We hit a new low in September when WALMART ran TV ads offering bedbug impervious sheets at its Vancouver area stores. I heard reports of The Bedbug Registry, but I was never curious enough to take a look. Actually I've never seen a bedbug, and I have no hankering to bump into one.
A SIX INCH BED BUG - courtesy of the Burnaby NEWS LEADER, Nov. 9, 2011.
I've been too busy of late to research Blog articles, or read local newspapers, but I couldn't ignore the NEWS LEADER delivered to my door on November 9th. You might have thought that the November 19th Civic Election would be the story worthy of page one.... but those of us who have been around a few years know that not until the protagonists and the antagonists start paying for large election adverts do the papers start narrating THE ELECTION STORY.
On P1 they printed a photo of a bedbug as big as a juvenile trilobite! A warning of such ghastly proportions simply could not be ignored. So I read the article. If you want to read "Avoiding the bedbug bite", its archived HERE.
Infestations at two of Burnaby's public libraries made the news recently, as did a report that BC HOUSING spent over $721,000 in one year fighting bedbugs "at 43 of 49 of its housing complexes" in Greater Vancouver. Lest you try to point a bony finger at "Welfare" tenants, I hasten to add that several were senior citizen buildings. Poverty and vermin don't necessarily go together. I spent much of my childhood on Welfare in Saint John, N.B. and we never once encountered lice, bedbugs or cockroaches. As my mother often said, "We're poor, but we're clean."
What did startle me in the NEWS LEADER report was one loopy comment attributed to a pest-control professional who said "the fall of the Soviet Bloc in the late 1980s and early '90s led to increased travel to and from Eastern Europe which had a nasty bedbug problem... Combined with the ease of travel today, it's led to a worldwide spread of bedbugs." I guess that in Burnaby the vermin are East German.
No, the spread of vermin including the rats which are also plaguing Burnaby, is actually due to the banning of chemicals and poisons which had largely defeated most of those ancient scourges by the mid 20th Century. When Environmentalism became a religion on this continent it lit candles to the Second Coming of Willard the rat and Benny the bedbug. Get used to it. The powers that be will not be arming for this war any time soon.
Finally I Googled the infamous online resource known as THE BEDBUG REGISTRY. I predict it going to become more popular than GAS BUDDY. You better have a look. You'll find that bedbugs are EVERYWHERE!! Feeling itchy?
A couple of typical reports on The Bedbug Registry. For a look at Burnaby Metrotown
I agree with your prediction that Bedbug Registry will continue to garner viewers - until, we return to the heightened awareness our grandparents and great-grandparents had about all things bed bugs. The spread of this pest will continue unless a coordinated, accurate and current public education on bed bugs is undertaken. We have seen provincial and municipal governments get involved back east - we need the same committment here in BC. Ken Hando. Disclaimer: I own and operate a canine bed bug detection service, Bed Bug Mutts, servicing Burnaby and surrounding areas.
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