@rpg714
You can still have bed bugs tho it is way less likely.
Knew someone who did not know till later that he picked them up in a not great motel (was assigned there by employer).
He would up having to throw out a lot of stuff. Worried for s long time that he had, in spite of serious precautions, let one into his house. Turned out he did not. They are very difficult to eradicate once they get in.
No pic just a story: 15 years ago one of our firefighter friends woke up with a large red bump on his thumb. He ignored it until it was turning purple and where the red bump was became a large hole. His skin was starting to die and come off. He finally went to the ER and found out that it was from a spider bite. Because he waited so long the shot and antibiotics didn’t work so well and he lost his thumb all the way down to the joint on his thumb. His name was Matt but after that his name became Stumpy.
@WTFsunshine spider bites are freaky! i got one once and the little red bump turns into a big clearish round blister type thing. (gross, sorry.) and then, a small line forms. they had to mark it on my arm. apparently, that’s the venom. if it traveled further than a certain point you’d be in trouble. thankfully this wasn’t the case with me - my daycare mom knew what it was early on so we got it checked out and kept an eye on it. still wigs me out a bit to think about, though.
@jerk_nugget Glad it was caught early. We get our house exterminated twice a year. I can’t stand creepy crawlers and I have two screams: 1) there’s a creepy crawler and 2) I set something on the stove on fire. Apparently my husband knows which one is which so he knows when to come quickly or when to come running. 🕷
@WTFsunshine They’re useful for coworkers who send you unwanted chain emails. Reply with a made up story and a warning about spider hazards filled with gross images and they’ll generally bump you off their mailing list. Worked for several that would flood everyone’s inboxes with all kinds of hoax warnings, and no amount of replying with debunking links slowed them down. In my work environment a stronger rebuke would have gotten me in trouble. But a couple of pictures of rotting flesh before breakfast and they lost my address.
@moondrake I use to get forwarded those chain mail messages- really didn’t like those! But back then someone found a video that was like a car commercial and if you kept watching it to the end a scary dead face would pop up and then there was a horrible scream with it. So I saved it and every time I got sent a chain mail I would send the chain mail back to the sender with that attached to it. Worked like a charm!
@WTFsunshine to this day if i start watching a boring video or reading a long boring story someone sends me, i start getting the creeps. i’m convinced i’m about to get the bejesus (whatever that is anyway) scared out of me.
all because one time an ex sent me this comic to read (online) and as you read you start to realize it’s quite long so inevitably you start scrolling and then a horrible scary face pops out at you. if you stop the frame and really look at it, it’s not so bad, but man it was a hell of a jump scare!
@jerk_nugget You can trust me on the jump scare. I’ve got no respect for that. This is just a really spooky story, mostly due to the setting. It’s quite long and rich with ambience. I am rereading it now, and it is sadly rife with pop ups on the main page and redirects on the photo links, which is sad because they add so much to the experience you really want to view the photos. They used to be embedded on the page. So the only jump scare you are going to get is a popup telling you you’ve got a virus they want to remove for you (don’t bite). But if you are willing to wade tgrough the crap the reward is a good story.
@jerk_nugget I never saw the comic one but not nice of your ex. I had the volume off when I got sent the other one and had already heard the screams a few times so when I saw who sent it to me I knew what was coming. Just held onto it so after people forgot about it I attached it to those darn chain letters.
OK, I’ll admit that I’ve had them. I’m 90% sure they came from a library book. They were only in my kids room. I eradicated them myself by nightly inspections for live bugs and with steam, rubbing alcohol, and diatomaceous earth.
@cinoclav I just vacuumed it up. They were contained to my kid’s bunk bed so I pulled the bed away from the wall and put a barrier of DE around the legs of the bed to help prevent them from spreading. I also steamed the mattress and seams in the bed frame with a hand held steamer and treated some areas with rubbing alcohol. I honestly think the best defense was diligence with two nightly inspections. The first was when the kids went to bed. It gave them comfort that I was treating the bugs. I’d look for their droppings and treat the area with steam or alcohol. Then an hour or so later I’d come in with a small flashlight to find live bugs that were out to feed and kill them with a toothpick. They give off a distinct smell when your crush them. We were lucky that we caught it early. Our first symptom was a rash on one of my kids back and arms. The doctor suspected it was an allergy. He wasn’t technically wrong but it caused us to change all of her bedding which could have spread them to other parts of the house. We discovered the bugs when my oldest kid asked me to look at some strange bugs they were seeing lately. I couldn’t immediately identify them so I collected them live and took to the internet for some investigation. I came across many pictures of bed bugs in my searching but I couldn’t be 100% sure since the bugs I caught turned out to be juvenile and most of the pictures I found were of adults that were either not very clear or were taken with a macro lens with more detail than my eyes could see in my sample. I knew for sure when one of the live bugs bit me while I was handling it.
