Thiefhunters in Paradise

Bedbug on fingertip. © 2010 Lenny Vincent

Violent sex in hotel rooms may or may not excite you, but it’s happening more and more often these days. “Traumatic insemination” is the correct terminology for the savage act these male perpetrators perform.

Yes, I’m referring to bedbug reproduction, and it’s probably occurring in a bed near you. Hopefully, not your own. Hopefully, not one you’ve slept in.

Given the number of nights I stay in hotels every year (200+), this concerns me. I know that mosquitoes are attracted to me, but I’m not aware of having slept with bedbugs. Now that infestations are pretty much exploding across the country, I worry about the possibility, but not in an obsessive way. I don’t inspect hotel beds, for example, though maybe I should.

I’m not just worried about being bitten. I’m afraid of bringing the parasitic hitchhikers home with me, in my clothing or luggage.

The entomologist in my family shared this little zinger from a fellow bug man who travels a lot (but probably not as much as I do):

…when I stay in hotels, all my luggage immediately goes into the bathtub.  I don’t drop any clothes on the bed.  One of the experts in bedbugs who does a lot of traveling said that he has now found bedbugs in 4 of the hotels where he stayed.  He also takes everything that can be thrown into the dryer as soon as he gets home and runs the dryer for about 20 minutes.   Another thing to do is bring giant trash bags with you on trips.  When you get to the hotel, break out the trash bag, put a piece of luggage in each bag and seal it whenever you aren’t actively dipping into the luggage.  It isn’t fun but getting an infestation of bedbugs in your home means all new furniture, rugs, drapes, etc.  It is a very expensive treatment and you lose lots of stuff.

(The bug scientist quoted above prefers not to be named.) First I’d ask him: what kind of hotels do you stay in? But that would be naive, because any bed can get them if a bedbug-carrying human or animal has been in it.

The insect we’re talking about, Cimex lectularius, is a wingless external parasite that feeds only on blood, says entomologist Lenny Vincent. It only needs to feed about once a month, but adults can survive over six months without a meal. And the female can lay some 540 eggs during her lifespan.

When I was a child, my parents put me to bed with the same comforting verbal-barbiturate every evening: “Night-night… sleep tight… don’t let the bedbugs bite!” I believed bedbugs were some sort of mythical creature, like tooth-fairies and goblins and bambianikins; fictitious characters to smile about and dismiss.

And to some extent they were fictitious; at least in the U.S., bedbugs were pretty much history, thanks to DDT. Had I known as an eight- or ten-year-old kid that tiny bed-dwelling critters that dine on human blood actually existed, I would have been up all night, or screaming with nightmares. But DDT went away in 1972, and foreign travel increased, bringing new infestations. Now, bedbugs are back.

A ventral view shows the bedbug's piercing-sucking mouth. Look between the antennae where it starts, and goes to the right, midway between the red eyes, projecting up. The small dark spots at the edges of each abdominal segment are the breathing pores called spiracles. © 2010 Lenny Vincent

Back to bedbug sex for a minute. Males are attracted to the scent of a well-fed individual (bug, not human) of either gender. An accosted male will send out a scent signal indicating that he’s not fair game. When the male finds a female, he plunges his aedeagus (penis) into her belly, without bothering to find a proper entry point. Hence the term, traumatic insemination. My guess is that the female vows never to mate with that guy again! You’ll soon learn, little miss bug: they’re all the same….

As awful as a bedbug-infestation-brought-home sounds, I can’t examine every hotel room and bed for bugs. I can’t imagine storing luggage in the bathtub—not all hotel rooms even have bathtubs—nor can I imagine the hassle of the plastic bag wrap. But I may live to regret my laziness. I should take it from an entomologist.

Think you’ve got ‘em at home? For $350, you can call in trained dogs to sniff them out with 96% accuracy.

People can look up and report sightings and infestations at The Bedbug Registry, though claims are not verified.

New York City’s serious infestations have prompted the publication Preventing and Getting Rid of Bed Bugs Safely.

Pest control companies are hawking heat treatments. One provides a bedbug-baking service for any size space. Four hours at 130° does it, they say. Maybe less. Confidentially. So your neighbors (or other hotel guests) don’t know you’ve got bedbugs.

