Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
Speaker 1: there's Josh, and this is short stuff. Okay, okay, bed
Speaker 1: bugs gross the end. This is actually a request from
Speaker 1: years back by our Disney buddy Brandon read we're finally
Speaker 1: getting to it. I can't believe it hadn't didn't cover
Speaker 1: this on a longer one, But now that I've read it, it's, uh,
Speaker 1: usually like twelve minutes of material here exactly. Man. That's
Speaker 1: why I languished for so long. But now finally that
Speaker 1: we're doing short stuff, it's bed bugs. Time to rise
Speaker 1: and shine. Right. So back in the day, um, there
Speaker 1: used to be bed bugs. And then for a while there,
Speaker 1: like in the nineteen fifties, um, we didn't have bedbugs
Speaker 1: because we were pumping D d T into the house,
Speaker 1: like basically dousing homes with poison. It wouldn't even bother
Speaker 1: to leave. You just sit there and bake a cake.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and and everything would die and they were like,
Speaker 1: that's great, everything's dead. And then people would be like, right,
Speaker 1: I don't have any hair on my body, right, I
Speaker 1: have cancer. So they said maybe we shouldn't pump D
Speaker 1: d T into homes anymore, and they were like, you know,
Speaker 1: that means bed bugs are going to come back, and
Speaker 1: they're like, okay, we'll just deal with that. I saw
Speaker 1: I saw mention somewhere. I think it was on a
Speaker 1: history article. I can't remember that that some people didn't
Speaker 1: believe they were real, like generations who were born after
Speaker 1: they've been basically eradicated, but it never actually seen a
Speaker 1: bed bug. I think they thought it was like a
Speaker 1: jack loop or a snipe or something. Right, Well, if
Speaker 1: you've been to New Yorker Philadelphia in the last like
Speaker 1: twenty years, there's a chance that you know firsthand that
Speaker 1: they're real, because those cities developed real problems with bed bugs,
Speaker 1: and they think that they came back for a combination
Speaker 1: of two reasons. One, the pesticides like DDT that we
Speaker 1: were using were banned, not just discontinued, straight up band
Speaker 1: You will be put in jail if you're a pest
Speaker 1: control person using DDT. And then secondly, international travel became
Speaker 1: more and more widespread. It wasn't just like a boat
Speaker 1: trip anymore. It was a plane trip, and you could
Speaker 1: spread bed bugs pretty fast. And the reason why they're
Speaker 1: able to spread and um become a real problem is
Speaker 1: because they are very very tough to get rid of
Speaker 1: these days, since we've given up our number one enfource
Speaker 1: or against bed bugs d d T. There's we'll get
Speaker 1: to some ways to get rid of them later, just
Speaker 1: suffice to say for now, they're very difficult to kill. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so bed bugs, if you listen to our shows on
Speaker 1: fleas and ticks, um, just get ready to be creeped
Speaker 1: out again because, uh, they drink your blood, they eat
Speaker 1: your body, uh, in your in your sleep. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: really horrifying. They call them bed bugs because you can
Speaker 1: find them a lot of times in your bed. But
Speaker 1: they're not exclusive to beds. They can be anywhere. Are
Speaker 1: in your apartment, they can be in your couch, Um,
Speaker 1: they could be in the walls, they can be in
Speaker 1: your clothes. Uh, they can be pretty much anywhere. Um,
Speaker 1: if you're living in an apartment or you're staying in
Speaker 1: a hotel in your next door neighbor has bed bugs,
Speaker 1: then chances are they're going to make their way over
Speaker 1: into your place as well. Yeah, because they're real tiny,
Speaker 1: like adults are about a quarter of an inch long,
Speaker 1: and they're real flat too. Yeah, like you can't, um,
Speaker 1: you may not even see bed bugs. If you're like,
Speaker 1: let me look on my sheets, you may see their poop,
Speaker 1: which is a dead giveaway. It's rust colored. But these
Speaker 1: these are these are tiny little things. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: they get everywhere they can hide very easily. And again
Speaker 1: because you can't as fumigate um, like like baits and
Speaker 1: traps don't work. Um. Most of the stuff we used
Speaker 1: to kill them we don't use anymore. They're just really
Speaker 1: difficult to get rid of. But they're really easy to
Speaker 1: pick up. And one of the places where you pick
Speaker 1: them up is a tell room. You can pick them
Speaker 1: up for everywhere from the the mattress and the sheets, um,
Speaker 1: to the luggage rack or the floor. UM. So you
Speaker 1: want to be really I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: investigate their hotel room before they unpack, and one of
Speaker 1: the things you want to look for is along the
Speaker 1: seams of the mattress and in the folds of the sheets.
