SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, welcome to That Wasn't the Plan. I'm your host, Emily White. Thank you for joining us today. We are doing a 2.0 series, and I felt that it was necessary because I have been traveling quite a lot this year, finding myself in and out of weird hotel rooms all over the world, from United Kingdom twice to Australia. I am currently in Texas heading back to the United Kingdom. And it's the one thing, and I am staring at it right now. I don't know if that's a bug or not, but it is the one thing that has been on my mind since meeting Dr. Deanny Miller last season, season one, episode six. She is one of the world experts in bedbugs and cockroaches, and she told us everything we need to know about bedbugs. So here I am in yet another hotel room. I haven't seen any bugs yet. I hope not to. I am heading out into the plains of Texas in two days, where I anticipate I will probably run into some creepy crawlies. I don't like creepy crawlies. I've always thought of myself as a girl that is adaptable to any environments. And I am. I grew up camping. I'm used to bugs in their native environment. But when it comes to my home or a rental property or a hotel room, I like to tell all of the creepy crawlies to please stay on the outside. You stay out there, I'll stay in here. I don't want to sleep with you. Therefore, do your own thing. So as I'm about to wash my face and tuck myself in in a strange hotel room. I'm comfortable sleeping with ghosts. I'm not comfortable sleeping with bugs. And I relistened to Deanny's episode on the flight down here and armed myself with a few tricks of the trade in hopes to ward off any visitors in my bed this evening. And that said, please welcome Deanny Miller's episode, Bed Bugs, back to that wasn't the plan. Because it's never the plan to wake up infested.

SPEAKER_02 2:30

That wasn't the plan. Hello, Courtney. Hello, Emily. How are you? I'm well, madam. How are you? I'm not great. I've been really sick for about a week now. Uh cute. Yeah, you can hear it in my voice, and I apologize to you and all of our listeners uh if I cough or sneeze, or you just can't understand anything I'm gonna say today. But um, oh my gosh, I am so looking forward to today's That Wasn't the Plan episode because we have an amazing guest with us today.

SPEAKER_04 3:03

And she is our first guest, and that is this there couldn't be a better person to be filling this role today for us.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

Indeed, because it's never the plan to get an infestation of any kind of bug in your house or wherever you're staying, but especially bed bugs. And I know nothing about bed bugs, but today we have got Dr. Deanny Miller with us. She is a professor at Virginia Tech, internationally recognized expert in urban pest management. She has a PhD in urban entomology. She has been inducted into the Pest Management Association Hall of Fame. Oh, she's an advisor to housing authorities, hotels, shelters, and schools. She's published early research on insecticide-resistant bed bugs. Um, she has won numerous awards for her work in urban entomology, including the Pest Controls Industry Crown Leadership Award, the Entomological, whoa, I didn't say that right, Entomological Society of America's Eastern Branch Distinguished Achievement Award and Extension, and the Gamma Sigma Delta Award merit in extension, and she's making a national effort to change integrated pest management to assessment-based pest management or APM. I mean, my God, she's also a total babe. She's a total babe. So without further ado, Dr. Deanny Miller, thank you.

SPEAKER_04 4:43

Look at her. Oh my gosh, she's so foxy!

SPEAKER_02 4:50

So, Deanny, you and Courtney go way back, and she has told me so many frightfully uh like amazing and just stories about you. And when I say frightfully, just the fact that I I've never known an entomologist or anybody that has spent their life researching the bugs because I get creepy crawlies all over me. I can't deal with anything that has left. She's a weenie. I'm a big pussy.

