You dirty fuckers…not only for giving us BED BUGS, but also for DENYING it. We moved from your dirty apartment building into a brand new home we’ve been saving almost 10 years to buy. Now we’ve thrown out 90% of our furniture and our first home will be forever infested with this little blood-sucking vampires.
This is heartbreaking. The least you could do is admit your building has a problem and let people know how to protect themselves. Oh yeah, and reach into the bottom of your wallet (insert flying moths here) and fucking cough up some money to help the people whose lives you destroyed (who also gave you rent money for a roof over their heads). If the law allowed me to sue you I would.
Not only the costs (which are ongoing), but the mental trauma (and lack of sleep) initially made me consider suicide. Thankfully I am now looking ahead.
Your reply was useless, consisting of finger pointing: “if you had told us before you moved out we could have done something about it but now it’s too late”…”it must have come in with you because they only live in your bed”…and followed by “it could have come in on your pant leg”. Great fucking logic. That means I would have had to have a fucking mattress attached to my pant leg to catch these little bastards. Our PCO guy said it looks like the infestation was a few months old. We moved out of our apartment a month ago. There’s your evidence. I thought these things only existed in nursery rhymes.
Too bad I am an obsessive compulsive cleaner, or we would have found them sooner and been able to 1. report it and force the owners to do something about it (which would have protected others in the building) and 2. prevent our new home from becoming infested. I think the underside of our boxspring where it met the bedframe is the only place in our apartment that didn’t get regularly cleaned. Now my clothes (which were mostly destroyed due to the treatment with hot water and hot dryer) and other belongings are in giant Ziploc bags for at least a year and I have to vacuum every day (and throw away the bag). Not to mention all the additional cleaning I’m doing on top of my regular routine. Every nook and cranny is vacuumed and disinfected. I’m up to my eyeballs in pesticides that probably don’t work (so if I am fortunate enough to survive this I’ll probably get cancer). I barely have time to eat my supper and make it to bed by midnight. I’ve been living like a leper, avoiding public places and social occasions. My friends think I’ve become a recluse. I guess I have, but it’s for their protection. My parents and other family members weren’t so lucky, and have torn their houses apart looking for signs, and are constantly living in fear of having caught them since I visited (before we “knew”).
Of all the places I’ve lived without incident, to move to Halifax and catch bed bugs is just ironic. Nice welcome home. Maybe you should put it on your tourism site; “come to Halifax for our vampire tour”…you could even capitalize on it. Charge people say $10 to get sucked on.
People in denial are the ones spreading these things through apartment buildings like wildfire. And our government is doing nothing about it. The CDC (Center for Disease Control) is preparing for the worst, so why aren’t we? Many pesticides are ineffective against newer strains. Learn how to protect yourself. Visit www.bedbugger.com!
This article appears in Oct 2-8, 2008.
I dont care what anyone says,bedbugs come from fucking dirty people who dont wash their bedding and their body.People in this city smell so bad I have to put a clothespin on my nose in public.
And I suppose said bedbugs simply appear out of thin air when the environment reaches an appropriate level of filth. Or maybe they can detect adequately filthy conditions from a few houses away, and migrate. No doubt, if the bedbugs find themselves in a nice clean house, they turn up their little buggy noses and move along looking for more suitable digs. In my grandmother’s day, people thought that hairs would turn into worms if they sat in dirty water for long enough.
It’s like the chicken or the egg thing. Which one came first, the carrier or the parasite, and Bonnie, here’s some advice. I’m not the most pleasant person here, but you out drove me . Get some manners you Travelocity troll. I’ve not suffered from bedbugs, but from what I’ve read, it’s tre shitty. Walk a mile in the infestation then say something worthwhile.
First off bed bugs don’t come from dirty filty people, get your head screwed on straight please!! I lived in a house last year that was made into 2 apartments and bed bugs moved in we still dont know where from, trust me I’m obsessive about cleaning (laundry, vaccuming, dishes I do it all) I even drove my roomies nuts cleaning but that didn’t seem to stop them from moving in anyway. The point is there is a bed bug epidemic sweeping every major city and even small towns (its due to the fact we no longer use DDT which seemed to be the only thing that really cleaned out the bugs now they are making a huge come back) You can pick them up anywhere, they will travel on people’s clothes and its near impossible to stop them. I too thought I would lose my mind (as did my other 2 roomies), I used to wake up at 4am to bites, and would call my mom at all hours in hysterics sure I was going crazy, I almost quit school and moved home. Bedbugs don’t just live in your bed, they will live in electronics (they like the heat) and build their homes in wooden base boards, and anywhere they see fit to do so. It’s been months sence I’ve seen one (maybe because I threw out everything I owned costing me a fortune) and I still freak out everytime I see a bug I don’t know. The point is Halifax (and everywhere else) needs to start providing people with solutions as to how to remove the bugs but the only help seems to come from the orkin man, many land lords (my old one) don’t care they spray some raid and think it will be ok they won’t pay for anything to be cleaned properly, but its not (we left the people moving in when we moved out a note because we felt guilty that no one informed them). So don’t jump to conclusions about people who have bed bugs, it could be the doctor that you visit, or the guy who drives your cab … bed bugs don’t discriminate…
I feel for you. I have never experienced bed bugs, but am sure it is not pleasant. I dont even know where they come from, but I heard that it was between the OCEAN and the TOWERS. lol
Speaking of annoying little pests, what is with the fleas this year? Everytime my dog goes outside I have to bath her…..
Lori you have to try “advantage” or “proban” something similar to get rid of fleas. Collars and baths and powders don’t work nearly as well as the oral insecticides or the drops that get absorbed through the skin.
I’ve used the drops on my older dog for years (I can’t remember the brand name-from walmart) but it didn’t seem to work on our new pup. The older one is flea free, but the younger one keeps gettin em! There is a vet who lives across the street who brought us home some advantage last night. **crossing fingers**
That sounds miserable. I’ve never had ’em, but i can bet it’s every bit of the nightmare i’ve heard described and worse. Just reading your post made me paranoid and itchy. Is there really no legal responsibility from a landlord to take action in a situation like this? If something breaks inside of your unit, they’re responsible for fixing that item..shouldn’t the same rule apply here? OP, I hope you get rid of those critters and can soon enjoy your new home. As for your old landlord..if karma has it’s way with him he’ll be bitten to a pulp soon enough.
In NS I don’t think the landlord is only responsible for paying for pest control if they can’t prove the tenant brought them in. In Ontario, the landlord has to foot the bill, so tenants are more likely to report pests and get the problem solved right away. with the system here, tenants just move to avoid the cost of getting rid of the pest leading to them taking the bugs with them, leaving the bugs for the next tenant and allowing the bugs to multiply and spread to other units. It’s in the best interest of the landord for them to foot the bill, so problems get reported early when the extermination costs will be lower.
As far as I understand, the landlord is only required to do something if the report is from a tenant in the building, which means they would not be required to fix the situation unless they get another report (from a current tenant). The woman who called them had already moved out before she discovered the problem, unfortunately for her :(Bonnie, you should educate yourself before you make assumptions about such things. I guess in your case, ignorance is bliss. I bet you still checked under your own bed last night.
I actually had bed bugs TWICE when I was backpacking in Australia. I would describe it as atleast twice as bad as chicken pox. They bite in almost a striahgt pattern, and I just had lines of itchy red bumps all up and down my forearms, thinghs, lower back, etc. It is god awful, but it has absolutely nothing to do with hygiene.