I mean bed bugged? You maybe read on the news about the infestation of bed bugs in Paris. Well Paris is one of the most visited cities in the world – and no wonder. It is the capital of love, fashion, food, art and everything else. And now apparently Capital of Bed Bugs.
Honestly I have travelled far and wide. I have stayed in luxury hotels and some dumps in strange and exotic locations and I have never encountered bed bugs. Maybe I am just lucky. Maybe I didn’t see them !! Yikes.
There are all sorts of tips on the internet such as – don’t put your bag on the bed to unpack it, wash your clothes at the hottest temp for 30 minutes to kill any possible bugs and eggs. I haven’t done any of those things either.
But now technology is helping …. There is some device that they put into the legs of the bed which emits some sort of vibration (only felt by bed bugs) which attracts them and then they get trapped. No insecticide is used but even more amazing – a message is then sent to the head office of the hotel chain to alert them so they can come in and get the problem sorted out.
Now I know that there are people freaking out reading this- and probably those are the same people who are scared of bugs (I am not talking bed bugs but other sort of harmless bugs). I had people who stayed in a hotel in Disneyland that had ants coming into the room through the floorboards – now that would be annoying. But they were resourceful. They blocked the hole in the floorboards with toothpaste. Yup – the ants did not like that at all.
I also had a case where a lady in Fiji complained about the bugs around the door of her bure (Fijian hut). Somebody from reception came down to check and said that there was nothing dangerous there – just the usual tropical things and some small lizards. She wanted the pest control to come in and the hotel explained that they don’t kill the lizards as they are harmless and help to keep down the mosquitoes. She was not happy.
So where in the world can you go where you won’t get bed bugs, flying insects or lizards?
How about Antarctica?
Oh no ….
The Antarctic midge might be smaller than a pea, but it’s the continent’s largest land animal–and only native insect. The midge has clearly evolved to survive in extreme conditions, yet a warming climate could threaten its existence, a new study finds.