SPEAKER_04 5:24

100%. Yeah. I would like to do my own little introduction of Deanny, just a quick little of how I know this woman. So we danced together to the song formation by Beyoncé down Constitution, Constitution Avenue in DC for the women's march in 2016, or was it 2017? Um, we also got to see the bras and the trees. Oh yeah. When we walked by the HUD building, she was like, I'm gonna go up in there, I'm gonna talk to Ben Carson about his policies. And I mean, she inspirational. We also went to Best Friends, which is in Utah. Um, and what was the name of the city? It was Canab. Canab. And we stayed there and walked dogs, cleaned up dog poop. You can go and volunteer there. They have the best salad bar I've ever had in my life. Deanny uh allowed me to come with her when she was going to this house in uh Southwest Virginia that was um infested with bed bugs. She was vacuuming them up, but while doing that, she also brought multiple cages to catch the feral cats that were loose at the house so that we could take them to a vet she was connected to to fix them and then bring them back. So while she's sucking up bed bugs inside, I'm trying to catch these terrified feral cats in this giant cage. And I caught, I think we caught four, five. Yeah. I mean, incredible. Like that's just the the tip of the I mean, Deanny, I know I'm forgetting so much. Oh, and I filmed her while crawling underneath a house in Christiansburg. It was like the crawl space, so we're in the dirt, we're both wearing um coveralls, and she's talking about the termite damage all over. I mean, it's the coolest thing in the world. It was like a dark, scary basement, and we're crawling around. I mean, I'm telling I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02 7:14

Dean, you have the face of an angel. Never if I approached you on the street, would I think this lady knows her bugs.

SPEAKER_03 7:23

Bedbugs and cockroaches have ruled my life, and I've gotten to spend time with ants and termites, but bedbugs and cockroaches are the main thing. So tell me, how did you get interested in this? You just never know where life is gonna take you. And this is what I always tell students you just have no idea. You know, I came from kind of a disaster family. My mother married six times, and I was thrown out of the house by her 19-year-old boyfriend before I finished high school.

unknown 7:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 7:51

And uh finished high school after staying at friends' houses and then went to work full-time at department stores and um hitchhiked out to Grossmont Community College at night with my friend Jane and took classes and then ended up with various boyfriends and uh worked for women's world shops. And my mother ended up splitting up with that boyfriend at one point, and my boyfriend and I split up at that time, and I ended up sleeping on the floor of her hallway for a few months. But the man who was identified as my father, um, who I knew kind of on and off throughout my life, his wife, Edwinna, who is like one of my best friends now, sent me an application to UCLA, and I didn't want to disappoint her, and I had a 4.0 in community college at that time. So I applied, and because I was 26 years old and um was going to have to quit my job in order to go to college full-time, I was considered a non-traditional student, so the state of California paid my way. And I moved up to Los Angeles and went to the UCLA campus, and it was the first time I didn't have to put on pantyhose and high-heel shoes, you know, on a daily basis and stuff. And I went in my third day on campus, I went and kissed Powell Library on the brick. Oh, I said, I am never leaving academia, you know, because it just seemed so great. And I was a geography ecosystems major because that was the most transferable units from my community college. And it was the first time living with my father and his wife. I did that for a while, but then it was such a long commute, I ended up having to move to Santa Monica and rented a little tiny room in somebody's apartment that was their converted balcony, basically. And um it just so happened that I realized I was a biologist when I got to college full-time. And I loved geography ecosystems, which was my major, but biology was a big deal. And I went out with a biology course where um we were out in the Mojave Desert and I studied some kind of beetles, and I didn't know what kind they were, so I took them to the Museum of Natural History and had them identified. And while I was there, I said, Hey, do you guys need any volunteers? And the gentleman said, Um, he was a famous uh entomologist at that time, said, Well, I don't, but Dr. Art Evans, who runs the insect zoo, would probably like to have some volunteers. So I started working as a volunteer at the first insect zoo that existed in the United States, and that was at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles. I did not know that. That's awesome. Yeah, and I thought, well, okay, then I will study beetles or something. So when I started applying for graduate schools across the country, out of the blue, here came this graduate student in the geography department that was just gonna help me. And he helped me put together the applications. I don't remember his name off the top of my head, but um, he said, Well, if you're gonna study bugs, you need to go to the University of Florida. And I'm like, What? And he said, Yeah, go to Florida. And I'm like, why? He goes, Oh, they got more bugs than anywhere else. Yep, sounds about right. Sure enough, I apply to Florida. I have one professor who is going to take me on as a graduate student working on some other kind of beetle. I didn't know what kind. But then I had another friend from high school, Therese Reichert, who said, make sure you get a letter from him saying he's gonna give you an assistantship. So I call this professor up and he says, Oh, I'm sorry, I can't fund you because I just lost my funding for another student, so I can't take you on. And I'm like, What do you do now? Well, this other graduate student who was helping me says, have them circulate your file. So I call up Florida, the Department of Entomology, and I say, circulate my file. Well, then the miracle happens. Out of the blue, I get this call. It's like, hi, I'm Phil Kaler. And I'm like, Phil Kaler. I'm working as a um waitress in Malibu at the Malibu Sea Lion at this time. And he's like, Yeah, you know, I got left out of the brochure, but I'm a professor here at the University of Florida in the Department of Entomology. And he said, And we have a world-famous sewage treatment plant. You need to get out here and see it. And I'm like, sewage treatment plant? Hell yeah. And then he says, Dada, we're catching eight pounds of American cockroaches a night. And I'm gonna take the students out there and let them crawl up the legs of their pants. And I thought, this is the craziest thing I have ever heard. But then he says, if you switch from beetles to cockroaches, I'll fund you all the way through the PhD. Dude. And I was like, now I had graduated Magda Coomb Law from UCLA, so I'm like, okay, I guess he'll do that. So I got in my 1972 Dotson Station Wagon and drove from Los Angeles to Gainesville, Florida. And from that day to this, this is still the best decision I have ever made. Woo! Yeah. You just don't know where life is gonna take you. I didn't know anything about bugs. Thought I was gonna study beetles, ended up in cockroaches. Best thing I ever did.

