Posted on 03/22/2017 8:03:33 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck
I have a buddy in rural Illinois who is living with and helping out his elderly mom, and he likes to cook. He cooks up a storm. They both enjoy the food.
The house they are in has begun to display a very bad bedbug infestation.
Both my buddy's mom and my buddy are freaking out. They don't have a lot of money but they are about to call Orkin.
I stopped to think about the science of bedbugs. Both my buddy and I did a lot of online research after discovering the infestation. But I think I have a scientific theory my buddy doesn't have.
According to a scientific paper I found that describes a study researching the repellent effect of DEET (as in Off! spray) upon bedbugs, the effect of DEET is balanced against the attractive effect of carbon dioxide. The conclusion was, as best I understood the implications, that 10% DEET would counterbalance the concentration of carbon dioxide in breath.
So that's good news for bedbug sufferers who have to survive it somehow. 10% DEET or more (and the sprays get a lot more concentrated than that) and the bedbugs are repelled from a person in spite of the attractive effect of that person's breath. A pain, but better than getting eaten up.
But then I started thinking about that carbon dioxide. And the way my buddy likes to cook on the gas stove in the place. And my brain went BINGO. What is the nominal "wattage" of a person? 80 watts at rest. What is the nominal "wattage" of a gas stove burner? 2800 plus (10,000 btu). And of a gas oven? Not sure, but it definitely is a lot. My conclusion is that if a bedbug smells carbon dioxide and it's lurking outside of an old, drafty house (and been dining on the blood of wildlife up to that point) it is going to think one gas stove burner smells like 2800/80 or 35 people. Might that seem better prospects to the bedbug than squirrels and raccoons and the like?
I've been urging my buddy to look into having the gas stove replaced with an electric one (with the appropriate wiring being done if necessary). I know he isn't a gas-only cooking snob; he used my own electric stove contentedly for years.
But what would FRee scientists think of this theory? I tried Googling gas stoves and bedbugs just for grins, and haven't seen a word about it.
I wonder if pestilences freak people out so much that they forget to reason? To the benefit of the business of exterminators? I'm suggesting to my buddy and his mom that they replace the stove as well as (if they must, and vacuuming and local spraying does not do enough) getting the house treated, so that the bedbug population isn't inadvertently replenished from the great outdoors in that drafty house.
Bed bugs cannot climb plastic very well, so after cleaning your bed and bed frame, put the bed legs in plastic, like a 2 litre pop bottle that has been cut to fit your bed legs.
It takes about a year for the bed bugs to die, unfortunately.
The ones that also infest Bats and Chickens?
Freegards
Bed bugs are attracted to warmth and CO2. Turn up the burners and they will be burned to death!
Got a gas stove, gas heating, gas water heater, and never had bed bugs.
And YOU have NO proof to support YOUR theory. ;^)
Take a 2 litre plastic pop bottle. Cut it in half, where the bottom half is about 2 inches taller than the top half. Turn the top half upside down and insert into the bottom half. Pour water into the bottom half and mix the water with brown sugar and bread yeast. Wrap the bottle in paper towel, so the bed bugs have something to climb. They will not be able to climb out of the bottle once they are in. They will slide down the bottle and drown. The CO2 being produced will overcome the scent they give off when they die so other bed bugs cannot be warned about their impending doom.
Or just burn your house down.
Why do you have to turn this into a big pride and ego trip? God bless you.
That’s certainly another way to generate CO2 for trapping the little bug(ger)s.
Are you in a state that has legal cannabis?
While I think that there are some good uses for DDT, I lived on the Northern California coast before and just after the DDT ban.
I saw with my own eyes, pelicans come back from being a once per week sighting, maybe, to several groups of 3 to 5 adult birds several times per day. The comeback was so fast and so pronounced that it surely seems there was a direct causality.
BTW, Pelicans eat fish, not insects.
They are not one of my favorite birds. They are not really very graceful fliers, and they are ugly up close. Also prodigious producers of guano. But, they do have a place in nature.
Heating up your place 120 degrees F for an hour or more will kill them.
But I am VERY sorry that I tried to give you any info!
I've read the other replies and frankly, yes, the ONLY time I have EVER heard of anyone having them ( not that I knew any of these people ), was when someone stayed at a hotel ( NYC hotels had a disastrous bedbug problem a bit ago ) or when they bought something used...clothing, a mattress, a sofa. It's what I've read in newspapers.
No cat lady. This was a row of apartments side by side. They just spread out to other apartments. The management had people out spraying and then my aunt had her granddaughters hubby out spraying. My aunt actually fell and broke both wrists trying to turn her mattress by herself looking for bed bugs. They drove her nuts. She had the beginnings of dementia so they really got to her mentally.
I stay in about 100 different hotel rooms annually for the past 10 yrs. Never got em.
You are just very sorry, period.
You certainly sound like the thing you vigorously deny being.
My daughter got them at a friend's apartment, took them home to her shelter home, spread them there, then got a little house and moved them with her.
To keep them from climbing up into your bed(s), you need to put the beds in something that will hold Food grade diatomaceous earth and keep the covers from dragging the floor. That's won't get rid of the bedbugs already in the bed. You need a special mattress cover to keep them out or in.
You can bag up things and put them in a very hot place (like hot car in summer) or cold place.
Foggers just drive them back into cracks and the walls. You'd have to do it many times.
My daughter finally got a professional who tackled them throughout the house, attic, ground floor and basement. Then he returned up to six times looking for evidence that any had survived and did area spraying if necessary.
It's expensive but worth it.
I lived in dread that she or my grandson would drag some over to my house, threw several angry fits, and tried to keep them out. My grandson saw one on his shoe in the car and brushed it off before he came in my house. I've never seen any, but she keeps going back to peoples' places that have had problems with bedbugs or other nasty bugs.
I forget the time if they are kept away from a meal before they will die.
I actually like pelicans but the blue cranes are my fave. We have a boat in Ventura and I love it when someone who’s never been there before is walking down the dock with me after dark and I spot a pelican....and they don’t. Lol. The pelicans wait til you’re right up on them then squawk and take off. Always scares the crap out of my guests. Rofl.
Microscopic hairs... wonder if fresh okra pods could be used as well.
Colder climates would be harder for the bugs to survive. Terrain, flora, and fauna would produce variations in this too. Just high school biology 101 kind of thought.
People often confuse luck with virtue.
The stuff might NOT be too good for your lungs either. I use DE in my pool filter but I would NEVER put it on my bed... or anywhere I might breath it in.
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