Don't Let The Bed Bugs Bite, If You Can Help It
Did your parents or your grandparents use to declare 'Sleep tight
. Don't let the bed bugs bite' as they tucked you up in bed as a child? You had probably never seen a bed bug and probably did not even know what they were talking about, but they would have. This is because anybody living previous to the Second World War would probably have been bitten quite often.
Up until the 1940's or 1950's, depending upon where your family lived, bed bugs were very common. Practically every street had them and because the houses were not sealed off from each other and because people were in and out of each other's houses more frequently, bed bugs were spread far and wide. When they tell you: 'Don't Let The Bed Bugs Bite', they are echoing a real wish, even a prayer from earlier days.
Bed bugs were a part of everyday, or rather every night, life for millions of people in Great Britain for four hundred years. They had been around in warmer parts in Europe and the world for thousands of years before that, but they did not proliferate in Britain until after the Great Fire of London in 1666.
It is thought that they came to the UK with the timber and tradesmen that were brought in to rebuild London. By 1670, bedbugs had become a blight on the population of the UK, like they were elsewhere in Europe. Fifty years later, bedbugs had established themselves in Jamaica and perhaps the United States of America too.
Bedbugs like to live in dark cracks near to their source of food, which is blood. Not all bedbugs prefer human blood; some prefer dogs' blood others prefer chickens' blood et cetera. However, they will all drink human blood if their favourite host is not about.
There is one bedbug though, Cimex lectularius, that does only eat human blood and this is the little blighter that people are referring to when they say: ;Don't let the bed bugs bite'.
So, bedbugs, if you have them, will be behind any loose-fitting skirting boards or architraves, loose wall paper or in damaged plaster or lino. Their favourite place of all in in a torn mattress. They are attracted to their blood donor by CO2 on the breath and body heat.
When they have found a host, they send out a message to all their friends and relatives by the use of pheromones. Bed bugs are most lively an hour before dawn and it takes them only five minutes to finish their dinner.
When they bite, bedbugs insert two tubes into you, one squirts saliva containing coagulant and anaesthetic and the other sucks up blood. This is why individuals seldom feel that they are being bitten. Sometimes they do not know for up to nine days and some people never know, because they are not allergic to the saliva.
Those that are allergic, may get an itchy lump, but it may not itch either. It depends on the person. Often the lumps are in rows of three, like flea bites. They are quite similar to mosquito bites, but they do not have a red dot at the centre. Fortunately for us, bedbugs do not pass on human diseases, although many bites can temporarily damage the immune system and can lead to anaemia.
by: Owen Jones
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