Perhaps even you can smell them. Bedbugs are said to smell like cilantro and unripe coriander seeds. Or, the other way around: “The very name coriander is said to be derived from the Greek word koris, meaning bed-bug. The foliage of the plant, and its seeds in the unripe stage, have an odor which has been compared with the smell of bug-infested bedclothes.” The Oxford Companion to Food, 1999.

Mac laptops—through the ages.

These are the Mac laptops I never sold or gave away. Three are in current use. One is a backup. The others have occasionally saved the day by accessing ancient files. Once, not too long ago, I actually had to dig out a SCSI adaptor to attach an old Zip drive to one.

Clockwise from top left:

• MacBookPro. 2.8 GHz, 500 GB hard drive. My current machine.

• PowerBook G4. 1.67 GHz, 100 GB HD.

• PowerBook G3 500. 500 MHz, 12 GB HD.

• PowerBook 180c. (That’s “c” for color!) 33 MHz, 80 MB HD.

• Macintosh Portable. Almost 16 pounds! 16 MHz, 40 MB HD.

• Macintosh PowerBook 3400. 180 MHz, 3 GB HD

• PowerBook 190. 66 MHz, 500 MB HD

• PowerBook G4. 667 MHz (The original Titanium).

• MacBookPro. 2.6 GHz. Bob’s current machine.

• MacBook Air. 1.86 GHz. Also Bob’s.

I’ve had many other Macs. I wish I still had my first, a 128k desktop with no hard drive, one 400k floppy drive. That was in 1985. I lived in the Bahamas then, and did actual, professional “desktop publishing.”

The adorable, 16-pound baby.

Anyone remember this old relic?

We were so thrilled with it. We’d spent a year in Africa and needed a laptop. Apple didn’t make one yet, so we had to buy a DOS machine. Shortly after we got home, Apple came out with a luggable.

Bob and I were on a cruise ship with our Mac Portable. The machine was a year or so old—that’s how long ago this was. Bob sat at the desk in our stateroom, I on the bed, with my 16-pound Mac open in front of me.

“Pass me a paperclip,” I said to him.

Apple logo circa 1989.

He tossed, I missed. The paperclip fell right into a narrow gap behind the display, where the back end of that computer extended another four or so inches. Instantly, a thin wisp of smoke arose and, like a cartoon, curled its wavy way right up to the smoke detector. On a ship. At sea.

I gave the gap a good blow and was horrified to see a little red flame dancing within. We got the tiny fire out quickly, but the machine was dead.

The size of a small suitcase.

The story’s not over though. We had a fancy neoprene case for the Mac Portable, embossed with a pretty little Apple logo. On our way home, we bought extra insurance for the case and sent it as baggage—something we’d otherwise never do. We hoped it would be stolen. We were sure it would be.

Not a reflection. Handle, display, hinge, back end.

On arrival, we waited at the baggage carousel—and waited. Finally, we went to the lost luggage office to report the loss of our insured computer. “Oh, we have your bag,” they said. It got extra care since it was insured, and they wanted to hand it to us personally. (Yeah. Those were the days.)

I found the old Portable in the garage recently. It has some parts tucked into its case I don’t remember, like a huge battery brick. Though it doesn’t start up, I can’t throw it out. I don’t know why.

Adult: “Nice dog. What’s his name?”

“Thermidore.”

“Hi Sermidore! Good dog!”

“THERmidore,” child enunciates.

“Oh, SIR Midore,” adult says. “An honorable dog.”

“No, Ther-mi-dore.”

“Shake, Sirmidore!”

“Are you thick?” The boy is disgusted.

“No, it’s just an allergy.”

Credit: Rickard Ignell/Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

Traumatic insemination is worth mentioning as a follow up to my post on bed bugs in hotels. Male bed bugs, ScienceNews reports, “ignore the opening to the female reproductive tract and inject sperm with a needlelike appendage directly through the outer covering of a mate’s body.” Yikes!

The report also explains that the male insects will happily mate with well-fed individuals of either sex until an accosted male sends out a special pheromone causing the aggressor to back off.

