Have you ever felt like you’re not alone in your house? This feeling can stick with you, even if you don’t have any hard evidence. Maybe it’s the coffee mug that you swore you left upstairs, yet it’s down in the living room. Or maybe you’re certain you left the backdoor unlocked, but now you can’t get back into the house.
Our minds have a funny way of either rationalizing our environment to comfort our fears or blowing things way out of proportion to bolster our paranoia. So, when you wake up with itches that aren’t really there, or you feel things crawling under your sheets, do you have bed bugs or just a wild imagination?
Bed Bug Invasions
If you feel like you have bed bugs, but you think that there’s no way they could have wound up in your Oklahoma City home, you might be dead wrong. You see, bed bugs don’t just invade homes because they’re messy or the sheets haven’t been washed in a while. They’ll invade any house they can gain access to. It turns out that even though they’re only five millimeters long, these tiny, oval-shaped pests can actually travel very far, very efficiently.
By hitching a ride on your clothes, shoes, or luggage, they can easily gain entry into your home, where an infestation will spread quickly. It is important to be especially careful when traveling. If the hotel you stayed in or any fellow travelers had bed bugs, these pests might have found their way into your belongings at some point.
Another way that bed bugs like to invade homes is by clinging hiding in used furniture that you think you’re getting a great deal on. If you don’t check all furniture items, including office chairs and even kitchen appliances, for bed bugs before bringing them into your home, you might be opening the door for a severe infestation. When bed bugs live in your home, attacking you night after night, you can develop skin irritations from all of the excessive scratching. In severe cases, you can even develop insomnia that lasts far beyond the length of the infestation.
See The Signs Quickly
Remember, bed bugs will infest any sort of furniture from any sort of location. Even offices without a bed in sight can incur bed bug infestations, so make sure you know the signs of bed bugs before bringing any furniture into your house. Noticing the signs early can help you avoid the health risks of a prolonged infestation. These signs include:
- Red bite marks: usually in a straight-line or zig-zag pattern. Bed bugs typically attack at night so as not to draw attention to their presence. You’ll wake up to itchy marks left by their bites.
- Musty odor: when an infestation is severe, the collective stench of bed bugs in your furniture will be noticeable.
- Bloodstains: the feeding process will leave droplets of your blood lying on your sheets or couch cushions.
- Rust-colored excrement: these dark stains are left behind by bed bug waste after a night of intense feeding.
Remember to watch out for these signs on all pieces of furniture as bed bugs don’t simply infest your mattress. If you do see these signs, don’t try to treat them by vacuuming or with store-bought sprays. You’ll only have more issues when the bed bugs resurface from deep within your mattresses and cushions. Instead, get the solution guaranteed to work the first time: call the professionals at Thunder Pest Control at the first sign of bed bugs.
