121–130 of 157 posts
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If they're big it means they're eating well, so consider how many more bugs you'd be seeing if it hadn't already made a meal of them!
Is that true? My first guess would have been that size more or less directly reflects age.
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It's not immediate, but my crude understanding was the heaters they use are positioned so the outer edges of the home heat up first. That way the bed bugs can't escape - they'd have to know to go towards the heat first. Also don't forget it just takes time to heat up a home that much.
Wouldn't that damage stuff? Plastics will go weak and start outgassing. Electronics might break.. and if you move all that stuff out you might take them with you
Even the best hotels have dealt with bedbugs. For safety, leave your luggage in your car for a few days when you return from a trip. Ideally, you want the temperature to either drop below freezing or rise above 100°F, which will kill bedbugs. The same procedure should be employed with used furniture, perhaps more aggressively. There is also a trick with dry ice and talcum powder if you think an infestation is startin…
IIRC, below freezing also isn't generally good enough -- I forget what the specifics are from when I cared a lot about it 5+ years ago, but it's something like -20C consistently for a few whole days for all the stages of bedbug and their eggs to be destroyed by cold. They're surprisingly resistant to death from cold -- but a good hot dryer at 120F for ~30+ minutes will definitely get 'em.
But I always wash my stuff at 60C and bedding and towels at 90C (for Fahrenheiters that's nearly boiling). And then dry for 30 minutes at 80C. I guess that does the job.
I'm surprised my clothes don't shrink from those temperatures. I wear pretty much only cotton but it seems unaffected.
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They are creepy, but they eat baddies. The last time one showed up in our bathroom, my wife yelled at me to "Stop marveling at it!" It was the biggest one I had ever seen, close to 3 inches. RIP Uber-coleoptrata scutigera!
I just googled the scutigera and they’re somewhat more adorable than the giant centipedes we have in Australia (no they’re not everywhere, but they’re enough to startle you).
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If you have centipedes in your house then de facto you have other bugs. They’re strictly carnivores. So as cool and helpful as they are, their continued existence indicates you have other problems as well. Best to consider them like Sully in the movie Commando: “ I like you. I’m gonna kill you last. ”
How is it possible to have a house with no insects? I just don't even see that as feasible, except maybe for a small new house with no shrubbery (and probably in a desert environment?). There ain't no way you're living in a house with zero bugs.
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In my neck of the woods it’s the same deal with spiders. You just escort them outside once they get fat and too lazy to not be on your wall in the daytime.
An indoor spider might not survive outside. Leave it alone! https://www.livescience.com/55270-can-indoor-spiders-survive...
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Here's how we got rid of them ourselves for cheap: 1. Bought a bedbug-proof encasement for every mattress and pillow. Seals them in and they starve. 2. Bought a handheld steam cleaner and steamed every seam on every piece of furniture.
> Seals them in and they starve. The problem here is that their lifecycle is unimaginably long and punctuated. They happily hibernate for 6 months at a time between feedings, so waiting them out means waiting a very very very long time.
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An indoor spider might not survive outside. Leave it alone! https://www.livescience.com/55270-can-indoor-spiders-survive...
There's a spider size limit in this household and they get big enough that I'm not having them walk around unescorted. They go back to the woodpile their ancestors came from.
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There's a spider size limit in this household and they get big enough that I'm not having them walk around unescorted. They go back to the woodpile their ancestors came from.
I’ve had to kill a couple particularly nasty ones. In particular I’ve found a wolf spider in my living room and a black widow in my garage. If they have no danger to me, which is most of them, they are happy to continue coexisting with me and eating bugs in my house
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IIRC, below freezing also isn't generally good enough -- I forget what the specifics are from when I cared a lot about it 5+ years ago, but it's something like -20C consistently for a few whole days for all the stages of bedbug and their eggs to be destroyed by cold. They're surprisingly resistant to death from cold -- but a good hot dryer at 120F for ~30+ minutes will definitely get 'em.
Hmm that makes sense. I don't have a washing machine so I was worried about getting these from the launderette. Especially since some of their customers seem to be of the no fixed abode type. But I always wash my stuff at 60C and bedding and towels at 90C (for Fahrenheiters that's nearly boiling). And then dry for 30 minutes at 80C. I guess that does the job. I'm surprised my clothes don't shrink from those temperatu…
I would think homeless people would be less likely to get bedbugs, not more. They aren't lice -- they can't live on people.