The pheromone can actually be detected by humans. It smells

a bit like almond, but not particularly pleasant. “Older people say that you used to be able to tell whose house had bed bugs because it had a peculiar smell.”

“Hand Picked Golden Dragon” RAM wrapped in gold silk brocade! Cleaning the garage, I found these gorgeous packages perfectly preserved in an airtight box. What the hell are they? One package still holds a 512 MB memory chip nestled in a bed of rich, red, synthetic suede, with a pretty pink ribbon for conveniently extracting the delicate thing. The other package is empty.

We can’t think of what they were for. An old Epson wide-format ink jet? A Panasonic video recorder? A camera? The packages are too nice to throw out. I guess that’s why the garage needs excavation.

Would a slathering of Dijon tempt the formerly (?) (supposedly) cannibalistic highland villagers? I couldn’t get myself to attempt the experiment. While on a visit to the north of Australia, Bob and I made a quick trip to Papua New Guinea. We were awed by traditional dancers from the highland villages. Only one of the men spoke English; he told me they are Huli “wigmen,” and that it took four years to grow his wig of human hair (presumably made of his own hair).

Though cannibalism and human sacrifice are reportedly no longer practiced here, Papua New Guinea does have a scarily high rate of crime and, just a year ago, Port Moresby was ranked among the top five murder capitals in the world. Hotels and local guidebooks warn of sudden, unpredictable, and violent eruptions of inter-tribal conflict.

“Papua New Guinea has a high crime rate. Numerous U.S. citizen residents and visitors have been victims of violent crime in recent years, and they have sometimes suffered severe injuries. Carjackings, armed robberies, and stoning of vehicles are problems in and around major cities such as Port Moresby, Lae, Mount Hagen, and Goroka, but can happen anywhere. Pickpockets and bagsnatchers frequent crowded public areas.…Individuals traveling alone are at greater risk for robbery or gang rape than are those who are part of an organized tour or under escort.”

—U.S. State Department’s Country Specific Information on Papua New Guinea

The U.S. Embassy in Port Moresby “emphasizes that there is no way to guarantee personal safety during a visit to PNG, only to minimize the chances of becoming a victim.”

Bob and I failed to do our homework. Had we read the above before wandering alone all over, we certainly would have changed our behavior appropriately. The fact that we traipsed back roads and the city center unmolested only proves that anecdotal evidence is not the whole story. We might have reported “we were fine!” But that doesn’t mean it’s safe.

As we explored the hilly roads of Port Moresby, Bob commented on the rolls and rolls of razor wire, the hefty security at housing complexes, and the number of security vehicles that followed residents into the complexes. Bob assumed the residents were high-profile mining executives, hence the security. After further study, it seems that these were simply foreigners working in the country, with the usual security detail.

A great number of the people we met, in the city as well, had the red gums and worn-to-stubs blackened teeth of the betel nut-chewer.

Betel nut, a mild stimulant, is sold everywhere in town, literally every few yards on some streets. It’s chewed with a pinch of lime (the mineral—in a jar in the photo below), a pinch of tobacco, and sometimes a favorite spice. Gutters are littered with betel nut shells and practically run red with spit juices.

As a great contrast to the ubiquitous promises of doom and crime to the tourist, Bob and I, in our naive wanderings, quickly considered Port Moresby the most friendly city we’d ever walked. Every single person, without exception, said good morning or good afternoon, and those we stopped to speak with immediately offered their hands, touched our arms, or both.

The Crowne Plaza Hotel in Port Moresby has a stunning collection of masks, some seven feet tall. I’m showing great restraint by posting only one mask photo.

I know what you’re thinking. This photo, below, looks fake, like we’ve stuck our heads through holes in a painted backdrop. Uh-uh. No. And the men’s faces are painted, not masks. Through an unofficial translator, a wigman told that the yellow pigment is dug out from “between the gas and the oil.” We’d asked because it looks so unnatural.

Yellowcake, uranium oxide

“What do they use for the yellow?” my mother, a painter, asked on seeing this photo. I explained what the wigman told me. “It doesn’t look natural to me,” my mother said.

