The unfortunate return of a minuscule bloodsucking villain

You wake up in the morning and take a look at your arm. There are three little dots, aligned like red planets on your skin. They itch. When you flip over the covers you see a tiny moving black dot.

That characteristic breakfast-lunch-and-dinner bite is caused by a parasitic insect we call the bedbug. It travels along the blood veins, feeding and then lumbering along to a different spot further down. The effects of a bedbug bite ranges from nada to rashes to ugly allergic reactions —and they never seem to chow down alone.

This is where our heroes step in: dogs.

With the bedbug industry booming, pest control companies are advertising a 98 percent accuracy rate for dogs trained to sniff out the suckers. Dog trainers can sell their furry bedbug detectors for 11 grand each. The National Entomology Scent Detection Canine Association had 11 certified teams that targeted bugs in California and 36 in New York in 2007, and the numbers are only rising.  

Dogs are good for this job because they can find bedbugs in couches, mattresses, clothing,and other pest hot spots simply by smell in only a few minutes. Bedbugs are about five millimeters long, so relying on sight is insufficient, and a human being’s sense of smell—which is tuned for picking up the aroma of dinner—is about as useful as a naked mole rat’s eyes.

Why is this happening now? The reason is unclear, but the number of bedbugs in America has been rapidly increasing since the 1980s. This was after a long, half-century lull where bedbugs seemed nonexistent, wiped out by the happy housewife equipped with insecticide spray in the 1950s.

Carried into the U.S. on luggage bags, imported clothing, and furniture, bedbugs have managed to come back stronger than ever. They can survive a year without eating, are resistant to most pesticides, and live in places like underwear and wall cracks. While they do thrive better in messy, old homes, bedbugs can be found anywhere, and can strike at any time. Who knows when they’ll finally be eradicated again, only to return decades later, as hardy as cockroaches?

So, compliments to the canines that are defending this country from bedbugs—and an apology to the unwanted insects themselves—you’ve just returned, we know; but nobody really wants you around. Getting bitten by a bedbug isn’t on anyone’s to do list—unless you’re Dr. Harold Harlan.