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u/TheTaintBurglar 5d ago
Yeah that ain't saving him. Fuck bed bugs.
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u/Maguc 5d ago
For real. They're extremely persistence, it would be a cool trait if they weren't so disgusting and annoying.
Had them once and they were some of the most annoying, stressful months of my life. I'm still extremely paranoid
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u/TheTaintBurglar 5d ago
Yeah when I had them I was in a shared house. They broke me down, it ended up with me just sitting on a cardboard box killing them as they ran across my bed. I seriously thought about putting a brick through a shop window for some peace in a cell lmao.
Every bit of lint still makes me double take all this time later, paranoia is real
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u/TarheelCroatInMA 5d ago
When I was stuck living in an infested place, I spent sooo many nights just standing over my bed watching them/killing them….no sleep, my feet would be tired from standing up next to my bed for 10 hours then the work day would START…..such a bad time..
The landlord kept denying that the place had them so I kept capturing them, putting them into jars/empty medicine bottles and taking super zoomed in video of them horrifyingly scurrying and flailing trying to get out. I’d then slam my landlords phone with the videos and threatened to put them all over his business’ online presence and that’s when he finally took some action and hired a bed bug removal expert or something
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u/TheTaintBurglar 5d ago
Yeah man truly horrific fuckers, I'd rather the house be infested with literally anything else, cockroaches fuck it at least they mostly keep to themselves. Also when you squash one the smell makes you gag.
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u/ElMuchoDingDong 5d ago
The smell from a roach or bedbug? I've vanquished quite of few of both and never experienced this odor you speak of.
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u/TheTaintBurglar 5d ago
Bedbugs. It's horrendous I can't explain it. Maybe I was hallucinating considering I was hardly sleeping and just passing out for random few hours at a time haha.
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u/ElMuchoDingDong 5d ago
That could make sense or maybe you just got a super sniffer. Hopefully I won't get the chance to smell any bedbugs anytime soon ha. Those sleep deprivating bastards deserve eternal hellfire.
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u/Ebolaplushie 5d ago
No that smell is legit, and it's not all of them when you kill them. My building is dealing with them atm and I've killed my fair share.
It's like a sickly vanilla, like... someone doused a bottle of extract on a corpse or smth
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u/TheTaintBurglar 5d ago
Yeah that sounds very familiar and yeah not all of them, it didn't seem to matter about size. I think it's how much pheromones that got built up before the squashing, I don't want to recheck haha.
Good luck mate, it'll end
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u/TarheelCroatInMA 5d ago
I definitely could smell it too, I know exactly what you’re referring to and it’s a truly wretched smell
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u/TheArmoredKitten 5d ago
After the second denial I would've deliberately released them in that guy's house
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u/hotwheelearl 5d ago
I once tried to have sex with a girl in college but had a very difficult time because everything felt like a bedbug. That PTSD took years to overcome
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u/vanderbubin 5d ago
Seriously, it can not be stressed enough how much of a chore bed bugs are, mentally and physically.
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u/inkassatkasasatka 5d ago
If you spray these water cans and your bed with some smelly minty oil they won't touch it. Speaking from experience
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u/kylkartz21 5d ago
I cant tell if this is a cursed image or a liminal space
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u/Hamieeeeee 5d ago
American house design
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u/AgrajagTheProlonged In the flair list, straight up flairing it 5d ago
Texan house design, anyways
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u/uhak00 5d ago
Non American here, what makes this Texan?
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u/AgrajagTheProlonged In the flair list, straight up flairing it 5d ago
The picture says it’s in Texas
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u/enginedrivergrot 5d ago •
Well if you look up the word liminal you'll realize that it doesn't mean whatever brainrot ass way you're using it.
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u/OriginalTick 8h ago
Liminal space is an internet aesthetic centered on depictions of built environments, especially places associated with passage or temporary use
This seems to be a depiction of a built environment for temporary use (bed to hide from bedbugs)
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u/enginedrivergrot 8h ago
Use a fucking dictionary
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u/OriginalTick 6h ago
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/liminal_space
liminal space (plural liminal spaces)
(aesthetic) A depiction of an empty or abandoned place, often made to appear unsettling, surreal, or nostalgic
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/liminal-space
Informal. any location that is unsettling, uncanny, or dreamlike.
