“What I found was enough to make my insides turn — I was so disgusted incensed mortified.”

“I was totally hysterical. It’s a horrible feeling — you feel as if you’re being invaded.”

“I couldn’t believe what I saw — it made me so nauseous.”

These were the reactions of three different frum Jews in three different locations on discovering bedbugs in their home. The initial shock of finding such unpleasant intruders is bad enough but what follows is equally traumatic — the shame the inconvenience the cost and the emotional turmoil.

In the last few years it seems that these tiny bloodsucking bugs have all but taken over America. Although bedbugs were all but eradicated in the US by the 1950s they have now returned with a vengeance reaching epidemic proportions. According to the US National Pest Management Association since 2001 there has been a 71 percent increase in bedbug infestations; in New York alone last year there were 10 985 complaints and 4 084 verified infestations. The bugs show no respect for rank or status having already invaded such prestigious addresses as the United Nations the offices of former US President Bill Clinton and the Empire State Building.

Difficult to detect and tough to eradicate the bedbugs also spread like wildfire traveling on clothing and between apartments making the epidemic impossible to control. “It spreads geometrically with the potential to affect anyone ” reported the owner of the Lakewood-based ThermaRid extermination company. “It doesn’t matter where you live — Flatbush Lakewood Williamsburg; if you go out of the house you have a problem.” In frum communities especially the larger communities in New York and Lakewood everyone has been hit from yeshivos and nursing homes to shops offices and private homes.

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