When The Bugs In My Bed Are All In My Head

Barbara: I woke up the other night, my back itching like crazy. It was smack dab in the middle of the night—I was almost REM I was so out, I was so out I’d have to be pulled physically out of bed for any of nature’s calls––and so I was in no mood to discover the source of the itching. I’d rather have just flopped over and gone back to sleep and waited for a more godly hour. But my back had other plans.

This itching was driving me so absolutely crazy that I started to scratch and squirm. I wriggled and writhed. And THEN I remembered that there has been a lot of talk lately about bedbugs infesting city homes. Well, I live in a city. And they were especially infesting the homes of people who travel a lot. Well, Phil travels a lot. And suddenly I had to replay every article I’d ever read or report I’d ever seen, going through the nauseating lists of the ifs and whats of bedbugs. If they were bedbugs, then I’d have to completely overhaul my home, maybe throw out my mattress, maybe fumigate the entire place, toxins infiltrating every nook and cranny. And what were bedbugs anyway? Minute, invisible creatures that attacked and disappeared, that were impossible to trap, that crawled up out of the darkness of your precious sleep-space, ate voraciously of your flesh, then crawled away again, leaving no evidence of their route except drops of blood on your sheets.

Of course I spent way way too long considering all this and not getting up to see for myself if there was any actual evidence on my body of these scurrilous creatures––beyond the itching. It was twofold: the aforementioned mid-night laziness and the dread at having my fears confirmed. But finally I couldn’t take it anymore. At the very least I had to put something on my itchy skin or I’d be up all night.

I managed to heave myself up and out and I stumbled to the bathroom. Then I got a handheld mirror and positioned myself to look through it into the large bathroom mirror so I could inspect my back. It was inconclusive. My vision was blurred from lack of sleep and my back was covered with incriminating red scratches. But all I could see when I looked closer were tiny bumps the size of rash-spots, not red or all congested like a rash, but spattered here and there like dead skin cells sloughing off. And when I googled bedbug bites—as we are so compelled now to do, right?—I saw how alarmingly awful they looked and how thankfully different from my own itchy skin. And, no, it wasn’t psoriasis either.

As I’ve told you all before, I am a habitual creamer, but despite that I think my skin is just really really dry from the cold air and the endless heating. I slathered on the cream and my itchiness abated. It is an unhappy skin I sport these days, but I will say this, it is a happy happy thing that it isn’t friggin’ bed bugs.

Deb: Okay, I can barely type, what with one hand busy scratching. Pavlov’s dog lives and I am he!

Barb, I think you showed great restraint frankly. When my mind goes to the dark place of anything, do NOT be in my path. In one sweeping motion I would have had the bed stripped, and my husband up, a flashlight combing his back. Then the mattress would have been turned on its end, inspected within an inch of its coils. The dogs would be barking and the lights in the house blazing. In the end, I would have been, as you were, covered in cream. I would have also been uttering a string of apologies to my disheveled husband and receiving a grunt in reply. And sleep? Fuggedaboutit! 

A Bug's Strife

Deb: I have spent the better part of my life as a murderer of bugs. Not first-degree murder mind you, but definitely bugslaughter. It’s not like I had an issue with or grudge against a particular bug. I didn’t scheme and painstakingly plan to stalk it and kill it and make it look like a suicide. No, mine would be more what you call a crime of passion. I see a bug. Freak out. Panic. Eyes searching for a well-read magazine. Bam, insecticide. Guilty as charged.

All my life I have been fine with this. I felt justified even. After all, weren’t the bugs invading my home? It’s not like I was cramming my big toe into their anthill or insinuating my schnoz into their hornet’s nest. Wouldn’t dream of it for any number of reasons. And yet there I was, victim to their constant invasion of the home that I fashioned out of the wilderness with my bare hands or, at the very least, snapped up in a bidding war twelve years ago.

So, yes, damn it, I had no choice. It was kill or be stung. And if the bug was bigger than the dog or bug-ugly, I would employ the services of a henchman in the form of my reluctant, sighing husband. I am not proud of this stereotype. I would love to think I fought valiantly against it ,but I did not. A big hairy bug, after all, can knock all reason and courage right out of a girl’s head.

Then one day something happened in my killing spree that brought about a change of heart. I woke up one day and found a little winged creature trapped between the window and the screen. He was flapping his little wings frantically, desperate to get out. My years of skipping biology classes told me he was a boy. And that his name was Bill. With lightening speed and accompanied by my inside voice singing “Born Free”, I cranked open the window and pulled the screen out! Watching Bill fly off to freedom was all it took to change my evil ways.

From that day on, I have become a friend to crawly and winged creature alike, capturing and relocating with the deft workings of a witness-relocation team. I have traded in my rolled up magazines for a drinking glass and a thin piece of paper (my new tools in this insectitarian effort). As I sat out in my garden the other day, I realized that the word of my brave and selfless deeds had gotten out. I could hear the bumblebees buzzing, “There she izzzzzzzzz, she’zzzzzzzzzz a legend, she’zzzzzzzzzz our friend.” You got that right, my little bee buddies. That I am. Yes, indeed I am ... OWWW! MOSQUITO. BAM!

Okay, so I’m a work in progress. You have to draw the line somewhere.

Barbara: Hysterical, Deb! Man, you hit the bug on the head for me on this one!

I have always been squeamish about bugs (and rodents, of course), definitely resorting to my husband for any necessary bug-letting, and usually taking up said magazine-roll. But strangely, very recently, I have noticed myself also going Buddha on the bugs. I find myself (quite despite myself) very gently removing bugs from the home and not stampeding for the nearest weapon.

Just the other day, a massive moth infiltrated the abode. I was in a snit—alone, no white horse nearby, no recourse but my own actions. I was desperate to be rid of it (unlike spiders, which I leave to their bug-catching ways—especially since we don’t have any killer ones here. Poor Rigel and her awful spider attack.) In the past, we have been the sad victims of the treachery of moths—both a larvae infestation of our kitchen pantry and cupboards (which was truly one of the grossest experiences of my home-owning life) and another infestation of my clothes closet. Oh, the carnage. Hard-earned and treasured cashmere sweaters. Just the right-kind-of-sexy t’s. All in the garbage. This nightmare is what flashed before my eyes as I stood apoplectic before the moth.

It, like your bug, fluttered desperately at the window. As if it could read my killer thoughts, it became more and more agitated. It was so HUGE, I didn’t know how to proceed. Then, like you, I found a piece of paper and gently coaxed it off the pane. Again and again, just angling the edge under its little “feet” while it panicked. Finally, it took the bait and found a perch on the paper. I walked as carefully as I could to the front door and, cringing and groveling, shooed it off into the wind.

It was a GREAT feeing. One, because I could do it, and two, because I saved it. Zen and the Art of Insect Liberation.