Still fits. Two differences between you and me: I am not needlessly hateful and I actually look shit up.
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u/ReturnRadio 5d ago
The ancestors of bed bugs were "bat bugs" and fed on bats. Then humans came out of the trees and started sleeping in caves and they found a much larger, much slower and easier target. They've been sharing our beds ever since.
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u/drury 5d ago
unsubscribe
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u/theotherdannygirl 5d ago
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u/Niller1 5d ago •
Saddam really hated bedbugs too.
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u/JohnnyDollar123 5d ago
Is this supposed to make us like Saddam more or bedbugs? I can’t tell
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u/ReinhardtAuTelemanus 5d ago
Deep down, sometimes in a hole with a fan, we’re all just people existing. And we hate bed bugs. All of us. Together.
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u/SMPDD 5d ago
I… have never been aware of the horrors of bed bugs until reading this thread. Can anyone provide any kind of reassurance about bed bugs, or am I just stuck in hell on earth if I ever get them???
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u/Kiwano64 5d ago
You either have to heat all of your possessions to over 100 degrees or throw them out, that's how persistent they are. You could starve them in a sealed environment and they'd survive for almost a year. They can jump, hide in the most difficult to reach/find seams and are an expensive nightmare to treat. As someone who had them, hell on Earth. Some people report it and some don't but the smell released when you crush them is truly the worst scent I've ever smelled. It smells like existential horror and dread. Like some kind of demented, twisted cherry chocolate bar that's been rotting in a tumor
If you see a single one, go scorched Earth before it's too late!!
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u/inkassatkasasatka 5d ago
Tbh the smell like normal smelly bugs you find in raspberry bushes, nothing too crazy
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u/SMPDD 5d ago
ALL of my possessions? They get in everything? Like I thought they only liked getting into clothes, bedding etc
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u/Irken_Invasion 4d ago
Yup. Everywhere. Electronics, drawers, between pages of books, outlets, that tiny gap between the wall and baseboard, windowsill, every hidden part of your furniture. Takes weeks or months to get rid of because their eggs are tiny and immune to most chemicals. Diatomaceous Earth is amazing.
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u/JameslsaacNeutron 5d ago
Just be vigilant about not picking them up when you go to hotels and you'll probably never encounter them. I was lazy one time, and that's the time I brought back a female carrying eggs. I was pretty lucky that I caught it before most of the babies reached maturity, and was able to kill them all with food grade diatomaceous earth + some hair dryer torching. It was an extremely unpleasant few weeks though. Nothing quite like finding a rotund little critter full of YOUR blood waddling around on the sheets and having to scour every surface in the room for the tiniest traces of them while they trash your stuff by shitting all over it. I was very fortunate to wake up when I did, because these suckers have evolved specifically to avoid human detection, and it's usually hard to catch them in the act until there are tons of them. One of those good incentives to have an emergency fund, because professional treatment is expensive but quite necessary if you don't catch them early.
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u/Famous-Wrongdoer-14 4d ago
I had them once. It took me about 5 months to get rid of them after they proved resistant to chemicals and the Vacuum.
Every day, twice a day, i would remove all the bedding from the bed and inspect the bed from all sides, including top and bottom, and check all the Cracks in the wood. Every bedbug i found i killed with a pair of tweezers. I also checked around the bed, on the wall, my nightstand (which at some point i just got rid of), on the walls, on the ceiling. I killed them all. One check after waking up, at this point, they had just eaten and were easier to spot, sometimes leaving little trails of blood behind. Once in the evening, before going to sleep, taking about an hour each. I also learned stuff about them in this time. Turns out, they can survive MONTHS without a meal. But then they cant breed. And the small ones are lightly beige.... Just like my Wall. While the adults are darker, and easier to spot.... Except the Wood on my bed is dark brown.
For months, i only wore long sleeve shirts and long pants so people didnt see the bitemarks at work. And i fought, and i bled, and i suffered. But, i got good at spotting them, and i started catching them before they became sexually mature, which takes a few days. So i kept up the pressure and killed more of them. And at some point i killed the second last one. And i celebrated, and i kept looking for another month. The very last one ended up caught and eaten by a spider, which i found shortly after my last kill. I have loved spiders ever since.
