Slight change of plans. This week is the last week of New York vs Bed Bugs.
So then, just a couple of posts to wrap up.
First up, Girault. I’ve been meaning to tell you about him for some time and I also really want to make amends to a good friend of New York vs Bed Bugs—someone who works closely, let’s say, with certain captured elements of the enemy—who told me about a bed bug encounter once and received this response from me: yeah, but did you take notes like Girault?
May you always keep clear of the dread bed bug.
I made this logic tree (PDF) a while back to try to figure out all possible solutions. (Because I read a book! A great book, actually, and thought I’d try its tools.)
But it’s only been 4 months and in looking at this today I find it almost painful to look at.
The only solutions that hold any promise, and they are on a scale from might never happen to don’t hold your breath, are the reintroduction of effective residual insecticides, real DIY protocols, and new technologies.
I missed the deadline to write a comment on the propoxur request because I read the NRDC (PDF) and Beyond Pesticides letters and then could not get the emotion out of my letter. Where do these people live, I wonder? (Also, I thought NRDC had NPMA on speed dial these days. Couldn’t they, I don’t know, pick up the phone and get a clue?)
Sometimes I get emails from people in other cities and I always tell them to look to the work of the Central Ohio Bed Bug Task Force, to the planning work of the Cincinnati/Hamilton County Joint Bed Bug Task Force and to all that has been achieved in Toronto.
The New York City Bed Bug Advisory Board is writing its report. It is due in little more than a month.
New York vs Bed Bugs will end its run after its release — and if it is not released, well.
I will do my best to write about all the things I wanted to write about before then.
Excerpted from recent email correspondence:
—Dead of course. Can I get these from you?
—yes, but alive. I have them in small, flat boxes that are taped and in plastic ziploc bag. paper is grid of 1/4″ squares.
—I’ll bring three ziplocs in case we decide the ziplocs are better than the box.
—box is taped and in ziploc
Family night at the museum. Lou is on his way downstairs to set up but finds time for a visitor.
—I have this sealed all around with tape.
—Yeah…
—(pointing to the edge of closed plastic box inside ziploc) Otherwise first instars can escape from here.
—They can?
On the subway and crossing the street, all I could think of was, if I get run over by a bus…
He gave me a magnifying glass too.
Good bless him.
________________________
Lady #1: I don’t understand why they don’t suffocate. Why don’t they suffocate?
Lady #2: I can’t see the eggs!
The members of the Bed Bug Advisory Board have been appointed and will meet this week.
The Mayor appointed Gil Bloom of Standard Pest Management, Richard Cooper of Cooper Pest Solutions, and Jody L. Gangloff-Kaufmann of the NY State IPM Program, Cornell University. The Speaker appointed Ray Lopez of Little Sisters of the Assumption Family Health Service and me.
There are various city agencies that will serve on the board, including the five agencies contemplated by the legislation, the Departments of Health and Mental Hygiene, Housing Preservation and Development, Sanitation, Consumer Affairs, and Information Technology and Telecommunications; and, in addition, the Department of Youth and Community Development and the Human Resources Administration.
I look forward to the opportunity to share in the work that lies ahead to “make specific recommendations to the mayor and council for the prevention and treatment of bed bug infestations throughout the city,” in the words of the bill creating this advisory board (PDF). Please feel free to contact me via email if you have thoughts. I look forward to hearing from you, but I am also always grateful for any comments that you can make publicly as they further the public conversation about bed bugs. We will of course share with you any news of public events in connection with this process.
New York vs Bed Bugs thanks Council Member Gale Brewer and her staff for working so long and so hard for the creation of this board and the Speaker and the Mayor for creating and convening this group to help the city adopt prudent measures to achieve control of the escalating bed bug infestations in our city.
I am overwhelmingly grateful to all of you who wrote letters or made calls or who testified in support of the City Council legislation that created this board. I hope your interest and support will now be repaid with effective policies that benefit the entire city.
