Bad Bugs

Brown-Eyed Boy wandered into the kitchen with a little brown bug on his finger.

"Look, Mommy, a beetle."

We often find strange bugs in our house, so I thought nothing of it. "Take it outside," was all I said.

"But I want to play with it."

"Take it outside," I ordered, and he grumbled but obeyed.

A few minutes later, Mr. Brown Eyes hollered my name in a worried tone of voice I don't often hear from him. He held Brown-Eyed Boys' beetle up on his finger, and then showed me a picture on his phone.

A picture of a bed bug.

My heart sank. My worst nightmare had come true.

We tore our house apart. Seriously, it was a disaster. Tools, toys, and cleaning supplies everywhere. Furniture upheaved and pushed aside. Clean laundry piled the dining room table and dirty laundry overflowed the laundry room.

Mr. Brown Eyes took the beds apart piece by piece. We threw everything--toys, books, clothes, blankets, shoes, stuffed animals--into plastic bags and and piled them outside in the hot sun. We bought expensive bed bug-proof bags for our mattresses, box springs, and pillows. Then we sprayed and scrubbed and vacuumed, then sprayed and scrubbed and vacuumed again.

But the next morning we still woke up with bites, so we did it all over again.

Something I didn't know about bed bugs until I watched Animal Planet's "Infested" (I love that show. Disgusting and yet so morbidly fascinating. I know, I'm weird), is that they don't just live in your bed. They can seriously hide anywhere. And you won't know they're there until they crawl out while you're deeply asleep and drink your blood.

*shudder*

Needless to say, I have been paranoid for the last week. We haven't gotten any new bites since that first night of cleaning, and we're staying on top of vacuuming and spraying. But I find myself going crazy, thinking of all the places they could still be lurking. Electrical outlets. Baseboards. Cracks in the walls of our log cabin. Mr. Brown Eyes told me they have even been known to crawl between the frame and glass of a picture frame.

He's so good at calming my fears.

In an effort to not lose my mind, I put together a list of things we could still be grateful for, even though there are blood-sucking parasites hiding in our house:

1. Arizona is hot. Heat = death to bed bugs.
2. Our dryer gets super hot. Again, heat = death to bed bugs.
3. At least we're not infested with spiders.
4. Or cockroaches. *shudder*
5. Bed bug bites are not fatal.
6. At least our house is clean now.
7. Mr. Brown Eyes being suspicious about that "beetle." Good thinking on his part.
8. It could be much, much worse.

Although we suspect Mr. Brown Eyes brought the bed bugs home from work, I have resolved to never, ever, ever, ever, ever, stay in a hotel again.

You just never know.

I overheard Brown-Eyed Boy talking to his cousin about the bed bugs the other day, and he called them "bad bugs."

I did not correct him.

Still shuddering,
The Brown-Eyed Girl