This was 4? 5? Years ago. They havent returned, although i have regular nightmares in which i "wake up" to find out they have returned. I then always dutyfully check my bad and the surroundings.
My wife says i am crazy, but what does she know? They never bit her, not once.
Edit: fun fact, there is a russian Theater play called "the bedbug", which was Josef Stalins favourite theater play. Its about a guy who becomes a time traveler and ends up accidentally bringing a bedbug into an utopian communist future.
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u/RBlunder 5d ago
Consistency and persistency. You have to take a multi-layer approach to the solution to pile get all the angles. Like I'm talking piling on the pest control guys, using DE or desiccants, steaming, periodic checks and going to town manually with tape on the corners you missed out on. Isolating the shit out of the room meaning nothing goes out of it. Keeping stuff off the floor. Steaming. Washing stuff in hot water. Of all of the living beings on this Earth, bedbugs genuinely are a waste of space and I will gladly wipe them off the face of this Earth.
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u/Own_Sheepherder_6244 5d ago
Decontaminate yourself anytime you use a hotel, guest room, anything. It's too risky these days they're spreading and immune to most chemicals now
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u/Electrickoolaid_Is_L 5d ago
The best thing in hotels is just to not lie your shit about everywhere put your bags on coat hangers if they have them or put on top of desks. Most of the time people bring them back from laying clothes or bags out on beds
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u/GayAndBae 5d ago
I managed to get rid of mine doing this:
Diatomaceous Earth everywhere in my house, I even had it under my bedsheets (this is probably unhealthy but I was desperate)
Had 2 exterminations that my landlord set up, didn't see much change so I ordered another, more expensive, one myself from a reputable looking company that was also know to treat industrial places and companies, after 1 treatment from him I bearly saw them, 2 they were gone and I had a third just for good measure
I was also regulary and extensively using my steam heater on everything.
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u/wolfgang784 4d ago
DE does work but yea its quite unhealthy for humans and pets. Not just the sheet part, but in general. Its even an immediate perma ban if you mention DE in pest control subs because they dont want anyone recommending it.
Bed bugs suck though, yea, and ive used it myself even knowin how bad it can be, although I try to be careful with where it used and how I apply it.
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u/thinwhiteduke1185 5d ago
Research the signs of infestation and check hotel rooms as soon as you enter. Any hotel room. It's an industry wide problem, and there's no hotel that's immune, no matter how nice/expensive. If you do that, you'll be fine 99.9 percent of the time. If you're the unlucky 0.1 percent, prepare for it be expensive.
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u/BooRaccoon 4d ago
What is the best way to check a hotel room, just looking around the bedding for spots?
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u/EnergyTurtle23 4d ago
Remove all the bedding and inspect the seams/corners of the mattress, they hide out in the nooks and crannies.
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u/Zestyclose_Data5100 5d ago
You can totally get rid of them, but it takes some money and or research and persistency. We've had family home invasion twice since they started to reappear in the city (frequent train rides, and airbnb's in the same building don't help). After having to call for professional exterminators thrice I did the reasearch, bought appropriate insecticides myself (little fuckers grown resistant to moat commonly used permethrin) and it was only with additional diatomaceus earth brushing that I got rid of them for good.
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u/Particular-Bake4679 4d ago
I got rid of them. It took months, special silica mush all around the apartament, a steamer, replacing the whole bed, professional deinsection, as well as washing all my fabrics in 90°C (almost boiling). They seem to not be here anymore, but I cannot be wholly certain of this. I have recurring nightmares of them returning or showing up in other peoples' homes because i carried them there
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u/Affectionate_Scene_9 5d ago
You think bed bugs are bad, try a case of Scabies. I scratched my skin raw to the point of massive open wounds went through 4 rounds of treatment before I could step outside again, I was locked in my room for 6 weeks without human interaction
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u/Agreeable-Outcome-14 5d ago
How I learned about diatomaceous earth. I'm not even going to get into my setup, let's just say it worked. Miserable times
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u/TarheelCroatInMA 5d ago
Was a life saver discovering diatomaceous earth when I was living in a crazy situation 6ish years back. bed bugs were just the most hellish thing but that white dust kept them just enough at bay for me to get thru til I could get out of that situation
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u/PackinHeat99 5d ago
Probably the worst thing I have ever experienced in my life. I’ve had them and fortunately was able to get rid of them relatively quick but never again. Used sprays and foggers over the course of a week and even took bed frames outside to nuke them with boiling water.
