2 Places To Look When Determining Whether Your Home Is Infested With Bed Bugs
After finding a few rust-colored spots on your sheets, you may start to suspect that your home has a bed bug infestation. However, since you have not actually seen any of the insects, you may be searching for clues that they are present. If so, look in the following places to help determine whether your home is infested with bed bugs.
1. Look under the Corner Rolls for Your Mattress and Box Springs
One of the first places you can check when trying to find out whether or not bed bugs are present in your home is under the corner rolls of your mattress and box springs. While the bugs can be found anywhere in your home, they often congregate in your bed because it provides warmth and easy access to their chief food source -- blood.
Bed bugs usually like to hide when it is light out, so they may gather around the edges of your mattress and box springs, especially under the rolls. Lift up the rolls to see if you find any reddish-brown specks or egg casings. You may even find one or two of the bugs lurking under there.
2. Inspect the Skin on Your Forearm for Unusual Bite Marks
Another area where you should look is your arms. While you sleep, the bed bugs will start to feed on your so that they can get their next blood meal. Although bits can be found all over your body, they are most often first discovered on the skin of your forearms since your arms are the most easily accessible to their hiding places.
If you see tiny bumps on your forearms and have pets, you may at first wonder whether they could be flea bites. However, bed bug bites are rather distinctive in that there are multiple bites in a straight line. When a bug bites and feeds on one area, they will then travel straight ahead from the previous bite to get more.
Even if you have yet to see them, if you have bite marks on your arms in the morning and discover evidence on the corners of your mattress, you most likely do have a bed bug infestation. Since bed bugs are very difficult to get rid of by yourself, contact pest control services as soon as possible so that they can look through your home to discover the extent of the problem and discuss your options for exterminating the bugs.