Did you know that at some point or another, every hotel will get bed bugs? It is not completely the hotel’s fault if you find yourself sharing a bed with bed bugs. Bed bugs come and go in suitcases. Hopefully, you won’t take any with you when you leave.
It’s not a bad idea to inspect each hotel room for bed bugs. However, they’re very hard to spot, especially if you don’t know what to look for. A good hotel will clean daily, so the evidence of bed bugs may not be all that easy to spot. If you suspect the hotel room does have bed bugs, your primary concern should be making sure you don’t take them with you.
Got Bed Bug Bites?
A quick clue as to the presence of bed bugs is the infamous bed bug rash from bed bug bites. Bed bug rashes often seem to start either with welts or are invisible before showing themselves into neatly organized red spots. The itch often begins before any of this is visible.
In fact, when compared to the common mosquito bite, bed bug bites will often be much less visible and much itchier. Also, you can usually feel mosquitoes biting you, while the first symptom of a bed bug bite is the itch that begins several minutes later. Bed bugs inject you with a natural pain killer before sucking your blood.
The visible bed bug rash may take anywhere from an hour to a few days to appear, depending on your personal physical reaction to bed bug bites. This means you can check out of the hotel and be on your way before you ever see the bed bug rash.
Bed bug rashes, unlike other rashes, don’t just suddenly appear. Instead, they start with a few itchy marks and continually increase in number. A bed bug only needs to bite you once to get a few months’ worth of nourishment. So the bed bug rash is actually an itchy mark being added by other bed bugs each night while you sleep.
What is remarkable about these bed bug rashes is that the bed bugs seem to bite in organized, geometric patterns. You’ll often have lines of bite marks on your skin. If these lines are common and straight, you may have been bitten several times by a bed bug whose meal was interrupted.
If you believe you may have a bed bug rash, watch it closely. It can take quite a while to heal, often lasting for weeks after you’ve eliminated the bed bugs from your life. You may need to use ointments to sooth your skin.
Smelling Bed Bugs?
If you become familiar with bed bug odor, you may be able to detect the presence of bed bugs just by their unique scent. If a room is heavily infested with bed bugs, the whole room may even take on their unique scent. The scent is described as sweet and musty. If this scent seems stronger around the bed or sofa, there is probably a significant concentration of bed bugs there.
Don’t Take the Bed Bugs Home With You
Before you check out of your hotel room, you need to do a close inspection of every item in your luggage. Be particularly wary of wood and fabric products. Bed bugs love to stow away or make homes in these materials. Bed bugs are infamous for their love of luggage. There are reports of them living locked away in luggage for months before being released to infest a new location.
A water-based insecticide may do some damage to your luggage, but spraying it around your luggage before you check out will go a long way to keep your home free of bed bugs. Then you can shake out your suitcase and each clothing item one by one as you repack your suitcase. You might even want to do this and store your suitcase in the bathtub the night before you leave.
One of the best things you can do is visit a laundry mat before going home. At worst, put everything straight into the laundry when you get home and inspect your suitcase carefully. Prevention is far less tedious than removing a bed bug infestation from your home.
Tags: bed bug bites, Bed Bugs