SPEAKER_04 13:39

Wow, is that not a that wasn't the plan? Because there wasn't a plan. She was just like, I love all of these, these wonderful guides that popped up are like, you need to request a circulation.

SPEAKER_03 13:51

Right. Right. I just had these miracles happen. And little did I know, Dr. Phil Kaler taught me how to do public speaking and how you presented scientific data. And this is a not a talent that I knew I had, but he did a lot of extension work, so I had to learn that as well, you know, going out and training people about bugs. I started winning these awards all over the place. And through my master's and PhD, even though I worked on German cockroach aggregation pheromone, which is basically found in cockroach feces. Yeah, yeah. So I like to say today I'm a German cockroach crap specialist. Yes, she is.

SPEAKER_04 14:32

Okay. Now, Deanny, if you'll confirm this, I told Emily you can walk into a restaurant and smell if there are German cockroaches in vest station. Is that true?

SPEAKER_03 14:42

Yeah, I've had that happen. Yeah. And also you can pick up a glass, you know, one of the water glasses, and oh, Americans.

unknown 14:51

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 14:51

Really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:53

Oh, is that the like turtle water tank smell that you get from glasses? Sometimes when you drink water out of do you know what I'm talking about?

SPEAKER_03 15:00

You drink it is where American cockroach smells, and I passed it around to other entomologists that were at the table with me, and we all agreed. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

Oh my god. Oh, I'm never eating out again.

SPEAKER_04 15:13

Did you guys stay and eat there? Oh yeah. Yeah. See, that's that's what I dig, is that it's not like hysteria. It's like, yeah, this is can you imagine the amount of German cockroach feces we consume on a daily basis?

SPEAKER_03 15:27

Yeah, it's hard to say. I would say people in that live in U.S. HUD housing probably have to eat a lot more accidentally than they ever would have dreamed of. But perfectly survivable. That's what I like to say.

SPEAKER_04 15:40

Well, and I know that that is super uh important to you, the HUD found like dealing with them. Can you talk to us a little bit about what you what kind of work you've done with them?

SPEAKER_03 15:51

Well, um primarily I've done a lot of cockroach work there. And one of the things that I'm responsible for discovering that's gotten me, I've been asked to speak all over the world about it, is that seriously, all over the freaking world. Bait formulations instead of sprays, because our sprays are about 55 years old now and not really working that well. And um, using the gel baits and placing them in these wax paper tacos, we use cut right wax paper, and we only found that out by accident, and that seems to attract them over, and we can actually feed them this bait without asking the residents to clean before us getting there. We actually don't want to disturb the cockroaches or move them around right before we try and give them snacks, and so they're happy and hungry. And we're using traps overnight the night before to kind of assess the population size so that tells us how much bait to put out, and that's where I'm coming up with is APM because IPM is was developed for agriculture.

SPEAKER_06 16:56

And what is IPM?

SPEAKER_03 16:58

Sorry, yeah, integrated pest management. It was developed for agriculture to avoid pesticide resistance, and it got cut and pasted onto the urban environment, but that's really not the same thing. So I'd like to switch it to assessment-based pest management so everybody understands something's gonna be assessed. Like how many bugs did you have before, and then we treated them. How many did you have after? You know, is this treatment working? Kind of thing. Right.

