He asked me why I am interested in bed bugs.
I told him I had them.
DOUBLE-CLICK AN ICON TO BEGIN
Field log
Brighton, couple in their 20s – had bed bugs and believe they haven't rid of them yet. Did not get pest control before. This is their first appointment with Matthew – he immediately does heat treatment and steaming in the flat. As he states that he "doesn't do inspections" and "if you got bed bugs, you know you got it". But he later retracts on that statement as we discuss delusional clients.
Matthew had been in pest control since he left school. His father too worked in the same field. He says field biologists ('pesties' he calls them) might be more kin to let me in for research. Apparently cavemen got bed bugs from bats hundreds of millions years ago.
The bedroom's window is double glazed, making it ideal for effectively turning the room into an oven – the goal temperature is 70-80 degrees c for at least four hours. Matthew sets a reflective sheet for insulation and blasts steam from a gas balloon from the bottom. He lets me check the room's temperature with an infrared thermostat as it's rapidly rising. It's fun.
The paranoia of infestations doesn't rub off on Matthew – he says he only had them once. He doesn't wear the suit nor changes his clothes when coming home. Just sits on his couch. He says that he only brought bed bugs home with him once, because he was careless. He is very resilient in that sense.
Council care homes and children's homes are vulnerable to infestations. Councils have tried to save on pest control by prioritizing getting contractors to exterminate one type of pest over the other locally. But you can't save on pest control. The family, which had four children, for lack of choice had to stay.
He tells me of an old lady who was feeding the foxes and another old lady who was council ordered to clear up rat dropping from her house floor. When Matthew got there she had already removed several trash bags worth of dry droppings on her own. The build up was 10-15 years of droppings – the council charged her with the money they might need for contractors for treatment of the house but not for the help she needed. For all Matthew knows, she is still in that house. He made a throwaway comment, half joking of all the crazy women in his field.
Wednesday's appointment in west London would be at an older lady's house. It would be a steaming treatment. I am curious to see how her interaction with Matthew would go as she fits the DP patient profile as well as belongs to a demographic that's more vulnerable to infestations.
Field audio
Field log
West Kensington station is pretty. At the underground I wonder if all these people know they are in danger
The train is packed - I am looking at a woman in a fur coat, a child on his father's lap on the upholstered seat. Everything feels contaminated here
Matthew tells me he was cleaning pigeon shit Tuesday. He says the lady today is a bit paranoid. I asked if she is being rightfully paranoid? He says she is not the worst he'd seen. Later, we find a bed bug in the seam of her mattress. Matthew presents me as his trainee. She asks if the bugs can latch onto cases of her medication. He says no but they can stick to books and there are a lot of items around. He extracts something round and dark brown from the bed – apparently it's a stale biscuit. Steaming treatment by itself is fairly quick – but depends on the clutter in the house.
Matthew says the nastiest thing is not the bed bugs – it's going through people's bedding. He shows me a fresh inky spot of feces on the mattress – it still smudges - they fed on her just hours before.
Is that —
I point at a black spot at the seam of the mattress.
No, that's just fluff.
I ask if any clients ever provide such evidence
He says that yes, the crazy people
Field audio
Field log
I get to the address before Matthew – he tells me on the phone to enter through the side alley
I am joining an after death clean up – where a person's body has been found only after a while. As you decompose, your body seeps down and becomes this black debris, embedded into the floorings and furniture.
The neighbor is the first to greet me. he is dumbfounded when I ask about the pest control people – I guess it would be an insult to be disposed of in the same manner as pests and trash.
Warren, the person in that day says it is his first time on this kind of job. He is visibly shaken by it. The nature of the job is dismantling any piece of the house the body had amalgamated with. Then placing them in bags.
As I am transcribing later – Warren says on the recording of the deceased's body lying there that his 'body fluid just gone through to heaven'. I am not sure why I think it's beautiful.
I ask how long has it been? Warren doesn't know how long it takes a body to do that. He was told it's been roughly a week. Matthew told me it's been a couple months. It's March. Calendar has logs up to mid January.
I think of the uncanny. There is something charming about the incongruity of the collections I find across the house; a blender next to medical records, a couch manual, art equipment – but as a certain point the state of clutter becomes too much. I wonder how it might have felt for his house to turn on him; the familiar books hindering movement; the medical equipment becoming an insult; the now vacant bedrooms upstairs functioning as storage units.
Somewhere being a place you are left in
Matthew says most of these cases have carers, though they 'obviously don't do much' He says it happens often in the UK. His longest case was 12 months. A 24 year old was his youngest case.
Field audio
100 PubMed abstracts — delusional parasitosis
131/1970 sentences: demographic + diagnostic co-occurrence (6.6%)
Hover over terms to translate.
run it yourself
cd "path/to/nltk/folder"
# run analysis
python dp_analysis_v3.py
# pull your own corpus from PubMed
pip install biopython
python pull_abstracts.py
Moved to London. got Bed Bugs
On the tenth day of moving into my London flat, I’ve discovered my mattress is infested with bed bugs. What ensued post discovery and treatment was paranoia that overtook my everyday life. I have spent my free time ironing my clothes. Flipped my (new) mattress once a week. Bleeding money into anti bed bug products. My room was no longer my own. It belonged to them really.
I have adapted my dealings with bed bugs into an interactive, choose your own adventure game. Enjoy.