« Friday Clouds : The lack of Corporate love | Home |  My Small Thin Punjabi Wedding - 4: Friday Furniture »

My Small Thin Punjabi Wedding - 3 : The War on Bugs

About a million or probably a thousand or perhaps a few hundred odd years ago, the first bug - the father or probably the mother (I haven’t forgotten the Desan Guns) of all the bed bugs, went to the Himalayas to perform severe penance and the Lord appeared…

Lord : “O dear bug… I am pleased with your penance, ask for anything and it shall be granted.”

And the bastard bug must have asked for “Let me never be killed by air, water, weapon… by man or animal… in day or at night… inside the house or outside… under the bed or over the bed… in the underwear or outside it… under the shoe or over it… by hunger or overfeeding”

And the Lord granted the wish, but then may have realized that it would mean going against the very law of nature, and then HE may have put some limits on the wish.

Whatever the limits, they seem to be virtually non existent.

Now I know, that with less than 8 weeks to go for D-day, I should be talking about my experiences in the preparations for marriage. Sadly, the preparations haven’t moved an inch from where we left it 3 weeks ago. All because of the bastard bugs and the boon granted to them, perhaps by the Lord, Himself (Herself)

I’ve ended up doing a semi-Phd on the bastards in the last 3 weeks. Typically, your reaction from the point of being initially bitten, to realizing you have bugs, shrugging it off, to major bug infestations, to an onslaught on your body by buggy bitemarks to finally realizing what “ACTUALLY BED BUGS IN YOUR HOUSE MEANS”… this - your reactions, move in slow phases, giving the bastards enough time to raise an army… hopefully you have a neat bank balance to fight the bastards… else heaven help you.

A bed bug will rarely be seen. If it is, your stars were shining very very brightly in that moment. Before you even smile, your hand should reach for the bastard, your thumb and your index finger moving towards each other as if they need some intense copulation and in between them, grab the bug, run to your toilet and flush the bastard.

While sitting in your backyard, enjoying the sun, you may feel an intense itch. You quickly look at the itching spot. It’s a bite. You desperately start looking for the bug that bit you. HA HA HA… you will never find it.

Because…

The bastard bit you an hour ago. The inflammation and itching starts an hour later. So by the time you realize you were bitten, the bastard is safe and enjoying a beer in the depths of your mattress, your carpet or in the hairy bushy tentacles of your ass (yes your body will be it’s home and you will not even realize it). The kind of guerrilla tactics has been perfected by these bed bugs, to an art form. Bed bugs are the terrorists in the pest community. They come quietly, they destroy and leave and by the time you realize what the fuck happened, they are sleeping in their fucking nests!

You’ll try your best to get away from the bug, which means perhaps you’ll separate your bed from the wall and push it to the center, so except the floor, nothing else touches your bed. Forget it. The bugs climb the walls, reaches your ceiling and simply lets go of holding on to your roof, nicely floating in the air dropping on your bed for its meal - which is you. (Yes, they crawl to the ceiling and parachute on your bed - 100% TRUE - I tell ya! these buggy bastards are watching too many commando movies)

So you decide to spray chemicals in your house… so you go to the nearest home improvement store and buy Baygon and all that shit. HA HA HA… no chemical exists in a store, that will kill the buggy bastard. YES. No chemical. If you find one, then first… pinch yourself… wake up and realize you are dreaming… But if you do not pay attention to this paragraph and go and bring a baygon or similar insect killing, spider killing, cockroach killing, throat killing sprays and coat your floor, wall, furniture and ceiling with it…

then welcome to hell… you’ve just committed a massive crime.

The bugs in the room in which you’ve sprayed the shit, will start forming satellite teams… hundreds of such teams will then disperse in a hundred different directions. They are on a mission - to conquer new frontiers - to boldly go where no bug has gone before… which means, now the bugs will move from that one corner of your bedroom to your living room, your dining room, your guest bedrooms, your sofa, your laptop, your desktop, deep under your mattresses, your chairs… EVERY MOTHER FUCKING THING IN YOUR HOUSE. DON’T YOU GET IT. THE SPRAY INCITES THE BUGS TO COUNTER ATTACK YOU. IT DOESN’T KILL THE FUCKERS. IT SIMPLY DISPERSES THEM TO GO AND MAKE NEW HOUSES IN MORE FUCKING PLACES IN YOUR FUCKING HOUSE!!!!