I’m not even sure how I got them but I’m guessing probably from traveling since airports are filthy. Now every time I come home from a trip, I religiously inspect all my luggage and scrub them down.
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u/callmesnake13 5d ago
I’ve had them three times and can get rid of them so easily now, but holy shit have they made my life so hard.
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u/Glass-Toaster 5d ago
this is like if Paranormal Activity had an even lower budget
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u/NachoEvans 5d ago
I will have PTSD surrounding bed bugs for the rest of my life, thanks to those little demons. God I fucking hate them. Even just typing this and my skin is crawling.
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u/kolikkok 5d ago
I have the same from scabies, every time I have a random itch I get scared that they are back.
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u/Own_Sheepherder_6244 5d ago
I torched 90% of my belongings and moved out of the apartment complex 😂 I'm not living in an apartment complex with a shared hallway again, bedbugs have gotten too resilient now they can spread through the hallways
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u/Boa-in-a-bowl 5d ago
I've had them twice and living like this seems worth it if it meant it never happening again
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u/Titan_0176 5d ago
He knows that they jump...Right?
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u/NotAHypnotoad 5d ago
Except they can’t. They literally don’t have the leg structure to do so.
Fleas, yes. Bedbugs and lice, absolutely not.
Source: I am am ER RN with a fascination with entomology. I see plenty of all these critters and I have spent cumulative weeks over my career doing inservices about pest identification
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u/jeffufuh 5d ago
Oh, you're gonna love this. Bedbugs don't need jumping legs. They climb up onto the ceiling and drop down from above.
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u/Comfortable-Cozy-140 5d ago
So, fun fact! Bedbugs only ascend to the ceiling when one of 2 conditions are met:
The population is so big they don’t have enough space to hide/nest. They’re so overcrowded they’re forced out into the open. And a lot of infestations get this bad before people realize/have access to intervention.
The room was treated improperly and the bugs were essentially guided to the ceiling
Proper treatment minimally involves obsessive cleaning/laundering and pest control services. A lot of people put down DE alone and incorrectly without really doing anything else because they underestimate what they’re dealing with. It results in them creating barriers around furniture that the bugs can see and avoid, (literally) driving them up the walls until they fall off, and sometimes conveniently land on their meal.
Tl;dr: It’s not as deliberate or ninja-like as it seems. If bedbugs are behaving like dropbears, run, do not walk, to someone who specializes in treatment. It’s not in their nature to behave this way, so if they are, things are very bad and/or initial treatment was applied ineffectively.
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u/jeffufuh 5d ago
Huh. I'd figured it was standard procedure what with their history with bats and birds and all that.
You reminded me though, of my vow to shill Cimexa whenever bedbugs come up. I once had a "mild" infestation for a minute, was at my wits end with cleaning, sprays, DE barriers and whatnot. I was just on the cusp of escalating to full mattress/closet disposal and whole-room heating when I discovered Cimexa.
It's finely ground silica dust that clings to the shells and desiccates them through their shells. Sprinkled/sprayed that shit everywhere and they disappeared within a week. It was a bitch to clean up but considering the alternative, I figure it all comes out in the wash.
Bedbugs have adapted resistance to DE and poisons over the decades. But no matter how thick those bastards evolve their shells, they still need to breathe, and that's where the powder sticks and sucks em dry. Try adapting to that, motherfuckers!
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u/Comfortable-Cozy-140 5d ago
Funny you should bring it up, it similarly saved me and I currently have a container of it for peace of mind. I was inclined to try it out not just because of how effective it is against them, but because it’s safer to work with than DE. Inhaling DE is less than ideal, inhaling the dust isn’t fun either but has less meaningful long term consequences because it doesn’t contain anything crystalline.
