Much of the frightening coverage of the return of the bed bug has been focused on New York City. See, for instance, this New York magazine piece on bed bugs infesting upscale apartments on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

But the bed bug is here, in all of its awfulness.

The Coalition for Economic Survival reports on efforts by tenant leaders at Park Norton Apartments in the Arlington Heights area to eradicate a building full of bed bugs. They're working with reps from the office of Councilman Herb Wesson.

The landlord did a building-wide fumigation.

Unlike us, you may not have a neurotic fear and obsession with bed bugs and so don't know much about them, and so you may not realize that the building-wide fumigation likely won't get the job done. Bed bugs are incredibly resilient. It's also not surprising that they would infest the entire building, as they're travelers. Nor should you judge either the landlord or the tenants for the infestation; as the New York piece makes clear, bed bugs don't discriminate, hitting rich and poor alike.

They were mostly eradicated by the now mostly illegal pesticide DDT but have returned with a vengeance, aided by their ability to travel and survive without food for long periods and then reproduce prolifically. They eat human blood, at night. They survive in books, furniture, clothing, luggage. They're disgusting, and they must be stopped.

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