To bedbugs, Utah looks like home sweet home

Although you might have thought you crawled into bed alone last night, an unwelcome guest could have been hiding under the sheets.

Sweet dreams.

Bedbugs are back, so sleep tight — they will bite.

Utah is crawling with the little bloodsuckers and is one of 33 states reporting bedbug sightings.

"It's not a joke. We're definitely seeing an infestation," said LaVarr Jensen, service manager at the Salt Lake Orkin, the nation's second-largest pest control company. Utah homes and businesses accounted for 12 percent of the total national bedbug calls to the local pest-control man in 2003, Jensen said. Nationally, Orkin received five times as many calls about bedbugs as it did two years ago.

The pest control company predicts a 25 percent to 30 percent rise in bedbug infestations over the next four to five years.

"Most studies show that for most people the greatest fear they ever have is insects in their homes or wherever they stay," Jensen said. "When they do get an infestation like bedbugs, it's a terrible situation."

And the pests aren't just hiding among the sheets at local hotels and motels. Local pest control companies have sprayed apartments and single family homes.

Jay Karren, an entomologist at Utah State University, has proof — a single bedsheet from a Logan apartment complex that sits in his freezer at Utah State University.

"They brought in this sheet in a plastic bag. I opened it, and man, they were just milling around in there," Karren said. "That's the worst I've seen. I bet you I could clean out half a cup of bedbugs in that one sheet, they were so thick."

These bedbugs are no childhood fantasy warned about in an old bedtime rhyme. Cimex Lectularis are real — complete with a straw-colored to reddish-brown body and no wings.

Their eggs are white, slightly pear-shaped and about the size of a pinhead.

The little critters hide in mattresses, sheets, furniture and behind baseboards, picture frames and torn wallpaper during the day. But come nightfall, bedbugs can't resist a warm body to snuggle up to.

Bedbugs love exposed flesh, and can drink about three times their weight in body fluids, leaving itchy, red welts in their wake. Otherwise, they do little harm, as they are not disease-carrying insects, said Ed Bianco, state entomologist at the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food.

"Bedbugs aren't known to be disease vectors," Bianco said. "The bite usually produces a marked swelling and considerable irritation. Bedbugs hurt when they bite — it doesn't feel good when it happens."

Officials at the Utah Department of Health said they receive only occasional complaints throughout the year about bedbug bites.