Dogs trained to sniff out bedbugs help New York City tackle its infestation
With bedbug reports up 47 percent this year, New York City has been scrambling to get the epidemic under control. Getting rid of the bugs can take weeks and cost several thousand dollars. Mary Plummer and Bradley Gallo report on the city’s newest solution: bedbug dogs.
To prevent bedbugs:
1) Wash clothing in hot water and inspect clothing immediately after returning from traveling
2) When buying furniture, inspect it for bedbugs before bringing it into your home
3) Never bring discarded bed frames, mattresses, box springs or upholstered furniture into your home
To check to see if you have bedbugs:
Use a bright flashlight to look for bedbugs in your home. A hot hair dryer, a thin knife or a playing card can be used to force them out of hiding spaces and cracks. Check the following favorite hiding places of bedbugs:
1) Behind the headboards of beds
2) In the seams and tufts of your mattress and box spring
3) In and around baseboard cracks
4) In loose wallpaper, cracks in plaster and clutter
{ 2 comments }
Great advice about inspecting and prevention. If you think you may have bed bugs have an inspection. If you are having a dog inspect and the dog hits on a positive, be sure the technician conducts a personal inspection and can positively ID bed bugs and not just go on the dogs alert. Finding bed bugs should be the technician’s confirmation of the dog’s alert.
To prevent bedbugs:
1) Wash clothing in hot water and inspect clothing immediately after returning from traveling
— You forgot to say dry the clothing. Drying is more important: hot, dry heat. In fact, clothes that are clean can be dried; so you don’t have to wash (a second time) and dry.
2) When buying furniture, inspect it for bedbugs before bringing it into your home
— If you don’t know what to look for, you could overlook an infestation. Remember, bed bug adults are large (around a 1/4 inch) and may be yellowish-orange, tan, brown to reddish brown. Immature stages are quite a bit smaller with the first instar nymph (hatches from egg) only 1/32 inch (1 mm) long and pale colored. Droppings are not always dark, but vary from light to dark. Is this second hand furniture? Could be discarded and reclaimed. Could be infested.
3) Never bring discarded bed frames, mattresses, box springs or upholstered furniture into your home
As above in #2.
To check to see if you have bedbugs:
Use a bright flashlight to look for bedbugs in your home. A hot hair dryer, a thin knife or a playing card can be used to force them out of hiding spaces and cracks. Check the following favorite hiding places of bedbugs:
— Again if you don’t know what to look for, why bother searching? See #2 above. Thin knife do to handle probably won’t work, knife blade also too thick. Playing card is too thick. Used Metrocard because is better thickness and also flexible and should be cut and trimmed: cut off the magnetic strip, cut the card obliquely to produce 2 triangles. Sometimes a bright light on what people recommend for sleeping such as a white sheet will blind you. Why not use a pale colored sheet, that way light and dark nymphs and droppings will contrast on the sheet background? Sometimes a hot hair dryer doesn’t always bring them out so quickly, but could work. You don’t want to have them out and the dryer blow them around.
1) Behind the headboards of beds
— in cracks and crevices on any surfaces not just behind the headboard. Or the bugs may very well be in plain sight, just on the rear, not well lit, surface, but sometimes in brightly lit areas, too.
2) In the seams and tufts of your mattress and box spring
— Not only here, but on rolls of fabric on the side of these objects between the top and bottom tufts or seams of the mattress and box spring. Inside either or both of these items, too. That’s why good mattress and box spring enclosures are important: keep bugs in, keep them from coming out if already there. Will not protect you from being bitten, just makes
bed bugs come out more into the open since they can harbor between enclosed mattresses and box springs and also pillows. An also find them on and within the bed frame, cabinets, bookcases, night stands, dressers, etc. On and behind pictures, wall hangings, inside electric clocks, TVs, radios, computers, printers, etc. Inside smoke alarms, wall light bases,
ceiling chandlier bases, inside electric outlets, wall switches, cable TV conduits, FIOS conduits, along heat riser pipes, almost any perforation through a wall, floor, ceiling. The list goes on.
3) In and around baseboard cracks
— Use the cut Metrocard to search. Don’t forget you are seeing the baseboard from the outside and they are getting in from behind it or underneath it where it meets the floor. Also molding that is up near the ceiling and don’t have to be behind it, but on top of it may be the harborage zone.
4) In loose wallpaper, cracks in plaster and clutter
— Also use the cut Metrocard to search. And many other places, too.
Lou Sorkin
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