“Let me Daddle that,” I said. My sisters and I have always asked our brilliant chemist father whatever curiosity needed an answer. As he was already on the line, my father said it sounds like they use “yellowcake,” a kind of uranium oxide. “Can’t be too good to rub on the skin,” he added.

As usual, you can click the photos for larger versions.

In time, shoes polish the mosaics to a slippery shine.

Halliburton aluminum luggage. Goes anywhere.

I’m sure it sounds obsessive to mention the necessity of onboard watchfulness when you fly. The likelihood of theft while on an aircraft is low, granted; but it’s unpredictable, and that’s the problem. If you’re carrying valuables, say cash, jewelry, even credit cards, you may as well continue with your precautions. The risks are to the carry-on items you can’t see: those in the overhead compartment can be ransacked practically under your nose—or above your nose. Those under the seat in front of you are vulnerable if you sleep or leave them while you get up. [Read Kayla's experience, below.] I want to stress that these are low-probability scenarios, especially if you’re not traveling alone. Your degree of precaution must harmonize with your comfort level and the value of the items you carry.

Sadly, suitcases are occasionally compromised while in the airlines’ possession. The odd unscrupulous employee needs only the moment of opportunity. It’s well-known that most luggage locks are next to useless. Keys are generic, and even combination locks have certain pressure points which free latches.

Bob and I believe in hard-sided luggage. The ones we use are aluminum, made by Zero Halliburton. They’re not for everyone, being both heavy and expensive. But when our bags were forced with a crowbar or other tool somewhere on the nether tarmac of the Miami airport, the locks and hinges held tight. Shiny scars in the seam, as if gnawed by a metal-eating mouse, were the only evidence of serious tampering.

Who's throwing your luggage around?

As we watch our silvery Halliburtons trundle off toward baggage handlers in Lusaka, in Santiago, in Mexico City, filled with sound and video equipment or perhaps with our favorite shoes from Florence, we’re eternally grateful for and confident in their sturdy locking mechanisms. Even more so after trying desperately and failing to break into our own locked suitcase when it jammed once in London.

Of course bags like these do call attention to themselves and an argument can be made for using inexpensive luggage. One world-traveling couple we met swore by the cheap stuff. After repeated thefts from their Louis Vuitton cases at Heathrow airport, they resorted to department store brands, buying new bags every year or so. A small price to pay, they say, given the cost of their trip and value of their belongings. That’s their argument, but I don’t buy it. I say buy the best bags you can find and afford and use their locks [whenever possible].

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Three (part-e): Getting There—With all your Marbles

Theft on a plane

“Kayla,” a 15-year-old girl, told me how her wallet was stolen on a cross-country flight. Her mother and sister supported Kayla’s story. The thief was a 35ish woman sitting next to her. In the middle of the flight, the woman bent down and pretended to be digging in her purse. But Kayla felt something and looked, and could see that the woman was digging in her (Kayla’s) purse. Kayla said she was too scared to say anything. The woman got up and went to the bathroom. Kayla checked her purse and found that her wallet was gone. She told her mother. Then she and her mother told a flight attendant. The flight attendant found the wallet in the bathroom, missing only Kayla’s cash. Kayla was still too afraid to say anything to the thief. When the plane landed, the woman just left.

While in Africa with cousin Ty, he showed me a jury-rigged lizard catcher he made from a long, pliable twig and a piece of dental floss. I was impressed. I didn’t realize how much better it could be.

Ty took a group of us on a lizard-catching hike in the Malibu hills. Standing in a patch of tall Mediterranean rye grass, he plucked a suitable specimen: long, soft, and green. He explained the importance of stripping off all the leaves downward, so they’d leave the stalk smooth.

Ty looped the end of the grass and made a tiny slip knot. He bent to help almost-9-year-old Dax strip and knot his stalk. As he turned to find a lizard to catch, I wondered how long it would take to find one. But Ty already had his eye on a beauty. Like thiefhunting and mushroom hunting, you only need to train your eyes.

Ty strips a single stalk of grass.

It was a blue-bellied western fence lizard, Sceloporus occidentalis, on the wall of a small building at the trail head. Ty extended his long lizard-catcher with a steady hand, slipped the loop over the creature’s head, and jerked it a little—not too hard.

