This morning I received a frantic telephone call from a couple dealing with a severe bedbug infestation. This couple live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with her husband. They have been living in a 1-bedroom apartment for over 2 years and have never encountered these creatures before in their entire lives until recently. They have traveled overseas for 2 weeks prior to his phone call, and when they returned they found hundreds of small oval dark red insects crawling all over the walls in their apartment.  At first they thought these insects were cockroaches and sprayed them with over-the-counter pesticides. Needless to say, the pesticide didn’t work and the next several evenings left them sleep deprived and inflicted with bedbug bites. Since they are renters, they contacted their landlord and management company who recommended that they contact us.

As they described their experience in detail to me, I tried to determine where the bedbug originated from. Could they have brought the bugs back with them from their travel abroad? Without identifying the source of the infestation, we will not be able to effectively eliminate and prevent new bedbugs from further infesting the apartment. Unfortunately they had mentioned that their building management company is not as alarmed by this incident as they should be and is insisting that the incident is isolated to their apartment only. Since we didn’t know where the bedbugs came from, I asked them to check with their neighbors to find out if they have a similar issue, and to confirm that the infestation is indeed isolated and confined only to their apartment. Since most of the neighbors were not home, they were going to contact them this evening and give me a call back tomorrow.