs in the building. That's a problem because these bugs travel easily and if other units are infected, the odds are that most people won't know how to identify them until things get out of hand. As I said, information is the weapon by which bed bugs will be defeated and so far, my building management is not helping by keeping things secret.
 
MetroMan, the whole stigma of having bed bugs definitely adds to the problem. No one likes to admit that they have them, and building/property management certainly doesn't want to "go public" for fear of affecting rental/property values, but keeping it under wraps doesn't solve anything -- it makes it worse. Not sure how we get around that unless government mandates property managers to inform all residents/tenants -- I know that has been suggested. Of course, how do you enforce that? I have also seen suggestions that exterminators be required to report where they have been working, but again how do you enforce that? It will only lead to "black market" exterminations ... or not calling in an expert at all.
 
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