The lizard came off the wall and dangled at the end of the grass, but not without a fight. It wiggled and kicked wildly, so that it was impossible to photograph. We all laughed, amazed to see success on the first attempt.

The lizard doesn't seem to see the stalk of grass, or even mind being hit on the head with it. Numerous times.

Ty reached to steady the lizard, but instead of standing nicely on his palm, it bit into his flesh and dangled by its jaw. Ty worked it free as he explained the rules of lizard-catching. Don’t hurt the lizards. Release them exactly where they were caught. Continue Reading »

The nine-year-long consideration.

Is it humorous, or just pathetic? I got a letter in the mail this week from a literary agent. His letter was dated and postmarked April 2009. He was replying to a query I wrote in June of 2000. Yes, almost nine years ago.

My book was published in 2003. Lucky for me, I didn’t need the Regal Literary agency. But I can’t help wondering about other writers who hope for, or have, representation by Regal Literary. How sloppy are they? Even if they don’t lose mail, or tend to reply after long delays, what about their judgment? Or their attention to detail? Did they fail to notice the date on my letter? Did they decide “better late than never”? Did they have a very large slush pile to plow through? Or were they agonizing about how to break the bad news to me.

I wonder, too, about my SASE. I recognized it immediately: my expensive, 100% rag, gray felt envelope, my own return address in my favorite font, favorite color of laser-printed toner. All designed to impress, and still beautiful today. But what about the stamp? The first class stamp I put on that envelope so long ago was worth only 33 cents then. A letter costs 42 cents to mail now. Still, the letter arrived, and without postage due.

When I lived in the Bahamas, I received a letter bearing a two-year-old postmark and the rubber-stamped message: “Found in supposedly empty equipment.” And today, as I write this, I see a story on a postcard arriving after 47 years, good as new, except for the fact that both sender and intended recipient are dead. In the case of Regal Literary, though, they chose to reply after nine years. WTF?

1. Traipsing through another airport—where were we, passing through Chicago, maybe?—we mounted a mile-high escalator, going up. (Which is the only way escalators should go, really, otherwise, you’re on a de-escalator? lowerer? why not just moving staircase?) The escalator was at least 100 feet long, maybe more. A man got on the parallel one beside us, going down. Somehow, somewhy, he had his roll-on in front of him, or beside him, and it tipped over, extended-handle first, and shot down the long length of the metal stairs, picking up speed. As he passed us, the man hunched his shoulders in guilty, apologetic mystery.

Lucky no one else was on that escalator.

Lucky no one was passing by the bottom of the escalator. When the suitcase hit bottom, it shot across the shiny floor like a freight train, like a forty-pound bullet, hit a trash can across the hall, and knocked it over.

2. My sister bought a little purse-sized umbrella one recent rainy day in New York. Unwrapping it in the rain, she must have inadvertently pressed its release button. The umbrella became a lethal weapon. Its handle fired off like a missile, flying right between a nearby man and woman. My sister ran over to apologize to them, though neither was touched, and dumped the launcher into the nearest trash can.

3. Bob and I were driving from Florence to Naples. We pulled off the highway for a quick lunch. In a bit of a hurry, we were soon ready to continue our journey. Wait, I said. let me get rid of this garbage. I gathered up some papers and drink cups and walked it over to a trash can. Lucky delay.

Back on the highway, traffic after only a minute, then stopped. Cars began to creep forward. There were shoes on the road. Lots of them, sprinkled evenly over the surface. Shoeboxes, too. Soon we came to the accident. A car had just fallen off the top level of a car-hauling truck. The car driving behind the truck crashed into the fallen car. A delivery truck next in line swerved to avoid the crash, but rolled, spilled it’s load of new shoes, hit the guard rail of the overpass it was on, and lodged cantilevered over the road below. The driver went through the windshield and lay on a grassy hill, below.

4. Close to the same time that the car fell off the car-carrying truck, an escalator at Rome’s Tiburtina train station collapsed, killing a rider, and an elevator in a Texas hospital malfunctioned, decapitating a doctor. We tend to trust things like car-carrying trucks, escalators, elevators, and automatic umbrellas. Should we worry more?