Sorry for the long reply. I just get excited about bed bugs now. BTW: my wife didn’t allow library books in the house for a while and they are permanently banned from the bedrooms. tl;dr: I used the vacuum.
Then an hour or so later I’d come in with a small flashlight to find live bugs that were out to feed and kill them with a toothpick. They give off a distinct smell when your crush them.
I’m a bit fanatical with my fear of getting them. If booking a hotel I check every possible site (like www.bedbugregistry.com) and travel sites for reviews. I won’t stay anywhere that has any history of them. Every single casino in Atlantic City has reports of them. I get dirt cheap offers to come stay but refuse to for just this reason. I thoroughly check every place I stay looking for any of the known signs of them. There’s no way in hell I want to go through the process of getting rid of those little bastards.
@cinoclav We think about that too but I don’t really do any checking or inspection. One thing we don’t allow is the luggage back in our house after a trip. We have a garage and we are able to store it in the rafters. We only travel once or twice a year so this works well for us.
i have to give points to whoever wrote ‘chigger warning’ - terrible and great.
i live in the boston area so while i’ve never had bedbugs (knock on wood) it’s definitely always a lingering concern in the back of my mind. and i never, ever, accept or buy something second hand that is made of soft materials.
i know stuff is ‘just stuff’ but i hate that saying and i’m very attached to my belongings. having to throw my things out against my will is like nightmare fuel to me. (i am capable of regular purges on my own terms though so i’m not a hoarder.)
reminds me…here’s a terrible story for your friday morning-
each classroom in my elementary school had a ‘showcase’ - a largeish shadowbox glass case sort of thing that you could see from the hall. the teachers would decorate theirs each month with whatever- xmas, st patricks day, etc themed items- but sometimes they’d have the students participate in some way. like the time they asked the first graders to bring in one of their favorite stuffed animals to put in the showcase.
and then they found asbestos and the school was closed for a little while while they removed it and all those stuffed animals were bagged and tossed.
Thought of a great payback for someone you REALLY didn’t like - buy them a comforter and infest it with the little darlin’s, drop in the mail, and score settled.
if your rental agreement has an addendum about bedbugs
/image turn and run
because, then the bed bugs are defined as your fault, even if you are the 10th tenant in the building to report them, having never seen one before in your life
@Yoda_Daenerys Yeah… HUD where I live gave us a rental addendum a couple of months ago with all sorts of stupid things about bedbugs including in order not to get bed bugs you can’t have your bed, furniture. etc, against the wall. Umm last I knew when walls and furniture procreate you get dents, scrapes and holes, not bedbugs.
Now roaches… that is something else. When I moved in here16 months ago the place was infested with german coach roaches (and I have killed both them and american coach roaches in the hall) and flour moths. I finally have most of them eradicated from my apartment, only to see the infestation in the hall get worse. Sigh. Of course around here they call American coach roaches water bugs. Yeah right.
And even my cats don’t eat them - just play with them (each of them tried eating them once and then them puked them back up). One night I woke up because a cat was running all over my bed. That little creep was picking up a roach in her mouth, dropping it on the bed, playing with it and when it fell off, rinse and repeat. I ruined her little 3am game by catching it and throwing her toy out the window. Yuck.
From what I have read, bedbugs are smarter than humans, double in number daily, can teleport between rooms, are immortal, and hide inside the walls and also inside everything else.
No I am not worried, never had them.
One of my students came with all these bumps one day, from bedbugs, I sent him home, thought it was chicken pox. Came another time with them, I just asked him if he went to his mom’s to visit, yep, bedbugs.
I would get rid of the mattress and fumagate.
I taught four and five year olds, did not go that high up, smart ass.
I was posting at two in the morning without my reading glasses. My excuse, thank you professor.
I don’t get that urge to scratch when talking about insects. But internal parasites make me squirm.
The joke is on you. I have a water bed!
@rpg714
You can still have bed bugs tho it is way less likely.
Knew someone who did not know till later that he picked them up in a not great motel (was assigned there by employer).
He would up having to throw out a lot of stuff. Worried for s long time that he had, in spite of serious precautions, let one into his house. Turned out he did not. They are very difficult to eradicate once they get in.
Not fun.
obligatory
@thismyusername I think this video creeps me out more than actual bedbugs.
@RiotDemon Totally agree! Suppose to be educational, I think, but got weirded out by the knife is a penis part.
/image bed bugs
just wanted to see what picture would come up
No pic just a story: 15 years ago one of our firefighter friends woke up with a large red bump on his thumb. He ignored it until it was turning purple and where the red bump was became a large hole. His skin was starting to die and come off. He finally went to the ER and found out that it was from a spider bite. Because he waited so long the shot and antibiotics didn’t work so well and he lost his thumb all the way down to the joint on his thumb. His name was Matt but after that his name became Stumpy.
