May 2011 - Jefferson County Public Schools

- Bed Bugs *
By : Le’Terria W. Thomas !
Bed bugs have been the latest gossip of the media, newspaper, and everyone. Bedbug infestations are up
5,000 percent, and that’s just the numbers that have actually been reported. You can get bedbugs from just about
anywhere, Hospitals, Homes, Apartments, Businesses, Buses, and Hotels. They say that bedbugs don’t transmit a
disease, but an engorged bedbug can burst at the slightest bit of pressure, exposing you to human blood. If that blood
is infected, then you are at risk of getting an infection, and of course, if you have an infection for too long without a
cure, then you could possibly die.
Finding Bedbugs, or having bedbugs, doesn’t mean that you’re dirty, or that you have an awful hygiene. It
takes nothing just for one bug to get into your clothes. Bedbugs are easy to catch, simply because they are very small,
and easy to miss. What people fail to realize about bedbugs is that, just about everything is manufactured like
overseas and can hide in a brand spanking new outfit: Coogi, Miskeen, Black Label, Dereon, Roca Wear, Enyce, Baby
Phat. It doesn’t matter what brand it is, because no brand is protected from Bedbugs. No matter what you wear,
there is a 7/10 that you could still catch them, just as if you where to get your clothes from the Goodwill.
Bedbugs have piercing mouth parts that most species use for feeding on plants. There are some species of
bugs with mouth parts that have been adapted to feed on the human blood, while inflicting very little pain, which
people usually don’t notice. Bedbug bites are basically the only way that you can really tell if you have Bedbugs,
unless you actually visually see the bugs crawling. Bedbugs are flat, brown, wingless and about ¼ of an inch long. They
have 6 legs, are shiny reddish- brown, and after a feeding of you blood, they appear dark brown and swollen.
Prevention
Try not to expose too many people to your home.
Make overnight stays at other people’s house limited.
Keep everything cleaned up and sanitized.
When you come from someone’s house, don’t mix
your clothes with the other clothes, clean them
immediately.
Those are just a couple of quick one’s to remember to
help you prevent the bugs from even coming your way.
I’ve never actually witnessed a case of bedbugs yet, but I
know that just from the looks of them, it’s nothing to play
with. Looking at different cases of Bed bugs just makes my
picture
skin curl up, because I could never imagine a bug feeding at
my skin without me knowing. I would advise for people to take more caution because its more than just bugs, it’s
your life that you’re playing with. Be more sanitized, and try to keep things clean around you.