In my case, they're not so alien, they're pretty well known as fellow inhabitants of this planet we call Earth, but they're not welcome in my 600 square feet of it. And unlike those hot boys and girls of that now pretty dated movie, I ain't waiting for Buenos Aires to get hit. I took my enemies on early and fierce and I think, yes dare I say, I think I've pretty much won.
Of course I'm talking about the bed bug situation. I've named the action I'm taking Operation Quattro B, which basically stands for operation bed bug bye-bye. Get it? "Four b's?"
0100 hours 19th February 2023. So, on my lower left torso a new itch, only one tonight and first one since around last night at this time so by my count two potential new bites within the past 24 hours. I think they're dying off boys, can't wait to open up the shitstorm out of the can, so to speak, later on today.
I look back at the operation so far and I think I did a pretty good job so far. It's been one full week so far. I swear if I say "so far" again, I'm going to shut this thing down and go back to bed, ugh! I've stripped the bedding, beat out the comforter, separated it from the bed on two successive nights, new pillowcases, separated the pillows on two nights, reassembling the bedding after fully spraying down the bed frame and edges of the mattress on the first night with a can of spray specifically made to kill bed bugs that I'd had for a while perhaps, 5 years, so I wasn't so sure about the potency. Got a new can of foaming spray and used that saturating pretty much the entire bed frame, headboard, legs, the desk, the desk legs, the desk chair, thoroughly saturating and foaming all surfaces. Took off the headrest pillowcase from the desk chair, replaced it with a fresh pillowcase headrest. The bites have been consistently reducing in frequency, pretty much daily, surprisingly though, sometime during midweek, I felt new bites coming on in the middle of the day while driving around during my work day, so it made me think, oh they're in the car too! Well luckily, the latter part of this week we saw some almost summer like conditions here in Florida with temps rising as high as the low 90s. So me thinks Mother Nature may have taken care of any stragglers inside my car while it sat soaking up the rays in the exposed parking lot at work, cooking them little babies at what must have reached over 100° inside the car.
I saw my new dermatologist Friday morning and she froze my mole (yay!) but also she prescribed me some ointment for the itch of the bites as well as some stuff to smear on my body to repel any critters from feasting on me. Unfortunately, it wasn't e-scripted to Publix pharmacy or something and so I now have to wait 'till Monday, ugh...
New weaponry arrived today. Well, yesterday, and I'm in the process of deploying them. I've positioned four bed bug detector discs under the bed legs that'll trap any travelers trying to get to me while I'm in bed. I deployed Vaseline on each of the legs as well as the top and back of the headboard which butts against the drapes. This should prevent even the most buoyant buggos from being able to get vertical on me. Sometime later today, I'll be exposing the mattress and wrapping it with its new mattress wrap that I bought. I think it's superfluous since I cannot imagine how bugs would be inside of a foam mattress but what the heck, it can't hurt. And since the surface of the mattress as it is easily gathers and traps little bits of fluff and lint from the bedding, making it hard to distinguish between a fleck of lint and a potential bed bug poop or smear, it should be easier once the cover is in place. Plus if any little buggers do happen to be in or on the mattress, they'll live out their days starving under the cover separated from the world forever. And, last but not least, I've got a good size bottle of Diatomaceous Earth. One of the gals at work praises this shit as the ultimate bug death so as I'm spreading the dust in every crack and crevice all around this room, I'll think of Rico and the boys laying waste to the chitinous hordes in the memory of Buenos Aires!
Vaya con Dios pequeños bichos!