Life as a Spectator Sport

Not ants, for once. I'm still fighting the overwhelming numbers of ants here, but the Ant Pro bait stations are doing the trick, finally. If the whole world goes to hell in a handbasket, I think what I'll miss the most is not electricity or running water or gasoline or supermarkets. It'll be the inability to keep ants out of the house.

But in this case it was not ants, but bedbugs. No, we don't have them here. Yet--all flexible appendages crossed. But I did find one in the hotel room we stayed in. Someone was watching out for us, that's for sure. The wireless internet at this hotel is usually pretty reliable, but last Thursday night it worked, and then it quit, and then it worked for a while and then it quit again. As a result, I was still awake far later than I would have been, trying to get an inspection package uploaded that was due the next day.

During one period when I couldn't get internet access, I sat back in the bed with a book to read for a while. All of a sudden, I saw a tiny red insect crawling at a pretty good clip up the page of the book. I reflexively shut the book on it, and when I opened it again, there was a large red smear where the bug had been. Uh-oh. This was not a flea, not a tick and not a mosquito. But it clearly had been feeding on someone very recently, almost certainly me. Still, it didn't look like any of the pictures of bedbugs that I had seen. So I grabbed the phone, late as it was, and called my daughter, who attended a scholastic conference in a fancy hotel in Philadelphia earlier this year, and came home with bedbugs.

Yes, she said, it could have been a hatchling after its first feeding. They're still very small, and transparent enough that it might well have appeared to be a red insect. But when I was able to get online and looked again at bedbug pictures, I couldn't find anything that really looked like what I had seen. So I went back to work, hoping this was just some small unusual insect. A while later, I felt something crawling on my arm, and glanced down to find an ant there. Since we occasionally find ants in the car, I figured it had come in with us. I flicked it off and it landed on the bed. As I reached for it to get rid of it permanently, another insect ran out from under the pillow, and this one definitely was a bedbug. A nymph, not an adult, but without question a bedbug. I grabbed the empty water cup on the nightstand, trapped the bedbug in it, and marched down to the front desk.

They were terribly apologetic, of course, offered move us to another room and give us the entire two-night stay for free. My first inclination had been to just pack up and drive back home, but we were four hours from home and it was already nearly midnight. Clarence said he'd be happy to just move to another room. So we did. But I have no idea whether anything had already gotten into my knitting bag or computer bag. I won't know until we start seeing them here. I had checked the mattress in that room, as I always do, and found nothing. Nothing behind the picture frames, nothing obvious on the back surface of the nightstands. But the headboard is permanently attached to the wall--you can't check behind it, and I'm sure that's where they were.

What is really distressing is that the night clerk told me this wasn't the first time they'd had a problem. It had been two years, he said, in the section that they used to rent out as dormitory rooms. I guess he thought he was making me feel better, but that's the floor we're usually on. In fact, we almost always get the same room. We won't be staying in that room again, that's for sure. If it wasn't for the fact that this could happen anywhere, I wouldn't even stay in the same hotel again. But we're there so often that I get a really good rate, and I only have to call and identify myself to make a reservation--none of the bells and whistles with name and address and credit card numbers, etc, etc, that you normally have to go through to get a room. And if my daughter brought bedbugs home from an expensive upscale hotel in a major city, we could pick them up anywhere too, so there is no point in changing hotels.

But in the future, I guess I'm going to take some extraordinary precautions. Anything that goes into the hotel room will have to be sealed in a plastic bag. Instead of carrying in a regular overnight bag, I'll take just a change of clothes for each of us, in plastic bags. I'll use the same bags to seal up the clothes we take back home, and they'll stay in those bags until they go into the washing machine. My toiletries case and Clarence's shaving gear will be similary sealed up, and opened only when something is needed from them. Instead of taking in the whole knitting bag, I'll take just what I'm working on, which is usually in a plastic sandwich bag anyway. I don't know yet what to do about the computer. It will be a real hassle to have to carry it by itself into the hotel room, rather than taking the whole bag of computer and accessories at one time, but if that's the only way to keep bedbugs out of my home, I'll have to do it. The accessories can go in one big plastic bag, and the computer in another one, and when I'm through using it in the evening, it will all have to be sealed up again.

That only leaves us, and a morning shower will, I hope, prevent either of us from being hosts to little buggies. Now I only have to worry about what previous diners might have left on the undersides of restaurant chairs, and we don't eat in restaurants now much anyway. But I know that bedbugs have been found on the benches in New York subways and bus stops.

What's funny about this incident is that a drunken guest smashed beer bottles all over the elevator lobby on the second night, just outside our room, and we slept through the whole thing. We would have gotten the second night free anyway because of that if we had complained, but we didn't know it had happened until we were going down to breakfast in the morning and found one of the maintenance people mopping up beer and shards of glass.

This job is beginning to be more trouble than it's worth.

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RSS Feed PERSONAL Send email to liz at life-as-a-spectator-sport.com Home I'm a mother, grandmother, a computer professional, Democrat, Christian. I welcome politely worded comments and email, my spam filter throws the rest away, so don't bother to flame me WHY 'LIFE AS A SPECTATOR SPORT' "If you're lucky not to live in the gutters of a slum, but still can't afford to take vacations in the Alps, you're part of that enormous middle class who lives life through the medium of the television, further separated from "real" life by air conditioner, by automobile, by dishwasher, microwave and ice-in-the-door refrigerator, by automatic washer and dryer, and all the other appliances and conveniences that make it possible for America to live life at second hand. I'm not sure why Americans decided that televised drama was better than the real thing, that cardboard microwave food containers were an adequate substitute for real dishes, and their contents for real food, or that cooking, dishwashing and face-to-face conversation wasn't worth the effort and time it required. Someone fed this nation a plastic crate of out-of-season tomatoes and told us it was life and we took them at their word, and we're so much the poorer for it that it's hard to know where to start to list the shortcomings." I wrote this a couple of years ago, but I have to admit it's much less amusing than I thought it would be to see the artifical construct falling apart. THE NON-ELECTRIC HOME Cleaning, 1 Cleaning, 2 Cleaning, 3 KNITTING BLOGS Extravayarnza Knitting Heretic Mind of Winter Pie Knits Persistent Illusion See Eunny Knit The Keyboard Biologist Taleweaver's Ramblings TECHnitting Wendy Knits FINISHED PROJECTS -------FINISHED IN 2006------- Peruvian Cap Tutti-Frutti Socks Shelley's Socks Carol's Socks -------FINISHED IN 2007------- Chain Link Socks Baby Surprise Jacket Valerie & Friend Baby Bonnet Rainbow Baby Socks Girls Pixie Hood Mitred Square Heart Red & White Socks Coffee Cup Pot Holder Nubbins Dishcloth Garterlac Dishcloth Suede Booties Kate's Socks Norwegian Sweet Baby Cap Half Thumbless Mittens Red Mittens for Akkol -------FINISHED IN 2008------- SELF-RELIANCE AND THE FUTURE -- Blogs and websites -- Causubon's Book Club Orlov Food Storage Made Easy From the Wilderness In the Wake Listening to Katrina Survival Topics The Modern Homestead The Oil Drum Notes from a Hillside Farm -- Mailing Lists -- 12vdc Power Living on the Land Rainwater Refrigeration Alternatives Old Ways of Living POLITICAL BLOGS and SITES The political sites have moved BOOKS I'M READING How to Grow More Vegetables, etc. Small Scale Grain Raising ARCHIVES February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 August 2008 July 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002 February 2002