Abby Connolly
As someone who lives in a big city, I’ve become extra wary of bedbugs.
Bedbugs can wreak havoc on a home, and getting rid of them takes time, money and leads to mental exhaustion. Not to mention bedbug bites can be very painful and irritating for some people.
One young woman has issued a warning on TikTok to thoroughly check for bedbugs when sleeping in a new space on vacation, even in places other than a mattress.
Sarah Luepker, a ceramist based in Chicago, recently stayed in a rental home with friends in Colorado for a bachelorette event. The rental home was quite nice and very clean, but Sarah still made sure to check for bedbugs on every corner of the mattress she’d be sleeping on.
“I lift up the fitted sheet, I check every corner, and there is nothing, so I sleep in the bed,” says Sarah in her TikTok video.
“The next morning, when I wake up with one or two bug bites on my arms, I assume their mosquitos from sitting out on the patio the day before.”
As the day went on, two or three more bug bites appeared on Sarah’s skin. She still assumed she was getting bitten by mosquitos throughout the day and slept in the same bed one last time. The following morning, she noticed that more bug bites continued to appear on her skin. They showed up in clumps all over her body, and she’d find a new bite every five minutes.
Sarah’s friends were alarmed by the bites and decided to go back into the rental home before checking out to inspect for bedbugs one last time. Sarah waited outside and could hear her friends communicating through the door.
Then, she suddenly heard one of her friends screaming in horror. Every other bed in the rental home had wooden headboards, but the bed Sarah slept in had a cloth headboard. As it turned out, that’s where bedbugs were hiding. Her friend looked very closely and found them clumped around the indented buttons on the headboard.
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