Thursday, November 13, 2008

Bed Bug Bites Reaction

I spoke to a grandmother a couple months back that had her toddler grandson sleep over at her home and wake up with close to 100 bed bug bites. You can imagine the shock she and her husband must have been in. Neither of them experienced any bites and were perplexed as to how so many bed bugs appeared to arrive in their home all at once and attack their grandson. After walking her through a basic bed bug inspection process, they were in disgust to uncover a massive infestation in their bedroom. They still didn’t understand why they were there and how come they weren’t getting bitten by the little buggers. The women fell silent on the other end of the phone when I explained that the bed bugs were feeding on her and her husband, and probably were for quite some time. This was backed up by the presence of fully engorged bugs as well as streaks on the headboard side of the mattress.

This leads me to the point of this entry- bed bugs do not always induce a reaction in the host. You can be getting eaten alive, and not even know it! From personally speaking with hundreds (if not thousands) of customers over the years here at Tallman Scientific Bed Bug Control, we have our own statistic we have developed about bed bug bite reactions:

Between 5% – 10% of people do not have noticeable reactions to bed bug bites

This is a very useful statistic if you yourself are suspecting an infestation, but don’t have any bites while someone else in your home does. In situations like this, people will often think the bites are some sort of rash or allergic reaction not related to bed bug bites because if it were bed bugs it would logically make sense that all exposed to the bed bugs will receive visible bites.

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