Bugs

Yall, the bugs here have been out of control!

Moving into a house at the end of the summer after it not having power on for at least a month, I expected and wasn't too deterred by the few bugs I saw. That was until things got out of control...

Thankfully, we have a great land lord who had already noticed some bug issues and had an exterminator service scheduled for us the second week we were there. We had noticed a lot of ants outside, baby crickets inside, and a wasp's nest on our porch along with cob webs.

Think Snow White cob webs...okay, okay maybe that's being a little dramatic, but just a little!

The guy was very nice and took care of all of these...I didn't realize bugs would start coming out of the wood work I guess to avoid the death chemicals. So, for the next few days all the momma and daddy crickets started coming out and dying along the edges of the wall. One managed to jump on Stephen one night while we were watching TV, but that one seemed to be the strongest and made it the farthest and seems to be the only one with that death defying strength. So, we've been sweeping up huge crickets the past week.

He sprayed the wasp's nest and I was not sad to watch those suckers fall to their death. Unfortunately, I didn't realize we had a wasp's nest under our mail box until one of them greeted me one afternoon with his stinger in my hand.

I have not been stung since I was little. And, man does it hurt! It's one of those things that you think, "Man. This hurts." Then, after a few seconds you realize it really really hurts. Stings are no joke! Thankfully ice numbed it and it only made about half of my hand swell. I went out, bought some wasp spray, and drenched that nest in poison! I didn't mind watching them fall to their death either.

However, there were more.

The second day we were in town, I noticed this random bug that I had never seen before crawling on top of our bed. Again, I'm in Snow White cleaning mode. So, I picked it up, killed it, and threw it away. A few days later, in the morning, I noticed another one. I thought that was odd as things were much cleaner and the bug population had dwindled significantly. I showed it to Stephen, told him about the other one, and he immediately googles bed bugs.

Looking back, there was no denying that was exactly what it was, but let me tell you I tried to talk myself out of it. The next day, we found two more. One on top of the bed and one on the wall. Every time we found them, with the exception of the second one, was an odd time for bed bugs to be out. I tried hard to talk myself out of us having them.

When we googled them, I read you should save one to show an expert because you never know when you might see another one. So, when we saw those two in the same day, I wrapped them up in tape and stuck them in the freezer just like the internet told me to.

It was a few days later when the exterminator came for our other bug issues. So, I showed them to him to get his opinion making sure not to mention our hypothesis that I had tried to disprove in my mind so hard. (You get real itchy if you don't) His first thought was that we had bed bugs. He tried to make me feel better by telling me he wasn't the expert. 

The company called us and scheduled a time for the expert to come and take a look a couple days later. The night before the expert was going to come, we decided to move our twin bed to the middle bedroom because we were buying a full bed for our "real" guest room. As we took the mattress off to move the box springs and frame, we began to inspect things. 

We had become pro inspectors by this point, inspecting our bed every night multiple times thankfully without seeing anymore bugs or evidence of them after those last two live ones we found.

Even though I was still trying to talk myself out of having bed bugs, it was really hard to deny this evidence.

The expert came the next day, took one look, and said, "Yep! You have bed bugs, buddy!"

Great.

So, we shut down the Snyder Hotel temporarily. The guy told us they would not be able to come and treat the house for at least two weeks.

Great.

More itchy living for us.

Thankfully, our land lord was not having that and got them out the next week. The guy showed up around 8:30, Stephen helped him get the house set up the way they needed it to be (in doing so, found two more live ones on my side of the bed), and he went to work.

They bring in industrial size heaters with a generator and heat the house to 120 degrees. They keep the house at that temperature for several hours (usually 4-6). Once the heat treatment is done, they come in and do a chemical treatment. It is an all day process. Even though he finished around 5, he told us not to come home until 7. When we got home around 8:30, the house was still close to 90 degrees.

I'm so scared to see our first electric bill.

The heat is the ticket to getting rid of bed bugs. Thankfully, this company guarantees their treatment and will come back in two weeks to do a post-treatment inspection.

We tossed some clean sheets in the dryer for 30 minutes last night, just to be sure, put them on the bed, and slept like babies!

Over the next two weeks, he recommended us washing everything (clothes, towels, sheets, etc). We spent this weekend washing every piece of bedding and every blanket in the house!

Again, scared to see that electric bill, but determined to be sure we're done with these pesky things!

We also went out and bought mattress covers for all of the mattress that are specially designed to prevent bed bugs. They say mattress covers, but we bought two of each and covered the box springs too since that's where most of our friendly critters were living.

These treatments are not cheap. ($1100) Like I've said, our land lord is great! You can't 100% prove we didn't bring bed bugs with us, but there was evidence that these bugs were already in the house when we moved in. So, they covered the cost! Thank you, Jesus!

Hopefully our bug adventure is done for a while. I won't be too sad to see colder weather come and get rid of pesky insects for a few months! They seem to really love old houses full of little crevices. Ugh!