Pleh

Operation Deep Freeze or, at least, Slight Chill, has begun. Lis and I took the mattress, box spring, bed frame, night stands, lamps, and other assorted master bedroom stuff out onto our deck for at least 72 hours of 50° or less weather. We got a couple big tarps at Lowes yesterday and used them for completely covering the furniture. Here’s one of the few times in life where I’m hoping for cold, cold weather.

Unfortunately, it looks like it’s going to just be cold enough to meet our requirements over the next three days. I don’t feel very good about it being so close to 50°, so we might just leave the stuff out until the next predicted cold snap: Jan 16th through the 22nd, where it’s supposed to be solidly in the low 40°s and high 30°s.

This is our last best chance to get rid of the bugs. That is, it’s our last chance to get rid of them if they are in our bed. Our big fear is that they weren’t coming from the bed but from somewhere else. We’ll try killing the bugs with cold, bring the bed back in, sleep in it and get bitten more. We’ll go out and get a new bed, only to have the problem continue. If that happens, then we just wasted big bucks getting a new bed and are now in the same place we were in before. Of course, we have no other real option.

They haven’t migrated, which is good. They’re supposed to be able to detect CO from about 100′ away, which should include all of the bedrooms, yet — knock on wood — we haven’t been bitten in the guest room and G hasn’t been bitten in her room (although they’d have a heck of a climb to get up where she is). This kind of leads me to believe that they are in the bed somewhere. For the last couple months, the legs of the master bed have been sitting in plastic dishes that were loaded with bug poison. They don’t jump or fly, so their only egress would be the legs. Over time, the liquid’s dried up, but I bet that there’s enough poison residue to still keep them away (if they can sense it).

Let’s hope that it all ends here or at least on the 22nd, which gives us one week to test things out before Lisa’s surgery.

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