Bed Bugs

I absolutely, positively, emphatically, and undeniably don’t think bed bugs are funny. When I snickered upon reading a notice in the condo elevator that a well-regarded nearby building has had an infestation and we are to take all necessary precautions, I meant nothing more than to acknowledge the migration of the little scourges from some of the best hotels in Manhattan to the ecologically pristine Pacific Northwest.

Riding in the elevation along with me was one of the condo association’s founding residents, who considers herself a high authority on all matters regarding the building. Upon hearing my audible smirk, she informed me archly that the management [of which she is not a member] would prefer that bedbugs not be treated as a joke.

I hate being spoken to archly.

Seeming not to notice, she continued on with dark predictions of what would happen in our building should someone inadvertently traipse bedbugs through the front door. Apparently we would be encircled in plastic and heated within an inch of our lives. You can’t use DEET any more, so you have to cook the little buggers to death without also decimating fish, pet cockatoos, and blast furnace-averse residents. Bedbugs, she said pointedly, can ride along on anything. She looked down at my leather low-rise boots with suspicion.

Here I am, worried about Newt and the European union and space debris falling out of the sky and whether, in an earthquake, I’ll be able to get to my carefully packed emergency bag. Now I have a humorless woman looking with malice aforethought at my footwear.

Happily, the elevator reached my floor and I prepared to exit. I put on my most authoritative voice and told her that bedbugs NEVER attach themselves to leather. The woven bag she carries everywhere is a different story – practically a tour bus for meandering microbugs. Then I wished her good afternoon with all the arch in my voice I could muster.

 

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Tags: kidding around