Bedbug (Cimex lectularius), from Wikipedia

In a city where people already depend on Ambien for a good night’s sleep, the thought of bedbugs has wreaked havoc on circadian rhythms from homeless shelters to $2 million loft apartments. The thought of them is making people itch–not the bedbugs themselves, whose numbers don’t even quite live up to the media hype. What has yet to be quantified–but what has become an urban infestation of its own–is the paranoia that the bedbug craze has produced. It turns out, perhaps no surprise in a city as neurotically obsessed as New York, that something as small as a bedbug can grow colossal in the minds of millions.

“Bed Bugs & Beyond: An outbreak of paranoia (and lint) sweeps the city,” by Mara Altman, The Village Voice, December 12, 2006

More

• Bedbugger: your foxhole in the war against bed bugs! – blog
• The Bedbug Blog
  • Reporting Bedbugs in New York City, September 8, 2006
• Bedbug – from Wikipedia
• “~ Bed Bugs ~ Cimex lectularius (Cimicidae): Biology and Management,” by Richard Pollack and Gary Alpert, Harvard School of Public Health
• The Bed Bug Resource, by Sean Rollo
• Don’t Let the Bedbugs Bite! Bedbugs in Apartments, a Met Council Fact Sheet – from the Metropolitan Council on Housing
• bedbugger: Bedbug Support Group – on Yahoo Groups
• “Control of Bed Bugs in Residences: Information for Pest Control Companies,” by Stephen A. Kells, Dept. of Entomology, University of Minnesota, February 15, 2006 (16-page pdf)