Thursday, September 23, 2010

Of bugs and nerds

Joanna Molloy yesterday and today held forth in the NY Daily News about the bedbug convention in Chicago...which she thinks is for nerds. She cites some interesting characters, including one US Army researcher, Harold Harlan, who let the bugs bite his legs for 30 years...he harvested them at Fort Dix in 1970. Now they are at Camp LeJeune. The enemy is within the gates...
And within another Nike store. This seems strange. Lightning strikes twice in the case of Nike and Abercrombie & Fitch. How do bedbugs get into places where there are no beds? Such as the Empire State Building and all the government offices in Manhattan (according to Gale Brewer).
Molloy talks about the sex lives of Cimex - which is about as disgusting as it gets; males like to mate once a minute - with any other Cimex, regardless of its age or sex...they cut through the abdomen of the females and just go at it. Apparently, the female of the species has no, what does on call it - cloaca? Or is that just for the birds?
Most interestingly she notes that Dr Stephen Kells of the University of Minnesota dipped a bug in some pesticide, and it lived on and even laid eggs...in my building they seem to be more prolific after spraying...which is ineffective.
What her article does not mention is heat...heat works. Get the temp up to 113 Farenheit, don't spray wasteful chemicals, and be done with them once and for all. Any article or post on this subject ought to contain that information, it is crucial. All the factoids about their sex lives etc. are just interesting but not what we really need to hear.
By the way, I will contact her and see if she is willing to do the city a service by writing about the Vigilant Hotel, not far from her offices. If that place, called Ground Zero, can be treated with heat and kept under watch by the city, it will make a large difference. Is this journalists willing to help us out? We'll know soon.

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