Criit'r Gitt'r Jack

I never knew Pre Internet Jack. In our life together he has always had ready access to information, in fact much of our odd courtship was spent, office to office via speakerphone, his manic surfing from place to place while I struggled to understand why Mr. Kurtz's sweep account was not funding correctly. Interesting way to get to know someone, privy to their after hours Internet search, or at least what was shared from our respective desks.

My husband will drive the same car for 20 years. He uses the bank supplied, and not at all current, Blackberry, does not own an iPod and has just recently, because of space issues, bought a flat screen television. His need for immediate gratification manifests itself in frustration at not being able to see the exact menu of the restaurant suggested by his mother for an anniversary celebration, next year, in a small town near the small town where she lives. This sort of incompetence, on the part of the small restaurant, drives him crazy.

Thankfully there are roughly the same number websites devoted to bed bug removal as there are bed bugs in the world, but not in our apartment.

Critt'r Gitt'r Jack turned to his weapon of choice and set about arming himself with information. My two days of extermination were deemed insufficient.The children were moved again, the beds disassembled, the Senator and the President removed to a safe location. I called Orkin.

It's a truly laborious and horrible process. Every single piece of clothing must be removed, bagged and sealed, and then laundered. Mattresses are dragged outside, examined and then coated with toxic fluids meant to kill anything living within. The infested room is cleaned, sprayed, boiled, and inspected. We found nothing, not one trace of bed bug. We moved to our room, clothing bagged, mattresses removed, room scrubbed, not one bug found, or one bug case, or one bug remains.

By day three Jack, now a regular in bed bug chat rooms around the Internet, was exhausted and mentally bug worn; he turned to the experts to explain our bug confusion. Late at night he logged on; true bug hunters are nocturnal, like their prey. Keep your bleary eyes open they urged, you'll find them, they're hiding. We found nothing.

Some suggested we hire a bed bug sniffing dog. While not a professionally trained bugger, but yet, a beagle with a keen sniffer, we turned to Eleanor Roosevelt. Not interested, and tired of being displaced, she opted for a nap.

Project Bug Removal is complete; the beds reassembled, the clothes returned to their clean drawers. Jack, now a para-exterminator, feels we were misdiagnosed. To think I spent years thinking bedbugs were just part of that charming childhood bedtime rhyme, "don't let the bedbugs bite", never to be uttered in our home again.