‘Night, night, sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite”, the nightly refrain of my mum as she tucked us in as children. I always thought it was just a nice thing to say, but I realise now — watching bedbug videos on TikTok — it was no random nicety. The woman knew things.
Now I know, the initial fear — that French bedbugs were coming for us in droves, travelling back with the Irish rugby fans in bags and on clothes, and looking forward to feasting on pale Irish flesh, like vegan vampires seeing the error of their ways — has mitigated somewhat, but I wouldn’t relax just yet.
No, don’t get comfy in your jimjams. And don’t dismiss that itch, that crawling sensation. It might not all be down to your new shampoo.
The French, possibly unhappy with the juxtaposition of words like “Rugby World Cup” or “Paris Olympics 2024” with other words such as “Cimex lectularius” or “biblical infestation” or, ahem, “eaten alive” have put the stories down to “Russian trolls”.
Russian trolls are the go-to guys for most things these days: popularism, the demise of the pub, plot weaknesses in Fair City, and, in fairness, doppelganger articles from sources with links to Russia Today have been discovered.
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These appear to both fan the bedbug flames and, predictably, implicate Ukrainian refugees, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t flames to begin with. Entomologists are indeed suggesting that bedbugs are “making a comeback”.
Increases in container trade, tourism, air travel and immigration have been music to their ears. Of course, they may not even have ears — it’s hard to describe the features of something that makes you run away screaming when you see it — but they do have a story. The Second World War was no laugh for them either.
Their numbers, like humanity’s, fell sharply during the war, theirs due to the liberal use of the chemical DDT. Known colloquially as Don’t Do That, it had been having enormous success killing most things until it was realised it killed everything, us included.
Since DDT was banned (by the US in 1972 but Ireland held on until 1986), bedbugs have been enjoying “the happy time”, or le moment heureux as they say in the 20th arrondissement. Les nombres are only going one way.
The postwar bedbug is a descendant of those that survived the DDT wars, so they are chemically resistant.
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But are they really so repugnant? Their bites are not fatal, and apart from a prisoner in Fulton County Jail in the US who may have been “eaten alive” by them, stories concerning “infestations” are not normally very dramatic.
Generally, they are just stories of how to get rid of them. The advice is simple: throw out headboards, bed frames, pillows and duvets and put your mattress in a zip-up protector — ideally never to be opened again as long as there is life on Earth. Then spray poison and ground glass everywhere and wash every item of clothing you’ve ever owned at as high a temperature as an asbestos suit can take.
Next place everything else you own — wallet, passport, books, computers, light fittings etc — in a specially constructed, VAST Bedbug Zapper, the size of your living room. Repeat until you and yours are at last safe again.
This may seem severe, but the bedbug is a hard chap to like. They shed their exoskeletons, leave faeces behind in the form of little black dots — that’s actually your digested blood — and wiggle in delight at the smell of a human. Oh, and they can go for a year without eating.
A recent warning in Arizona also told residents: “They are known to hide.”
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So, on that note: night, night, sleep tight, etc!