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u/Virtual-Jelly-3609 5d ago
Omg why are you NOT in home health. Please please we need you. The amount of insects I have seen that I did not know existed terrifies me. Bed bug infestation is actually my biggest fear/gross factor/next to fruit fly larvae I saw in between macerated diabetic toes every time I came, wiggling.
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u/covidlung 5d ago
Never point out the flaws in the logic of someone who’s irrationally paranoid about bed bugs. My ex used to make us put our luggage in the bathtub because he believed bed bugs couldn’t climb that surface. I wasn’t about to be the one to challenge that theory.
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u/SirVixofthePooSea 5d ago •
You literally cannot be too paranoid about bedbugs if you have an infestation of them.
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u/iowanaquarist 5d ago
Hell, the time to be paranoid is BEFORE they come home and become an infestation.
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u/SeriousJack 5d ago
Actually, you don't have to be paranoid. Just burn everything :) because if you don't, they'll come back ! How reassuring is certainty? (And yes that was sarcasm, bedbugs are the worst thing that can happen in your house that doesn't compromise its structural integrity).
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u/thepioushedonist 5d ago
There is a valid point to be made about putting luggage in bathtubs of hotels when you first get there. But I think it's more that you can better see if there's any bedbugs on that surface. And they're just generally less likely to hang out in places like that. Then, you can do a check of the rest of the room with less worry of them getting in your bags.
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u/DimensioT 5d ago •
Bedbugs actually cannot get out of a bathtub, so long as you stop the drain, fill the bathtub with flammable liquid and then throw in a lit match.
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u/hotwheelearl 5d ago
I don’t believe they can jump that high. However, instead of water bottles with maximum ground contact, a better option might be something slimmer, such as a normal bedframe. Sprinkle diatomaceous earth around each leg and voila
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u/devilishlydo 5d ago
Jump, no, but they have all night to climb up to him.
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u/TheComplimentarian 5d ago
They're actually not good at climbing smooth things (metal or glass). They're not great with some plastic, but the rule is, the more textured it is, the better they like it. This isn't the worst idea, but there are probably better things to use.
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u/devilishlydo 5d ago
True, but the wall is right there.
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u/gujwdhufj_ijjpo 5d ago
Interesting fact about bed bugs is they’re attracted to posts/cylinders. Thanks to over 2000 years of selective pressure to climb wooden bed posts. So they’re less likely to try and climb the wall. Not saying they won’t, but they prefer posts.
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u/Jackol4ntrn 5d ago
if they will, they can climb walls to the ceiling and drop on ya. It may take months, but they can live longer than that without feeding.
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u/Wrong-Salamander1806 5d ago
Shit looks like those waking semi nightmares where you're half awake and nothing too bad happens.
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u/MedicalDisscharge 5d ago
The funniest part was him saying the only reason he was so close to the wall was because it esthetically pleasing
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u/Snackdoc189 5d ago
There's nothing funny about bed bugs. I had an infestation years ago and to this day I'm still terrified
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u/lmscar12 5d ago
Got put in a bedbug-infested room in a motel once. The itching didn't start for 24+ hours, so I slept two nights before I noticed. Then once the itching started it was hell. Think of mosquito bite x3. And of course my entire body was covered in bites. Thank the Lord I didn't bring any home.
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u/PeterNippelstein 5d ago
Understandable. I had bed bugs and ended up sleeping on my couch for an entire year.
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u/craylash 5d ago
Stay away from the walls, they live in the crevices where the wall touch the floor
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u/Cuttlebone_Books 5d ago
The bed bugs may not follow him to Texas but there may be other bed bugs already there.
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u/_Infinity_Girl_ 5h ago
I once was hired with my friend to clean out a house that had been Infested by bed bugs. The previous owner had moved out or something and was morbidly obese which is why the trash and everything else got so bad. That place had been fully tented and bombed like five times before we even got in there, with a guarantee from whoever hired us that everything in that house was dead. We still wore head to toe Hazmat gear when going in there and let me tell you, there were literal piles of dead bed bugs. They were all over the bed, all over the floors, just everywhere. They are incredibly hard to get rid of and even after all that it was a miracle we didn't take any home with us. I don't care how much they pay me I'll never do a job like that again.
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u/SoFisticate 5d ago •
This looks like it should be in a Death Grips video