On Thursday, lucky Walmart shoppers in Edinboro, Pennsylvania were treated to live bedbugs, which were checking out their new home in the men's changing room. Some were roaming around freely while others were living in a pill bottle that someone had placed in a boy's jacket offered by the store.
According to CNN:
On Friday, health safety company Ecolab confirmed that the insects were bedbugs. An Ecolab employee also reported seeing bedbugs crawling around the men's changing rooms the same day, according to police.
A Walmart employee later found a second closed pill bottle containing dead bedbugs in the men's department, police said.
"A third-party pest management service has visited the store and we are working with them to assess next steps," the Walmart spokesperson said. "In the meantime, we have blocked off the impacted area.
State Police are investigating the matter and looking for the person or people responsible, they said."
Bedbugs are tenacious little critters, and don't always clear out after one fumigation (I know this because I had friends who had to move out of their apartment after two failed attempts to get rid of the blood suckers). So it might a while before Walmart sees the last of them.
Image: By CDC/ Harvard University, Dr. Gary Alpert; Dr. Harold Harlan; Richard Pollack. Photo Credit: Piotr Naskrecki - http://phil.cdc.gov/phil, Public Domain, Link Read the rest
St. Paul Public Schools in Minnesota found bedbugs infesting iPads issued to students. As of now, only a few of iPads were found to be buggy. From WCCO:
...The district encouraged students to take their tablets out of their cases to thoroughly clean the case and keyboard with a window cleaner to kill any bacteria...
In a statement to WCCO a spokesperson for St Paul Public Schools said in part:
“There is no indication of the presence of any additional pests in any other iPads. However, as the health and safety of our students are our highest priorities, we felt it was responsible and prudent to ask families to maintain the cleanliness of the devices.”
(via Fark)
image: Piotr Naskrecki (public domain)
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At noon ET, employees at the New York Times received the following email:
Dear Colleagues,
During an extermination sweep of the newsroom over the weekend, we discovered evidence of bedbugs in a wellness room (02E4-253) on the second floor, a couch on the third floor and a booth on the fourth floor. These specific areas were then swept by professionals and found to be otherwise clean. In an abundance of caution, the second-floor room has been temporarily closed, the booth has been blocked off and the couch has been removed to be treated and professionally cleaned.
Additionally, evidence of possible bedbug activity was found in a few personal lockers on the third floor. Individuals associated with those lockers have been contacted and treatment is underway.
We continue to monitor the situation and, as a precaution, we intend to sweep all New York Times-occupied floors. We will provide updates as they become available.
If you have any questions, please contact Pat Whelan from Facilities at [redacted].
Building Operations
Via Slate Read the rest
A family of three (including a 7 year old girl) on a British Airways overnight from Vancouver to London spotted bedbugs crawling on their seats and alerted the crew, but the crew said the flight was sold out and wouldn't move them, so they spent 9 hours getting gnawed by bedbugs, arriving with their skin "absolutely covered" in bites. Read the rest
Terminix has just released its annual list of the top 15 U.S. cities most infested with bedbugs, determined by the most S.O.S. phone calls the company receives about the stealthy blood-suckers. And the winning city for most bedbugs in 2015 goes to… (drumroll) … Detroit! Ohio wins for the state on the list with the most bedbug infested cities (five!).
The rest of the list:
Philadelphia, MI Cleveland-Akron, OH Los Angeles, CA Dayton, OH Chicago, IL Columbus, OH Cincinnati, OH Dallas-Forth Worth, TX San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA Denver, CO Toledo, OH Oklahoma City, OK Baltimore, MD New York, NY
No need for hysterics, but if traveling to one of these cities (or any city for that matter!) check out today’s Surefire Way to Spot Bedbugs in the Huffington Post. Their tips include:
1. Setting your luggage down in the bathroom (unless your room has tile flooring) 2. Pulling the bed sheets off the mattress 3. Using your flashlight app on your smartphone to inspect the mattress – including the seams – for bugs as well as small dark blood stains (from the bug’s excrement, if you must know) 4. Inspect the furniture and wall art
A little know-how in spotting these luggage-hopping pests might save you a call to your local bug buster and possibly months of your life trying to eradicate them. Read the rest
Yes, bedbugs are gross. But before you go all Conan on any creepy creatures living in your mattress, please be aware that pesticides are both helpful and potentially dangerous. With bedbug infestations on the rise in many American cities, the Centers for Disease Control is trying to make people aware of the dangers of using too much pesticide, using the wrong types of pesticide, or not carefully following directions. Know what you're using on your home and know what any company you hire to spray is using, too. (Via Jen Gunter) Read the rest
