SPREADING: Bedbugs In The Empire State Building.

UPDATE: A D.C. connection: A reader emails: “Please don’t use my name if you mention this but bedbugs have arrived in Washington, D.C. A colleague of mine who lives on Capitol Hill has a confirmed bed bug case in her house. She said that two of her friends have them, too. They’re spreading.”

MORE: A reader emails:

I have seen several bedbug posts on instapundit, but nothing on how to avoid spreading them yourself. I got bedbugs on a business trip last year and they are horrible to get rid of (took about 3-6 months of monthly spraying by an exterminator at ~$1000). So, how do you keep from getting bed bugs? It is not a cleanliness issue, so don’t think you are immune if you keep your house in relatively clean order (my wife keeps our house fairly immaculate).

1. _Never_ put your suitcase on the bed at a hotel. This is an open invitation for the bugs to crawl into your suitcase, and then crawl out when you put the suitcase on your bed at home. Use the suitcase stands that all hotels have. Bedbugs don’t like crawling up metal.
2. If you want to be really paranoid (as I am, now), leave the suitcase in the garage (or somewhere else outside the house) when you get home. Wash everything you have in your suitcase in hot water and dry it in hot air before bringing into your bedroom. 120 degrees F is the magical number for killing the *@&#&#. Generally bedbugs transport in cloth and wood. They will not usually transport on you (though they occasionally will).
3. Realize that different people react differently to bed bugs. My home infestation got to be really bad because we let it go for a couple of months. I react immediately and quite badly to bites. My wife does not react at all, so we never considered that we were getting bit by bed bugs until it was a couple of months too late. At that point, the bugs had spread into our kids’ rooms, etc. If you are getting bit by something in bed, check for bugs quickly. If you are getting bit, do not move to another bed in the house. This does nothing but cause the bugs to look for a new food source, which they will eventually find in your new sleeping spot.

I am always happy to find any way to kill a couple more bedbugs. There are few things I more passionately dislike… :)

If you post this, please don’t use my name…

You know, all these requests for anonymity make me think that if we’re going to conquer the Bedbug Plague, we need to put an end to the shame!