Bedbugs? Before you call an exterminator, try this cheap solution!

Updated

I'm a clean guy. I shower daily, shave every other day, change my sheets regularly, and am careful to straighten up the house before it becomes a breeding ground for disease and vermin. In other words, while I'm not Howard Hughes, I take personal hygiene very seriously. Consequently, when I began noticing little bumps on my legs a few months ago, I was pretty alarmed. The fact that my wife and daughter had them as well made me feel simultaneously relieved and disturbed; on the bright side, I realized that my bumps weren't a symptom of herpes or some debilitating infection that I caught off a toilet seat (I used to watch way too many medical dramas). The downside came with the realization that my wife, daughter, and I were now sharing our house with some unwanted visitors that my wife subsequently identified as bedbugs.

Bedbugs! I'd thought the little bastards were extinct. After all, the only place I'd ever encountered them before was in the pages of old English novels, where they were a tool for demonstrating the slovenly lives of various villains. After researching the bedbug issue, I discovered that, like me, many scientists had assumed that the little creepy crawlies were eliminated about 50 years ago through the use of DDT. Sadly, however, bedbugs have been on the rise over the past twenty years or so. The New York press has even taken to tracking infestations as they crop up in each borough.

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