Speaker 1: Are looking for that rust colored poop or the former
Speaker 1: shells of these things. Because they scurry away pretty fast
Speaker 1: when they are found out, So you might not see them,
Speaker 1: but you can see those telltale signs of them. I
Speaker 1: have never looked for bed bugs in any hotel room.
Speaker 1: I haven't either, But now that I know all this,
Speaker 1: I don't know that I'm not going to do very certainly,
Speaker 1: yes you will, um so while you're sleeping they um
Speaker 1: like it tick or flee. They they will stick their
Speaker 1: little syringe uh in their mouth and they will stick
Speaker 1: it into your skin and they will suck your blood
Speaker 1: for three to ten minutes. It's about all it takes.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna feel it necessarily. It's really an annoyance.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna like um like, it doesn't give you
Speaker 1: a disease, but it uh, it can give you like
Speaker 1: a rash, and it can make you itchy, and it
Speaker 1: might swell up just a little bit, but a little
Speaker 1: anahistamine and you're probably fine. So it's not like some
Speaker 1: big disease vector. But it's still creepy. Nonetheless, No, and that,
Speaker 1: but that's really important to say. Like they've never traced
Speaker 1: the transmission of a disease from bed bugs humans. We
Speaker 1: have never found it, but they they do. They are
Speaker 1: a pain and they are a kind of mosquito bity
Speaker 1: like you're saying, um because of that allergic reaction, but
Speaker 1: they're they're just kind of I think one of the
Speaker 1: things that you're like, I don't want to live with
Speaker 1: bed bugs, even if I'm immune. Some people are immune
Speaker 1: to their bites, but um, like they they at least
Speaker 1: don't have an allergic reaction, right, Um, which I guess
Speaker 1: is the same thing. But nobody is going to find
Speaker 1: out that they have bed bugs and be like, well,
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do? I guess I'll just live
Speaker 1: with it. So you've got to get rid of bed bugs.
Speaker 1: And like we said, it's really hard. But in true
Speaker 1: stuff you should know spirit, we say, never give up,
Speaker 1: and we're going to come back after this message and
Speaker 1: teach you how to get rid of bed bugs if
Speaker 1: you are an unfortunate soul who has bet bugs. All right, So,
Speaker 1: one thing we did not mention was that once a
Speaker 1: bed bug feeds, they can go a full year without feeding.
Speaker 1: So if you move into a place that like no
Speaker 1: one's lived in for eight months, doesn't mean there aren't
Speaker 1: bed bugs there. Um, if you live in a place
Speaker 1: that's super clean, that doesn't mean there aren't bed bugs there,
Speaker 1: because it might help if it's really gross and trashy,
Speaker 1: but it's certainly not a prerequisite. If you stay in
Speaker 1: some fancy hotel, there might still be bed bugs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean they're not associated with filth. They don't
Speaker 1: feed on filth or trash. They feed on human blood
Speaker 1: and um, those that trash or whatever gives them more
Speaker 1: places to hide. But it's not a requisite for a
Speaker 1: bed bug problem, right, So if you find out you
Speaker 1: have bed bugs. Um. And by the way, you can
Speaker 1: look up online generally and find out about hotels before
Speaker 1: you go into the room. Great, you can do some
Speaker 1: googling and be like, just type in bed bugs and
Speaker 1: like hotel blank. Oh, I'll bet hotels take that very serious. Think. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if you do find bed bugs though in your home, um,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things you can try. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you if you can bake your home in an oven,
Speaker 1: there's a thing, you know, there's a thing at d
Speaker 1: and twenty degrees. They can come in there and and
Speaker 1: crank it up and essentially kill them with either heat
Speaker 1: or cold above one below thirty two fahrenheit. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: if you just have isolated a big bed bug infestation
Speaker 1: to like your clothes or your bedding or whatever, you
Speaker 1: can throw it in the dryer on high heat for
Speaker 1: like a couple of hours and you're gonna kill every
Speaker 1: bed bug in there, um, in every stage of of life. Um,
Speaker 1: But you can't do that with like your whole house
Speaker 1: or your couch or whatever. So they actually sell machines
Speaker 1: that you can hook up to a house. You seal
Speaker 1: the house, and you pump peat into the house, and
Speaker 1: you bake the contents of your house for a couple
Speaker 1: of hours, and because you've raised the temperature of every
Speaker 1: nook and cranny in your entire house, you kill every
Speaker 1: single bed bug that's in that house. But it's quite
Speaker 1: expensive to have done. Sure, Um, if you want to
Speaker 1: go the cheaper route, Uh, you should laund to your stuff. Sure,
Speaker 1: the dryer works, but I would wash it on. If
Speaker 1: you have a sanitize setting, definitely do that all your clothes,
Speaker 1: all your sheets, all your towels, all anything. Um. If
Speaker 1: you have like area rugs that you're not super attached to,
Speaker 1: maybe just throw those out. Sure, if you want to
Speaker 1: go through the trouble of cleaning them, that's fine. Um.
