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Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 13:06:24 -0700
From: Richard Childers <fscked@sbcglobal.net>
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To: ray.smith@co.humboldt.ca.us
Subject: Update: Fortuna: 137 12th Street, #4A
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Ray,

Thanks for coming out to see our pest problem, Friday morning.

I'm looking forward to hearing what your entomologist says about the 
identity of the insects.

The (1) feces marks on the box spring mattress that we disposed of, the 
(2) nocturnal, (3) biting habits of the insects in question, the (4) 
presence of eggs in the seams of the box spring mattress, and the (5) 
anatomy of the organism in question - extremely flat and red-orange in 
color - all these attributes strongly suggest, to me, an infestation of 
bedbugs.

I recall your saying that the size made the identification suspect - 
that they were too large to bed bedbugs.

However, Wikipedia reports that adult bedbugs can be up to 3/16" of an 
inch in size - that's almost a quarter inch.

My sense is that the property manager at the time - Richard Henson, at 
last report, residing in Rio Dell - did something to get rid of all the 
adult bugs, but didn't get all of the eggs with his low-cost approach to 
pest control. The resulting eggs hatched shortly after we moved in, and 
are now adults, laying eggs and creating the second generation.

(Mr. Henson is semi-illiterate; he dropped out of school some time 
around the 4th grade, if his spelling is any indication.)

This second generation of bedbugs was interrupted, in my wife's room, 
but it's likely to be flourishing elsewhere in the building.

Why would it not?


I am writing, now, because although my wife did a stellar job of 
cleaning a significant portion of her room ... I just found another bug, 
on the wall, n her room.

I promptly sprayed it with poison and left it where it was for the 
exterminator to identify.

When you were inspecting the room you noticed one bug - wedged in the 
exact corner of the bedroom, behind the door, where the two walls and 
their intersecting floor trims created a tiny corner - and, I recall, 
you pointed it out to your companion, the Fortuna property inspector. We 
all assumed it was dead and left it there to see if the exterminator 
would see it.

I looked, this morning, and noticed that the bug in the corner was gone. 
Perhaps I should have sprayed it.


And so I am confident, again, that there is an infestation of bedbugs 
forming - and that there is enough evidence to warrant intervention.

I say this because I suspect there is resistance against saying this - 
but, as scientists, and engineers, and public health professionals ... 
we all know that the problem has to be described before it can be solved.

(Probably the starkest illustration of the problem is to spray the 
bedbugs where one finds them, and gradually, let a mosaic grow, and 
grow, and grow, in size, and density ... until it can be photographed, 
and shared. But that's a long time to wait - it's not in the interests 
of public health to wait that long, I feel.)

It's my unpleasant duty to be point man, and it's your unpleasant duty 
to pass the word to your management ... but I'm convinced we need to get 
a handle on this. This cannot possibly be the only outbreak in Humboldt 
County.

We need to get the word out - educate people, so they recognize it when 
they see it, and so they respond to the problem in an informed fashion, 
instead of hysteria, and bigotry, and political grand-standing.

Why?

Because the same people who live in the tenements down on the Fortuna 
flats, work up the nice houses, up on the hills - and it's only a matter 
of time until there are outbreaks of bedbugs in the nicest parts of town 
(the ones that are, technically, outside of city limits - but that's why 
it' a county-wide problem, and not just a Fortuna-specific issue - 
because bedbugs don't respect legal boundaries).

It might have already happened. Your comrade from Fortuna mentioned 
seeing something like that on his arm, outside his house. We segued into 
a discussion about not taking dogs to Samoa Beach any more. But the 
bedbugs could already be spreading.

I hate to use the word "proactive" - but as a computer guy, what I do is 
look for problems, open tickets describing those problems, assign them 
to myself, and then fix them. Ideally I fix the problem before the 
customers even know it exists. My customers rarely understand what I do 
for them - but the few that do know that I am looking out for them, and 
they appreciate it. They tend to be very technical people, like myself.

It seems to me that we need to be proactive about this infestation.


It would be nice to light a fire under Richard Henson and see what he 
did and what he really knows, but I don't know if there is legal 
authority for a criminal probe.

He already has a criminal record, if it's germane.


Regards,

~richard
707-725-7995