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.
I’m getting that picture, at least that an outdoors source is implausible without having become infested through a more people-linked route. Which still could happen.
I.e., if a place has rats, mice, other critters that nest, those could serve as secondary sources for the bugs. I don’t know why larger livestock couldn’t be infested that way too, though horses with bedbugs would probably be pretty obvious.
I am now doubting that the stove alone is more than a minor factor. Might be encouraging them to find other places to nest in the home, if they still go roaming around after carbon dioxide.
Luring them into a room and bombing them there (or super spraying it) still sounds like a possibility.
It doesn't mean you are dirty. Anybody can get them. They get spread by backpacks and the like in clean public places. A 911 call center was ground zero for one infestation.
Those old wives and their tales taught more than a few. Not knowing the ‘why’ they knew only that it did work
My admiration to them all. Can you imagine traveling across unknown territory in a wagon? I couldn’t do it. God bless every one of them.
It would seem to me that the most plausible method that could be invented to kill them with normal insecticides would be a trap that simulates their blood feed. This, they would dig into.
Maybe have one of those naked dogs and coat it in pyrethrin (if that is not toxic to the dog). Bedbugs go for dog. Bedbugs eat poison. Bedbugs die. But that poor dog!
Or could there be something the people could eat that would make their blood poisonous to the bugs?
No they climb up legs unless you spread diatomaceous earth around them or in something they are lifted onto/into or some other trick I read by a poster.
Introduce natural bedbug predators like centipedes.
Thousands and thousands of centipedes.
Freegards
Bmk
The legs of a bed might be a good place to set them in dishes of the diatomaceous earth.
Assuming the bed itself has been rid of the bugs, or at least its mattresses encased in something bugproof.
These pestilences can be a real trial.
That would be fun!
However now my buddy’s mom will have centipedes crawling over her.
Since you mentioned it. Yes, when I was a barefoot urchin in the deep south we lived in a wooden share-croppers house where the outdoors was generally also indoors. All of us urchins slept with the bed bugs through the winter. When the weather turned warm to stay the beds all went outside. Open springs laid out on the grass were wiped clean and returned to the beds. Then the mattresses were brought out. All urchins had a “rag” soaked in Kerosene with which we wiped the crevices of the mattresses on both sides. It was a painstaking job and the tiniest crevice dare not be missed. After they set in the hot sun for several hours they were returned to the beds. The room also had been scrubbed and sprayed with Kerosene. Loved that clean smell of “Coal Oil”. When the cold weather came back, so did the bed bugs. We considered them part of life in rural TN.
Good to know. Thanks.
I guess you didn’t kerosene the beds in the winter. Also that could have made them an easily ignited fire hazard.
Setting the mattresses out in a cold freeze would have killed the bugs, but again it is not that common in Tennessee to get that cold in the winter.
Also prodigious producers of guano, But they do have a place in nature. The same can be said of at least half of Freepers!
I live in Florida and spend most of my time crawling around where wild animals are... I’ve seen nasty bugs of all kinds and lots of parasitic critters... but I have yet to see a bedbug. Not even in my birds’ nest boxes outside. Worst thing in those are seed beetles, which are annoying to look at, but they don’t bite and the larvae make good chicken and fish food.
Now, I have a relative who is a stewardess who says the darn things are everywhere the airline workers go as some of the stewards and stewardesses are constantly transporting them around. When she travels she won’t even bring luggage or clothes into the house... every stitch of clothes goes into the laundry while the luggage gets stuffed in giant garbage bags and gets fumigated.
Thanks for sharing that childhood memory, WVNan. A good read!
If the DDT was hurting the pelicans, and pelicans were eating fish, how did the pelicans get it? Was it washing off into the waterways and then polluting the fish? Seems to me that fishing industry ought to have been up in arms about the issue.
Also curious what the fish ate. Could the DDT have been hurting the fish population by hurting the fishes’ diet?
Seems like a problem of excessive spraying to me. There shouldn’t have been any reason for DDT to be getting near the pelicans.
I ditto this one.
I’ve found the opposite is true in my circles. The key to keeping bed bugs away is ..
... Cleaning the house.
I live in a relatively new farmhouse (it’s only 100 years old) and believe me - I can show you some sort of rodent or bug in under 10 minutes of looking. (wolf spiders are my common find. I hate spiders.) and I can sweep my floors in a continous loop for eternity and still sweep up piles of dirt (As someone in a 100 year old house can agree) but we’re good to go.
I run electric stove, but I run coal heat.
Hey eventually the centipedes will eat all the bedbugs, and then eat each other. She probably wouldn’t have to be covered with centipedes very long, really.
Freegards
It does seem unlikely that the wild could be a primary source of these bugs.
A secondary source maybe, after having been infested from people. Anyhow, the environment needs to be considered. It seems hard to believe that people alone could be sustaining such colonies of bedbugs. They’d be dying of blood loss. Do these bugs somehow supplement their diets?
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