Speaker 1: You can also suffocate them so you can seal a rug.
Speaker 1: I guess you can always do that with a rug
Speaker 1: or a mattress see loon plastic and that will supposedly
Speaker 1: suffocate them. If you have one of those euro sealers
Speaker 1: or a vacuum sealer things that you like store blankets
Speaker 1: in under the bed. If you have one of those,
Speaker 1: that helps a lot, because those things can go for
Speaker 1: a while depending on when they last eight without you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of air, And what seems like very small
Speaker 1: amount of air to us is a lot to a
Speaker 1: bunch of bedbugs. So you want to suck as much
Speaker 1: air as you can out of the plastic. And even then,
Speaker 1: I didn't see anything definitive about how long they last
Speaker 1: or how long it takes to kill them. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: one seems a little like I don't know if I
Speaker 1: would depend on that one. Okay, Um as like the
Speaker 1: final solution you know, uh, you can use You can
Speaker 1: do all this stuff in concert with insecticides if if
Speaker 1: you're down with that stuff in your house, Um, that
Speaker 1: will help for sure. Um. There are dust insecticides, which
Speaker 1: um generally aren't as toxic. Um. There are contact insecticides
Speaker 1: with are way more toxic. I would say, Yeah, ones
Speaker 1: made from chrysanthemums. Oh that's nice. Yeah, I thought so too.
Speaker 1: Which one the contact the pirate throids? Yeah, the contact
Speaker 1: in secticide. Uh, and then you could, like, if push
Speaker 1: comes to shove, like you should hire a person if
Speaker 1: you have the means. I don't know if I would
Speaker 1: tackle this on your own. If you have the money
Speaker 1: to hire a professional, just go that route and they'll
Speaker 1: do all this stuff. But those are some tips, like
Speaker 1: if you want to go the less expensive route. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's one other thing that we need to say. UM,
Speaker 1: if you throw out that area rug or if you're
Speaker 1: like I just can't live with this this couch anymore, UM,
Speaker 1: don't just like put it out in the curb, because
Speaker 1: the people will come along and say, that's a pretty
Speaker 1: nice couch. I think I'll take that, it's a pretty
Speaker 1: nice area rug. I think I'll take that, and then
Speaker 1: they have a big bug problem of their own. You
Speaker 1: don't want to wish that on anybody else. So it's
Speaker 1: common UM advice that if you're going to throw this out,
Speaker 1: throw out a couch or an area rug or whatever
Speaker 1: you want to make it unattractive, like slash it up,
Speaker 1: throw paint on it, do something to make it so
Speaker 1: that no one wants it any longer, maybe even right
Speaker 1: like bed bug infested or something on it, so that people. Notice,
Speaker 1: you're clear because you don't want to transfer your big
Speaker 1: bug problem. You're not that kind of jerky listen to
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. Yeah, I'm not going to subscribe
Speaker 1: to that, uh, because I don't want to see furniture
Speaker 1: in a landfill. So what are you gonna do? Hang
Speaker 1: onto it and just kill the stuff? Yeah? Sure, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm with you on that, but I'm I'm not going
Speaker 1: to put a couch in a dumpster. Let's just s
Speaker 1: I'm with you, man. But for the people out there
Speaker 1: who are like, I can't deal with this, I have
Speaker 1: to get rid of it. Sure, make sure you make
Speaker 1: it so that no one would want that couch anymore. Okay,
Speaker 1: make sure it has to go in a dumpster, right right? Basically, uh, chuck,
Speaker 1: you got anything else? I got nothing else? All right? Well,
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Speaker 1: I really like these short stuffs, here's why. You can
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