When you bring home a book from the library, the last thing you expect is to bring bed bugs back to your house with you.
The truth is, library books get checked out repeatedly, and the books visit many homes — some of which could be infested with bedbugs.
How Bed Bugs Get Into Books
Bed bugs don’t infest books because they’re bookworms — they’re book bugs (this is our attempt at humor).
Unlike their name suggests, bed bugs like to hide in places other than just beds. They are quite fond of small spaces where they can hide. Because of their extremely small size (anywhere from a sesame seed to an apple seed), they can easily go unnoticed, especially when confined.
You might be thinking, “but won’t they become squished?”
If bed bugs have just eaten and are filled with blood, then yes. However, if they haven’t eaten in a few days, they can get away with hiding in the smallest of spaces without turning into a flattened, red blotch.
You’re might also be thinking, “I haven’t checked a book out of the library in years!”
First of all, you should be reading more! Secondly, one of your children could have easily borrowed a book from the library at school.
What You Should Do
- Open the book and flip through the pages slowly over a flat surface. This way any bed bugs that might be hiding will fall out and reveal themselves.
- Inspect the spine of the book, including the open space in between the spine and the pages.
- If you don’t find any actual bed bugs, still keep an eye out for any of their skin casings or red stains on the book that might have come from a squished bed bug in the past.
- For those that do find a bed bug within a book, place it in a plastic bag and contact the library from which it originally came from.
Becoming infested with bed bugs is as simple as bringing something inside of your home that you didn’t look over beforehand. This could be a book, a piece of furniture, clothing from an overnight trip — pretty much anything and everything!
So if your home becomes infested with these blood-sucking pests, make sure you give us a call as soon as possible!