I’m sorry… I haven’t been sleeping for the last THREE MOTHER FUCKING WEEKS SO IF I FEEL A BIT AGITATED do forgive me.

So by this time you are a bit, yes just an itsy bitsy tiny bit - irritated. Cause due the baygon spray, the bugs have started miniature colonies all over your house. You are bitten while watching TV, of course while sleeping, while lying on your couch, while relaxing in your backyard, while eating on your dining table, while lazying on your lazyboy chair… this does lead to slight irritation and you go on to the Internet to get your dose of information or misinformation which entirely depends… again on your… luck.

So on the Internet you find a vital knowledge to deal with the bastards… “Isolate your bed”… so far so good. You’ve moved you bed away from the walls and other furniture. The only thing your bed touches is the floor. Now you bring four saucers and place the legs of the bed in them. Then you fill the saucers with water.

COMPLETE ISOLATION. NO MORE BITING.

Well if the bugs aren’t in your mattress, your pillow, in the wood cracks/gaps of your wooden bed, in the seams of your bed and pillow covers, then good!

No… its BAD… the bastards have the ability to “LIFT THEIR BODIES FAIRLY HIGH ABOVE THE GROUND” and will use this to “WALK ON WATER” arrive at Terminal A, (B, C, or D) - which is the right - up corner leg of your bed, climb up the leg and VOILA!!!

So the water isn’t working. But you don’t know yet, that they can walk on water or most of the chemicals. Chemicals! Yes they simply touch the toes of the bugs since the bastards raise their bodies fairly high above the ground and the chemicals can’t do a thing.

But you don’t know this as yet. You probably think they are in you mattress. So off you go to the store and buy new covers… plastic or vinyl air tight covers and then buy nice mattress covers.

DIE MOTHER FUCKERS! First we’ll put the mattress in the plastic cover. Zip it. Then we’ll put it in the mattress cover. Zip it. If the bastards are in the mattress, they will die. Cause now they can’t come out.

Oh what a sigh of relief. Tonight you’ll be able to sleep peacefully!

WRONG!!! The bastards “CAN EASILY AND EFFORTLESSLY CRAWL OUT OF THE CLOSED ZIPPERS” to reach you! Yes… the bugs can twist and turn their bodies to crawl in and out, on either side of a closed zipper. So they will crawl out of the zipper, bite you, suck your blood, and crawl back through the zipper into their home (your mattress) and go to sleep. FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!

Now you wake up… to the menace. You call your Pest Control Operator (PCO) who comes and sprays his stuff all around your house, making sure you have taken all your clothes outside the house and washed it and kept it outside the house until he does his job.

Well, bad news again, if the PCO knows his job and is an expert on killing bed bugs - HE WILL ALSO TREAT YOUR FURNITURE, YOUR CUSHIONS AND YOUR MATTRESSES. If he doesn’t do that, your troubles just keep increasing like an elastic.

More Bad news. The PCO sprayed pesticides DO NOT KILL THE BUG EGGS which will hatch in two weeks. So perhaps you are feeling all happy and merry since the bug bites are virtually reduced to one or two a day (never zero, cause a few bugs can escape those pesticides). Two weeks later the new born army arrives. The effect of the pesticides lasts for 10 to 14 days, just short of the time the eggs need to hatch.

TA DA!!!!

By now you are having an emotional break down. No man, women, acidic comments on your blog or your life events have affected you this bad. Bed bugs will get to you.

As they got me…

But worst of all, BED BUGS DON’T LIKE YOU!!! Yes it’s true. They are like the Lalita Pawar in the house. They don’t like you. They don’t like the smell of the human body. So they simply come, bite, suck your blood and LEAVE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE TO ESCAPE THE HUMAN STENCH… MOTHER FUCKING SON OF BITCHES, IF YOU ARE GOING TO STRESS ME OUT THIS MUCH, YOU MOTHER FUCKERS AT LEAST HAVE THE DECENCY TO LIKE ME.!!!!

