Itchy, Crawly, Creepy

We've been battling an infestation for the last six months.

In June of last year, we bought a recliner from a nice consignment store. It was a great chair--good condition, comfortable, and with nice upholstery. My husband and I both loved that chair.

In October, I started seeing little brown bugs crawling around the bed and the recliner. I had no idea what they were, but they didn't seem to be doing any harm. I was more confused than anything. Then the weekend before Thanksgiving, my husband said, "Could they be bedbugs?" and I just thought, oh no. I looked up photos of bedbugs and sure enough, that's what we had.

The law required us to immediately notify the landlord, so we did. The landlord and I did a dance about who was responsible, inspections, and payments before he called in Orkin to spray our apartment and let me tell you, after our experience, we will not be using Orkin if we ever need to call for pest control on our own.

We did the dance to have them come in and spray, and they didn't give us any information afterward, so we figured everything was good. The only problem was that I'd been told by someone who came in to inspect that the technicians would need to cut open the bottom of our box spring and recliner, and they cut open the box spring but not the recliner. That frustrated me because the inspector said that recliners are very difficult to treat, but they didn't seem to have treated it.

Two weeks later, a bedbug sniffer dog came by to check to see if we still had bugs, and I already knew we did because i was still seeing them. So, they came back to spray a second time. This time, we cut open the bottom of the recliner ourselves, and it was filled with hundreds of bedbugs. It was disgusting. The technicians said upon arriving that we needed to get rid of the recliner as soon as possible. So, we got rid of it the next day.

After another two weeks, the landlord emailed me to see how it was going and casually dropped that there was a report from Orkin, and from what it said, we might need to get rid of our mattress.

I was furious. Orkin was giving the landlord instructions on what we, the tenants, needed to do in order to get rid of the bugs but not the people who can actually do it. So, the landlord had us come down to the office and gave us a copy of the report. In it, the technician exaggerated the condition of our apartment and lied about the things he discussed with us. It pissed me off even more. But we got rid of the mattress and replaced it with an airbed. So, we have a twin-size airbed in the living room and a queen-size one in the bedroom. The twin bed replaces my recliner, and I'm happy to have it.

Even after getting rid of the recliner and mattress, we were still seeing bugs, so Orkin came out and sprayed nine days ago. We've only seen two since then, and it's been five days since we saw the last one.

I hope it's over and done with. Years ago, I lived in an apartment in a two-flat house that got a mouse infestation every fall like clockwork. I'd rather deal with that than these damn bedbugs!

Photo Credit: Drew Coffman