The bedbug cam -- an idea whose time has come

Another season, another press release from a pest-control association warning us that bedbugs are baaack in the United States! (We can’t think what they have to stand to gain by reminding us of this.)

Bedbugs are more common than they used to be: Read this L.A. Times article about bedbugs from 2007, for example. That article quotes a fellow from the National Pest Management Assn., the same organization that just saw fit to alert the press today.

And here’s another article we ran on the topic, last year—about bedbug-sniffing dogs, of all things. (Every bedbug-sniffing canine service in the country seems to cite that article on its website.)

To get the bedbugs-are-coming word out, we can think of an even better strategy than surveys of pest-control companies that are then sent to the press. (Newspapers, after all, are so yesterday.) Anyone watch GoatCam? What about a bedbugcam? It should be easy enough — given what people will do for a minute of fame and how widespread the creatures reportedly now are — to find someone to offer a bed that could be filmed round-the-clock at high magnification.

Take a look at one of the blighters right here. Coo—I mean, gross, yes? But photogenic. Definitely photogenic.

--Rosie Mestel

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