It can be tempting to pick up a free mattress that someone has placed on a curb or next to a dumpster. Often these mattresses look new without stains or broken springs. They may even be wrapped up in plastic. However tempting this “free” mattress is, leave it for the trash. The mattress could be home to bed bugs.
Where Bed Bugs Hide
Bed bugs are nearly flat. They evolved these flat bodies in order to fit into narrow cracks and crevices in human homes. Places where bed bugs have been found hiding include but are not limited to:
- Tears and rips in wallpaper
- Inside the grooves of a screw head
- Inside small electronics like digital clocks
- Inside cracks and seams in picture frames
- In tears and seams in mattresses or cushions
- In seams or folds on stuffed animals.
Even if a mattress looks clean and does not have the musty odor common to bed bug infested bedding or furniture, it still can be home to bed bugs.
Mattresses Wrapped in Plastic
Many towns and cities have laws about disposing any furniture or mattresses that are home to bed bugs. Arizona even has state-wide laws about getting rid of stuff infested with bed bugs. Just because there is a law in effect does not mean that everyone in the state will follow the law. Each item of used furniture containing bed bugs is required to have a sign taped to the item warning the public and garbage collectors about the bed bugs.
Some places like New York City require all mattresses being trashed to be wrapped in plastic whether it’s full of bed bugs or not. Some people will wrap their mattresses in plastic or try to cover it in trash bags thinking this will help the garbage collectors. The practical upshot is that even if the mattress has plastic on it, it still could have bed bugs. Plastic is not a force field for keeping out bed bugs.
Bed Bug Facts
It only takes one pregnant female bed bug to start an infestation. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a female bed bug lays about five eggs every day when she has been fertilized. She needs to drink human blood to make the eggs. She lays over 100 eggs in her life. After the eggs hatch, it takes just 37 days for the babies to make eggs of their own.
Only professional pest management companies can successfully eliminate infestations because they know where bed bugs hide and can get proper insecticide in contact with the bug’s bodies. A second treatment kills any newly-hatched bed bugs.
If you need help with getting rid of Bed Bugs in the Phoenix Arizona Metro area call our Bed Bug Pest Control experts today at 480-832-8888