@WTFsunshine spider bites are freaky! i got one once and the little red bump turns into a big clearish round blister type thing. (gross, sorry.) and then, a small line forms. they had to mark it on my arm. apparently, that’s the venom. if it traveled further than a certain point you’d be in trouble. thankfully this wasn’t the case with me - my daycare mom knew what it was early on so we got it checked out and kept an eye on it. still wigs me out a bit to think about, though.
@jerk_nugget Glad it was caught early. We get our house exterminated twice a year. I can’t stand creepy crawlers and I have two screams: 1) there’s a creepy crawler and 2) I set something on the stove on fire. Apparently my husband knows which one is which so he knows when to come quickly or when to come running.
🕷
@WTFsunshine Sounds like a Brown Recluse bite. Their bite causes tissue necrosis. If you ever want some gross images, Google for brown recluse bites.
@moondrake Ahhhh…no. Watching Matt lose his thumb in person was enough for me!
@WTFsunshine They’re useful for coworkers who send you unwanted chain emails. Reply with a made up story and a warning about spider hazards filled with gross images and they’ll generally bump you off their mailing list. Worked for several that would flood everyone’s inboxes with all kinds of hoax warnings, and no amount of replying with debunking links slowed them down. In my work environment a stronger rebuke would have gotten me in trouble. But a couple of pictures of rotting flesh before breakfast and they lost my address.
@moondrake
You have the best office warfare techniques.
@moondrake I use to get forwarded those chain mail messages- really didn’t like those! But back then someone found a video that was like a car commercial and if you kept watching it to the end a scary dead face would pop up and then there was a horrible scream with it. So I saved it and every time I got sent a chain mail I would send the chain mail back to the sender with that attached to it. Worked like a charm!
@WTFsunshine to this day if i start watching a boring video or reading a long boring story someone sends me, i start getting the creeps. i’m convinced i’m about to get the bejesus (whatever that is anyway) scared out of me.
all because one time an ex sent me this comic to read (online) and as you read you start to realize it’s quite long so inevitably you start scrolling and then a horrible scary face pops out at you. if you stop the frame and really look at it, it’s not so bad, but man it was a hell of a jump scare!
@jerk_nugget This is not a jump scare, but it’s a helluva spooky and intriguing read. I go back through it every couple of years.
Ted’s Caving Page
@moondrake i want to trust you, but i’m not sure i can.
@jerk_nugget You can trust me on the jump scare. I’ve got no respect for that. This is just a really spooky story, mostly due to the setting. It’s quite long and rich with ambience. I am rereading it now, and it is sadly rife with pop ups on the main page and redirects on the photo links, which is sad because they add so much to the experience you really want to view the photos. They used to be embedded on the page. So the only jump scare you are going to get is a popup telling you you’ve got a virus they want to remove for you (don’t bite). But if you are willing to wade tgrough the crap the reward is a good story.
@jerk_nugget I never saw the comic one but not nice of your ex. I had the volume off when I got sent the other one and had already heard the screams a few times so when I saw who sent it to me I knew what was coming. Just held onto it so after people forgot about it I attached it to those darn chain letters.
OK, I’ll admit that I’ve had them. I’m 90% sure they came from a library book. They were only in my kids room. I eradicated them myself by nightly inspections for live bugs and with steam, rubbing alcohol, and diatomaceous earth.
@toddnet How was the process of cleaning up the diatomaceous earth? I’ve always read it’s the way to go. Hope to never find out.
@cinoclav I’ve used DE for ants and it’s just powdery - you can vacuum it right up.
@cinoclav I just vacuumed it up. They were contained to my kid’s bunk bed so I pulled the bed away from the wall and put a barrier of DE around the legs of the bed to help prevent them from spreading. I also steamed the mattress and seams in the bed frame with a hand held steamer and treated some areas with rubbing alcohol. I honestly think the best defense was diligence with two nightly inspections. The first was when the kids went to bed. It gave them comfort that I was treating the bugs. I’d look for their droppings and treat the area with steam or alcohol. Then an hour or so later I’d come in with a small flashlight to find live bugs that were out to feed and kill them with a toothpick. They give off a distinct smell when your crush them. We were lucky that we caught it early. Our first symptom was a rash on one of my kids back and arms. The doctor suspected it was an allergy. He wasn’t technically wrong but it caused us to change all of her bedding which could have spread them to other parts of the house. We discovered the bugs when my oldest kid asked me to look at some strange bugs they were seeing lately. I couldn’t immediately identify them so I collected them live and took to the internet for some investigation. I came across many pictures of bed bugs in my searching but I couldn’t be 100% sure since the bugs I caught turned out to be juvenile and most of the pictures I found were of adults that were either not very clear or were taken with a macro lens with more detail than my eyes could see in my sample. I knew for sure when one of the live bugs bit me while I was handling it.
