Bedbugs are the gross-out du jour.  And unfortunately, it's all true.  By the sounds of it, New York City is creeping gradually closer to 100% infestation rates.  And guess what?  They're on the move.  I found a website with a handy map tool to show you where bedbugs have been reported in your area.

Is that an itch?  Hm?  Maybe feel a little something crawling on your calf?  Or is it just me?   It's probably just me.

At first, the word from the front was obvious: don't take anything from the curb.  Then the line moved to encompass thrift stores.  Is the clothing safe?  Has it been heated to the requisite 135 degrees to kill bedbugs?  Probably not.  Better avoid it. 

Offices, subways, day care, hotels, shopping malls, restaurants, upscale clothing stores, movie theaters.  Anywhere that people gather, people leave behind bedbugs.  Literally nowhere is safe.  Cincinnati, ranked the nation's most infested city, had to call in the Department of Defense to help. 

But bedbugs are on the march.  Our Maginot Line of parasitism keeps getting pushed back, and back again.  The latest casualty in the war: used books.  Books!  Library systems across the country have started falling.  Bedbugs forced the temporary closure of library systems in Maryland, Denver, Manhattan, Long Island, Florida, and Cincinnati. 

This seemed preposterous at first.  Until I remembered how many people read books in bed (I do not), and keep stacks of books beside their bed.  These books, with their narrow cracks in the spine and between the pages, are the perfect hiding place for bedbugs.

You can kill bedbugs by heating the infested item to 140 degrees, either in a dryer or in the oven.  Will a book survive a good baking?  I'm not sure I'm brave enough to try, frankly. 

To de-bedbug a book, you should bake it in the oven at its lowest temperature.  Use a thermometer to check the temperature - it should be between 140 and 170 degrees.  Move your oven rack to the lowest point, and cover it with newspaper.  Then place your books in there, but don't stack them - you need the heat to penetrate thoroughly.

My big concern with this is the glue used in the bindings, and making the pages brittle.  Books were not meant to be baked! 

The elephant in the room, of course, is that you definitely cannot bake library books.  Not with those clear plastic slip covers.  Is it time to abandon the library system AND the used book store?  There is no way I could afford to maintain my reading habit if I have to buy every book brand new.  That's just crazy talk!

Bedbugs can survive up to 18 months without a meal; possibly longer.  You can put your treasured books into a securely sealed Ziplock bag and leave them untouched for two years.  That would do the trick. 

It seems like it would be easier to freeze the bedbugs out, and better for your books.  But this essentially requires long-term access to a commercial freezer, with temperatures around 20 degrees below zero.   A home freezer won't get cold enough to kill the bedbugs off.

My next fear?  Bedbugs in YARN.

Photo credit: Flickr/cdresz