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Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2007 14:40:49 -0400 (EDT)
From: Lee Denis
To: John Hutchison
Subject: Fwd: BEDBUGS!
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Lee Denis
Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 20:26:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: Lee Denis
Subject: BEDBUGS!
To: Dave Brown
Hello Dave,
It's Lee Denis here. I made a sucessful transition to BC Housing at Hall Towers, but nobody told me that these places are not just for seniors anymore, and they are mainly taking in Level 2 Disability people now. But these people do not have the supports that you provide at Lookout...its not a good thing. I pity the elderly. Maybe when I'm 60 I'll get safer and go private if the place turns into a 'Welfare Hotel'...too scary to contemplate!
I got so depressed today I almost felt like asking if I could return to Cliff Block! But no, it's early days yet and I'm just depressed because I developed a bedbug problem.
I have no idea how I got them...does anyone? But it was only about a month ago, so nobody will blame Cliff Block at least.....
They travel along the heating system, which is the old apartment kind that goes from room to room on the floor.
They use the same Pesticide people that Cliff Block uses, only they come EVERY THURSDAY! Don't forget Dave, there are two towers and over 200 residents, so I would say it is reasonable. Unfortunately, they were totally successful in eradicating the cockroaches that used to be in the two towers, and cockroaches are the only local enemy for a bedbug. Cockroaches will eat the eggs that they lay in the cracks in the tiles.
So, here we go....first I wanted to see if the fact that a dead bedbug gives birth...so I put a live one in a glass, then poured salt on the thing to see if that would kill it, but no - it crawled around on the salt. It did die eventually, as I had injured it in the capture. After a week or so a black sqiqqle lay beside the dead bedbug.
I had thought all the black sqiqqles I had been cleaning up in the cracks in my tile floor were dead fruitflies! Silly me.
The black sqiqqles are actually the larvae, or whatever the proper name is for such a thing. They have a sort of intelligence, as I have watched them climb my wall, UP of coarse, to try and get to wood table. They love wood, more on that later.
So, cleaning the cracks in the flooring of anything like a black sqiqqle is a good idea.
A few days later I looked in the glass and the sqiqqle was GONE..but I could vaguely make out the outline of a bedbug...the babies are translucent! Invisible to us. And they can move fast!
So, that is one experiment I tried.
The second experiment was to put a live one in the glass with 2 dead ones to see what would happen. After one day it has burrowed it's way into the dead one's belly to get at the blood!
Now I will tell you what a very bad infestation feels like...lonely. How can I visit anyone? I cannot see my 85 year old mother now, she is so very scared of getting a bedbug infestation, she knows that she could not stand the work.
The work - yes 8 or 9 loads of wash...plus purging all belongings that may be infested. I've done the wash thing 3 times now. Now I live with everything in plastic bags...it's all washed. I had to undo my new home and make it into an armed camp! It's so hard for me to move the furniture out from the wall each time so I just leave it out from the wall for the next fumigation!
Plus there is the cat...I cannot just leave for 6 hours. Blue kindly took me in to your lobby the first time (I wore clean clothes and took every precaution not to infest you)...but this time I must go to the 19th floor lobby with the cat...there is nothing there but an empty room and a wonderful view! But I cannot keep bothering Lookout. The manager at Hall Towers, Steve, is a wonderful man and is very helpful...in his way. He looks after BOTH BUILDINGS, so everything he does is 'on the run'...a very busy and hard-working man.
So, we have black sqiggles that seem to have the intelligence to climb a wall to get to my wood table. Here comes the clincher, THEY LIVE IN WOOD. My son, Shawn, lives in the West End of Vancouver where there is a bad infestation everywhere and they all are buying wrought iron and glass tables...and iron beds...
You must check all your wood furniture Dave, or get the pesticide people to check it. Some of those tables are bad looking. Also, it says on the sheet of paper they leave that nobody can bring in used furniture unless they check it first. I believe we should follow the instructions on that sheet of paper to the letter.
I did find out that heat to 117 degrees Farenheight will kill ALL STAGES of the bedbug...I am still dubious about the freezing.....
I read a book on pests and apparently in the 1930's there was a worldwide infestation of bedbugs and England suffered badly. Sweden put people up in tent cities in the parks while they fumigated they buildings and they were seriously thinking of building hotels for the people to stay in thru the winter fumigations.
Denmark came up with a good idea, they painted the walls in an oily substance almost to the ceiling (bedbugs cannot climb a smooth surface) and the made some sort of concave molding for the walls.
Another thing I read, I can copy this if you like - you can be in an iron bed all safe and sound, and they bedbugs will climb the wall and the ceiling and DROP onto you - their food.
These bugs are prehistoric, they live to eat and breed.
Everyone says I'm too 'into' this thing and I should take my mind off of it. But I cannot really have company in my infested apartment and feel good about it and I cannot really visit people for the same reason. I feel like I'm in some sort of isolation! Quaranteen if you will. I am lucky that my girlfriend, Corinne, is brave enough to visit me! It's very depressing. It's also a lot of work, a LOT of work...the laundry MUST be done!
I have no idea if they will be gone after my 3 fumigations. I am expecting the second fumigation on Thursday...they use very strong poison....I was in the room a hot 3 minutes before my bowells exploded when I returned home after fumigation number one. I put my bare arm on the table and my arm burned because there was a wet spot of spray!
My first thought was that the SECOND fumigation was the IMPORTANT one, as all the big ones would have died, and they the second wave of poison would kill all of the hundreds of hatching egg things. Think Dave, if you see 3 big bedbugs and a female lays 300 eggs in 3 hours...in all the cracks in the floors and in the wood - they the HATCHING EGGS must be the important spray.
BUT I caught 2 big guys just today...I just pick them up now I'm so used to them...and I have no idea where the big ones came from!
I don't think anyone has the answer, unless we bring back pet cockroaches! They are like aliens and they are truly creepy bugs...then again, I guess if we look at any life cycle of a bug, yes, it's creepy...
I hope this information helps you...I'm at the library, so I'll try and get that book on the 1930 infestation and copy the pages, it's a good read.
I really need a mattress for Thursday or Friday Dave...my Mom will buy me a metal daybed and I will cover the mattress with plastic, but she cannot affort to get it for my until after the 3rd spray. My foamy is so infested that it must be thrown away!
I'm 57 years old and starting to feel the effects of sleeping on the floor, up and down, up and down...God.
OK Dave, any questions, just ask!
or email me at:
Thanks for listening,
Lee Denis
Lee Denis
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