If you are accidentally reading this, I thank you so much for your interest, and if you’ve been around since last year when we started this quixotic project, gosh you are champ and I’ve been thinking about you all this time.
Coming up next, we will take a look at some extraordinary bed bug history—consider this fair warning so that you can skip the next few days if you like. (Yes, I’ve heard about it! Sorry, but it was my special project to write about the history of bed bugs.)
And then I will focus on some of the mysteries of bed bug bites.
And then, unless perhaps one of my heretofore anonymous colleagues feels like writing for the blog, the New York vs Bed Bugs blog will be no more. I can’t say whether we succeeded or not. On the most objective measure, we failed. But we’ll see. Now I’ll hear from Jessica about using the failure word.
Writing for this blog has been extraordinarily rewarding for me. It’s been great to speak my mind about a subject that few care about, and about all the things that are wrong and should be made right. Ahem, remember always that bed bugs are freaking public health pests.
The website will remain and I hope the resources collected here will be useful to you. I will find another way to work on these bed bug issues that I care about so much.
The bed bug bites post(s) will blow your mind, I promise, but I’m also willing to entertain requests for these last few days. So go ahead and tell me all about it.
Best wishes always.
We now have a brief FAQ. Feel free to contact us, but you may want to check out the FAQ.
More useful to you, I expect, will be the resources collected here.
The most frequently asked question is for recommendations. We regret that we can’t recommend pest control products or services.
I’ve been coughing for several weeks and finally must take a break. No, nothing serious, just need to get better. If you wish to know when posting resumes, you can subscribe to the feed or sign up to receive an email.
Thanks, and I hope things are going well… no bed bugs, I certainly hope.
Yes, I know you want to know about the hearing!
It was great!
I’m going to tell you everything but I overdid the sleep is overrated thing this week and I know you want to read a coherent account. For now, I want to share four good things that happened yesterday:
- Jessica is safely recovering. We mentioned her leave from Chicago vs Bed Bugs here.
- Nobugs came to the hearing!
- That little EPA conference thing we mentioned? Well, ha ha, we learned it’s actually a two-day conference, April 14 and 15.
- The hearing was great.
We are so grateful to the City Council, to the Speaker, to the committee members, and especially to Gale Brewer and her staff.
The people who came to share their stories spoke powerfully and I think were heard. The experts were all awesome, even the ones we disagree with here and there!
I was telling the group earlier that some things probably will not sound as good as they did yesterday. For example, Timothy Wenk, a lawyer, said he just didn’t know why New York City didn’t have laws, a bed bug czar… A city of 9 million people. You can’t swing a dead cat in New York City without hearing a bed bug story.
I told you it sounded better in the room.
More later, promise.
I’m adding a quote to our sidebar quotes. You’ve seen those, right? I’ll tell you my favorite after all of this is over.
This one I thought you might be interested in, although I almost added it months ago and then thought better of it.
But the distressing and disturbing calls and emails we’ve received this week, from people living in completely untenable situations, losing hope, truly living in neglect, well, the quote is in.
It’s from Hans Zinsser, the immensely entertaining author of Rats, Lice and History:
But however secure and well-regulated civilized life may become, bacteria, Protozoa, viruses, infected fleas, lice, ticks, mosquitoes, and bedbugs will always lurk in the shadows ready to pounce when neglect, poverty, famine, or war lets down the defenses. And even in normal times they prey on the weak, the very young and the very old, living along with us, in mysterious obscurity waiting their opportunities. About the only genuine sporting proposition that remains unimpaired by the relentless domestication of a once free-living human species is the war against these ferocious little fellow creatures, which lurk in the dark corners and stalk us in the bodies of rats, mice, and all kinds of domestic animals; which fly and crawl with the insects, and waylay us in our food and drink and even in our love.
I think perhaps we should see bed bugs in our society as Zinsser’s genuine adventure, because the lance may be rusty but our intelligence and ingenuity hopefully remain.
