So a friend of mine in New York just had an exterminator come to his house to check for bed bugs. If you've been following the news, bedbugs are a huge problem in NYC. His apartment is safe...for now. But in talking to him (okay, IM-ing) I realized just how traumatizing the specter of bedbug infestation must be to East Coasters (and anywhere else bedbugs are a big problem) so I decided to spend five minutes this morning on trying to come up with a way to eradicate the problem.
Here are some facts:
Bedbugs are found in beds.
Bedbugs feast on human blood.
Bedbugs are sneaky and come out at night.
Bedbugs are resistant to pesticides.
So what's the solution? Decoy living rooms and bedrooms. Bedbugs are tiny, between 4-5 millimeter in length. What if they had access to tiny beds? Tiny couches? Tiny people? My guess is they'd eat what's closest to them, rather than make the long, arduous trek to your huge bed or couch. So if you fear your home might be the target of these creatures, run to the nearest store and buy yourself a bunch of doll furniture and place it somewhere in the house as far away from your actual bedroom as possible. If you have dandruff, I'd recommend shaking your dander all over the furniture as bait. In addition, add a blood trough to the bed so they stay on the mini-furniture. When enough bedbugs infest the decoy bedroom, set the decoy bedroom on fire. Then start the process over again.
I'm not an entomologist so I haven't field-tested this idea, but I'm 98% sure it will work. If you try this, drop me a note to let me know how successful it was for you.