Yet the war is still on. The PCO did his thing three days ago. We haven’t moved anything in the house. All my clothes are washed and packed in Ziploc bags. If I remove anything I wore, at the end of the day, it goes in a ziploc bag. Nothing except the furniture is open. All clothes worn are washed every second day and run through the dryer TWICE and they then go back to… you guess it… ziploc bags.

To-be-Biwi found a pesticide called “DE” that is spraying on rose bushes. It is also used in swimming pool treatments. We rushed to the store to get one, then found there are two types of “DE”. One that gives you cancer. One which doesn’t. We ran back to return the one we had bought. Got a replacement online.

Friday and Saturday we spent vacuuming intensely every inch of the floor space. The bastards did get killed by the PCO’s treatment. Yet we know the eggs are around and then there are those that will escape and wait till the pesticide effect wears off. To-be-Biwi sprayed “DE” in all corners.

Now you will ask, how come DE works when other over the shelf products don’t? And aren’t bugs gonna “lift their bodies up in the air and walk through DE?”… well DE particles (dry powders) have sharp edges (not felt by humans) that rip through the outer shells of these bugs when they walk over them or around them. These cut the bugs and they die of “dehydration” - FUCKING 10 DAYS LATER. But it doesn’t mean every bug in the house will walk, scratch itself with DE and die. NO. There will be some which will survive, mate and create a new army… did you forget the Lord’s boon to them?

HEAT. PLAIN RAW INTENSE HEAT WILL KILL THEM. DRY STEAM CLEANERS WILL KILL THEM.

So you rush to buy the steam cleaner from the store. BAD IDEA.

REAL BAD IDEA.

You need an Industrial dry steam cleaner that will give you high pressure dry steam at more than 290^o F… all the steam cleaners available at stores do not heat as much. And GOD HELP YOU IF YOUR STEAM CLEANER HEATS ONLY AT 100^o… which is the ideal temperature for the bugs to intensely start matting and laying 300 to 600 eggs in a matter of minutes, cause they instinctively think at a 100^o there is something wrong in the air, and it may kill them and to ensure their family tree remains intact, they will mate and lay eggs so even if they die, the egg “may” survive, thereby ensuring their family survives.

But what they don’t know is YOU STUPIDLY BOUGHT A STUPID STEAM CLEANER THAT ONLY HEATS UPTO A 100^o… so NOW THEY WILL SURVIVE AND SO WILL THE 600 NEW BUGS THAT WILL BE BORN IN TWO WEEKS.

WELCOME TO HELL.

Well… I didn’t make the mistake of buying the wrong steam cleaner. By this time I had done enough research and bought online an industrial dry steam cleaner which was used to steam the old mattresses and furniture that the PCO had not sprayed their pesticides upon.

Next weekend, we’ll be using our Bhramastra - the steam cleaner on the walls and the carpet, which would give the pesticide residue enough time to do it’s thing.

Life will never be the same again. Steam cleaning will happen for the rest of my life (which is actually a good thing considering the infinite ways the cleaner will be used around the house and the backyard). Everytime we travel, it will be ziploc bags. Everytime we return from a trip, everything including the bags will be steam cleaned BEFORE IT IS EVEN PLACED ON THE BED (definite NO NO) and all the travel clothes will be put in ziploc bags for laundry. Guests arriving at the house will now place their bags OUTSIDE the house in the backyard on special tables we’ve bought and after they leave, every inch of bedsheets, cushions, mattresses, blankets they used will either be zipped in the ziplocs for laundry or steam cleaned at a mother fucking 300^o F.

… and you will be psychologically and mentally scarred for life. Every feeling on your skin will feel like a bed bug. A mosquito bite will appear like a bugbite. A 1 millimeter black or brown spot on your carpet will appear like a bed bug. You will first dive under the bed to check for bugs before you put your luggage down on the floor upon checking into your hotel room. You will closely inspect overhead bins with a flash light before putting your carryon luggage on a flight. You will be paranoid 24/7… “are they watching me?” will be the thought forever in your mind.

I’ve even asked the wedding pundit, if me and to-be-Biwi can steam clean each and every guest who arrives for the marriage ceremony and later for the after marriage lunch and dinner. After all we are just trying to make sure our marriage is… ahem… steam clean and bug free…