Sorry for the long reply. I just get excited about bed bugs now. BTW: my wife didn’t allow library books in the house for a while and they are permanently banned from the bedrooms. tl;dr: I used the vacuum.
@toddnet
Thx for info.
@toddnet You made that sound exciting.
I’m a bit fanatical with my fear of getting them. If booking a hotel I check every possible site (like www.bedbugregistry.com) and travel sites for reviews. I won’t stay anywhere that has any history of them. Every single casino in Atlantic City has reports of them. I get dirt cheap offers to come stay but refuse to for just this reason. I thoroughly check every place I stay looking for any of the known signs of them. There’s no way in hell I want to go through the process of getting rid of those little bastards.
@cinoclav We think about that too but I don’t really do any checking or inspection. One thing we don’t allow is the luggage back in our house after a trip. We have a garage and we are able to store it in the rafters. We only travel once or twice a year so this works well for us.
i have to give points to whoever wrote ‘chigger warning’ - terrible and great.
i live in the boston area so while i’ve never had bedbugs (knock on wood) it’s definitely always a lingering concern in the back of my mind. and i never, ever, accept or buy something second hand that is made of soft materials.
i know stuff is ‘just stuff’ but i hate that saying and i’m very attached to my belongings. having to throw my things out against my will is like nightmare fuel to me. (i am capable of regular purges on my own terms though so i’m not a hoarder.)
reminds me…here’s a terrible story for your friday morning-
each classroom in my elementary school had a ‘showcase’ - a largeish shadowbox glass case sort of thing that you could see from the hall. the teachers would decorate theirs each month with whatever- xmas, st patricks day, etc themed items- but sometimes they’d have the students participate in some way. like the time they asked the first graders to bring in one of their favorite stuffed animals to put in the showcase.
and then they found asbestos and the school was closed for a little while while they removed it and all those stuffed animals were bagged and tossed.
i still think about it. (clearly.)
@jerk_nugget wait, i thought the punch line was showcases teaming with 1000’s of bedbugs
/image thousands of bedbugs
Do bedbugs exist on the west coast? I’ve never heard of anyone caring about them around here. I always thought they were a New York thing.
@SSteve Happy hunting: http://www.bedbugreports.com/
@cinoclav Wow! I just stayed in San Diego, my hotel was brand new, but there are hotels on that list that were nearby, and very nice. Eye opening.
@SSteve Yes, 100% for sure in California. Source: personal experience.
Thought of a great payback for someone you REALLY didn’t like - buy them a comforter and infest it with the little darlin’s, drop in the mail, and score settled.
@zahita459 Yes, I am evil.
@zahita459 You mean like the small pox blankets?
@Pantheist Yes, but not terminal, only make you WISH you were dead with all the itching.
if your rental agreement has an addendum about bedbugs
/image turn and run
because, then the bed bugs are defined as your fault, even if you are the 10th tenant in the building to report them, having never seen one before in your life
@Yoda_Daenerys Yeah… HUD where I live gave us a rental addendum a couple of months ago with all sorts of stupid things about bedbugs including in order not to get bed bugs you can’t have your bed, furniture. etc, against the wall. Umm last I knew when walls and furniture procreate you get dents, scrapes and holes, not bedbugs.
Now roaches… that is something else. When I moved in here16 months ago the place was infested with german coach roaches (and I have killed both them and american coach roaches in the hall) and flour moths. I finally have most of them eradicated from my apartment, only to see the infestation in the hall get worse. Sigh. Of course around here they call American coach roaches water bugs. Yeah right.
And even my cats don’t eat them - just play with them (each of them tried eating them once and then them puked them back up). One night I woke up because a cat was running all over my bed. That little creep was picking up a roach in her mouth, dropping it on the bed, playing with it and when it fell off, rinse and repeat. I ruined her little 3am game by catching it and throwing her toy out the window. Yuck.
From what I have read, bedbugs are smarter than humans, double in number daily, can teleport between rooms, are immortal, and hide inside the walls and also inside everything else.
@InnocuousFarmer You just have to get all jewish mother and sprinkle moth flakes all over the house.
Between the chiggers fleas and skeeters bed bugs would starve here.
No I am not worried, never had them.
One of my students came with all these bumps one day, from bedbugs, I sent him home, thought it was chicken pox. Came another time with them, I just asked him if he went to his mom’s to visit, yep, bedbugs.
I would get rid of the mattress and fumagate.
@Calabama “fumigate” Assuming your student was not attending your English class.
I taught four and five year olds, did not go that high up, smart ass.
I was posting at two in the morning without my reading glasses. My excuse, thank you professor.
ALERT, SPELLCHECK POLICE ON DUTY!
I will not hold this against you, this time!!!
Bed bug plushie at the local mattress store. And I thought my facehugger plushie was weird.
