Goodbye Scab Rat, Hello Scab Bedbug

For many years, a familiar sight for Manhattanites has been the giant inflatable rat stationed outside of businesses and construction sites using non-union labor. But in order to capitalize on the city's eternal bedbug terror, the rat has been retired. Gothamist reports:

Asylum spotted this giant inflatable bedbug outside the Affinia Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Let us hasten to report that Affinia is one hotel in NYC that does NOT have bedbugs. But a "group of pissed-off painters deployed the inflatable insect to tsk-tsk Affinia and Capital Builders for not paying them union wages." They're currently handing out flyers titled: "Notice to the Public: Affinia Hotel -- Infested with Bed Bugs." But the hotel doesn't literally have bedbugs, just owners who are "sucking the financial blood from" the workers. With bedbug panic at its peak, you've got to wonder if guests on their way to check in will grasp that little nuance.

The rat was actually kind of cute.

New York City Bedbug Terror!

The bedbug scare gets the Taiwanese news animation treatment.

(Via - Gothamist)

Seat Defenders

Local NYC news was outside a Times Square theater last night where folks from a company called Seat Defenders were hawking plastic sacks intended to protect moviegoers from bedbugs. $17.95 for a package of 12 seat covers. One Times Square theater closed for two days over the summer to fumigate after patrons complained of being covered with bedbug bites.

A Little Good News About Bedbugs

The New York Times reports that while the city remains at DefCon 1 over the bedbug panic, at least we can rest assured that the blood suckers don't carry any diseases.

Bats are sources of rabies, Ebola, SARS and Nipah virus. And other biting bugs are disease carriers — mosquitoes for malaria and West Nile, ticks for Lyme and babesiosis, lice for typhus, fleas for plague, tsetse flies for sleeping sickness, kissing bugs for Chagas. Even nonbiting bugs like houseflies and cockroaches transmit disease by carrying bacteria on their feet or in their feces or vomit. But bedbugs, despite the ick factor, are clean. Actually it is safer to say that no one has proved they aren’t, said Jerome Goddard, a Mississippi State entomologist. But not for lack of trying. South African researchers have fed them blood with the AIDS virus, but the virus died. They have shown that bugs can retain hepatitis B virus for weeks, but when they bite chimpanzees, the infection does not take.

Check out the NYC Bedbug Registry for the addresses of apartment and office buildings currently reported to be infested.

Daily Grumble

On my way to lunch I saw a beautiful carpet lying against a light pole on Second Avenue. I thought, "Wow, somebody is throwing out a very expensive rug." And I almost walked over to look at it! Ack!