The loathsome
bedmate returns

Montreal’s lack of any plan to wipe out
bedbugs is keeping exterminators busy
and their hosts itchy

BACK WITH A BITE: Bedbug

by LUCAS WISENTHAL

Last April, when Rachael moved to an apartment in the lower Plateau, she was reacquainted with a familiar pest.

“The place was infested [with bedbugs],” says Rachael, a Concordia student who didn’t want her last name disclosed (though common, bedbugs still come with a stigma). “Totally infested.”

Rachael, who’s lived in the area for several years, had dealt with bedbugs at her previous apartment. But she wasn’t prepared for what her first night in her new place would bring. She awoke to the bugs, which live on human blood, crawling out of the phone jack in her bedroom. When she sought refuge in her bathroom, she found more in her tub. “And then I started looking in the corners of the apartment, and there were all these dead ones there,” she says.

She’s hardly alone. In recent years, bedbugs have become prevalent in Montreal. Frank Pulcini of Extermination Centrale says he averages between four and 10 calls a day for the bugs. And that figure jumps to 20–50 during moving season. That means that next Wednesday, July 1, many Montrealers are likely to encounter the same problem as Rachael.

Not that it’s anything new, says Dr. David J. Lewis, a McGill entomologist. Though largely done in by DDT decades ago, at least in North America, bedbug populations remained robust in developing countries. These days, though, increased travel is just one factor that’s led to a rise in local infestations. But while cities like New York and Toronto have set up advisory boards and campaigns targetting bedbugs, Montreal has not. “All it takes is for you, while travelling somewhere, to accidentally bring home a pregnant female, and away we go,” says Lewis.

A female can lay hundreds of eggs in her lifetime, so the bugs’ numbers swell quickly. And they’re tiny—an adult measures about five millimetres—and almost flat, making them exceptionally adept at hiding: under baseboards, in tiny crevices, along a mattress’s inseams, in electrical sockets, wherever. Even the cleanest apartment can harbour the pests, Lewis says. Unlike, say, cockroaches, they’re not looking for filth—only the scent of humans. But they can go months without a meal.

Bedbugs are primarily nocturnal, so many sufferers only become aware of their problem when they discover blood and tiny black specs of bug shit on their beds (as I found out the hard way last winter). Some people react severely to their bites, which often appear in groups of three, hours or even days later. And by then, the bugs may have set up shop in neighbouring apartments, compounding the already difficult task of eradicating them.

It’s an expensive one too, and unless you can prove you didn’t bring them into the building, you may end up footing the bill, says Jean-Pierre LeBlanc, a spokesperson for the Régie du logement. Landlords, however, are expected to deliver inhabitable dwellings to tenants.

Rachael got out of her lease by collecting evidence in the form of photos and videos and sending a threatening letter to her landlord. Between laundry—thorough exterminators require you wash every item of cloth you own in the hottest water possible, then dry them on high heat—the cost of movers, her rent and, of course, the exterminator, she was set back about $2,000. She also threw out her bed.

“I spent my entire savings,” she says. “I still haven’t paid my tuition this year because the bedbugs ate my tuition. And I’ve had to get two more credit cards. Essentially, bedbugs put me in debt.”