BED BUGS

Small, flat, oval bloodsucking insect, with a reddish-brown color, reduced wings, and an unpleasant odor. Hides during day and feeds at night. They usually infest beds but can squeeze into narrow places in bed frames, headboards, in bedside furniture, behind pictures and switch plates, behind baseboards and under buttons on mattresses, in box springs, and in cracks and crevices. You may find speckles of dried blood excrement on bedding or in places where they hide. If you have bed bugs, besides being treated by a professional pest control operator, you should:

• Launder bed linens daily in hot water and dry with high heat. Very high or very low temperatures will kill bed bugs.
• Remove linens from infested rooms in a sealed plastic bag and launder them separately to avoid contaminating other linens.
• Steam clean mattresses and then vacuum them daily.
• Steam clean carpets and then vacuum them daily.
• Replace or dry-clean pillows.
• Remove pictures from walls.
• Repair cracks in plaster.
• Re-glue loose wallpaper edges.
• Seal openings around vents, ducts, pipe runs, and conduits