SPEAKER_02 17:25

So, how did you get from cockroaches to bed bugs?

SPEAKER_03 17:29

Well, I got hired the week I graduated with my PhD here at Virginia Tech. So moved from Florida to Virginia Tech as the urban pest management specialist. Yeah. So that meant anything that was a pest that got in the home would be an area that I covered. And when I first got here, subterranean termites were the big topic. So all my graduate students and everybody worked on subterranean termites. Then the non-repellant termiticides came out, and that worked so much better that that issue really calmed down. And then we were working on ants primarily because the cockroaches had gel baits, so I wasn't really working on cockroaches that much. But about 2004, I had a graduate student come into my lab who had worked for the pest control industry. And he said, Yeah, I want to work on the hot new thing. What is it that everybody's talking about? And I'm like, huh. I hear bed bugs are becoming a problem. And so I got into them early on and started doing bed bug work. And my work is not like molecular-based and that kind of thing. It's very practical because I have a 70% extension appointment where I have to go out and take university research to people who can use it as part of their job. So that's why I go out in the field, do all this work, work on it myself so I know how long it takes, how hard it is, whether it's reasonable or not, what the results are. And so we started doing work on bedbugs out in the field and were able to determine that they were highly resistant to those insecticides that we are allowed to use indoors because of the Food Quality Protection Act. And that's one of the challenges that we're facing today. All right.

SPEAKER_02 19:20

So what is usually the moment people first realize, oh no, this might be bed bugs? What do they look like? What are the signs?

SPEAKER_03 19:31

Well, um, typically, and I hear from tons of people all the time, I get calls that um about I think I have bed bugs, when in fact what they describe doesn't sound like bed bugs at all. But if anybody gets a bite from anything these days and they think that it's either happened in their home or somebody else's home, or they stayed, went and traveled somewhere, then they are suspicious that it's a bed bug issue because the media has promoted it so much. Yeah. W and uh what do they look like? What do bed bugs look like?

SPEAKER_02 20:06

Yeah. How would I know that I have them?

SPEAKER_03 20:08

Oh my goodness. Let's see. What did I do? Oh, you uh I had my gods until just about an hour ago. Oh no. Um do you have time for me to run and get them? Yes, please. One second.

SPEAKER_04 20:25

I just I could listen to her talk. I mean, she's so freaking intel, like so smart and so smart. She's freaking awesome, man. I just and I just like how she was like, well, I was into Beatles. And then I was like, eh, what's the hot topic now? And dude, she is just the freaking coolest.

SPEAKER_03 20:45

Do you see them in the petri dish here?

SPEAKER_02 20:47

Oh, they're big. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:49

Oh, yeah. You can talk to museum. And do you see that little tiny one running around? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Kind of at the top, you've got some small ones moving too. They're pretty busy. Oh fuck.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

Okay. I'm sorry. I'm like, what's the word formicating?

SPEAKER_03 21:09

F-O-R-M when you feel like something's crawling on you. Well, the thing about these guys, we like to say they're the size and color of an apple seed, the adult. Oh, okay. Okay. But they go through five immature stages before they become adults where they have to fit their skins, grow, you know. And those are usually kind of beige-y colored, unless they've been eating. So beige colored. And you can still see them. Even the teeniest, tiniest ones we like to say are like the size of a comma in a paperback book.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

Okay. So people will see them.

SPEAKER_03 21:49

Totally. Okay. And the thing is, they poop a lot because they feed on blood and they have to poop it out before they can take their next meal to make space in their gut. And so typically what people see a lot of first, if they actually have bed bugs, are the marks, little black marks on their sheets and things like that.

SPEAKER_04 22:09

In the corners, right? Like on you you check the edges. What are the places to check?

SPEAKER_03 22:15

Well, the places that bed bugs hang out are usually cracks and crevices and things like that. So they'll usually be around the perimeter of the bed, but they can poop anywhere, including right on your face.

SPEAKER_02 22:27

Oh my God. Oh my God. And so like they feed on only blood, human blood. Is that true? That's right.

SPEAKER_03 22:34

Well, not just human blood. They'll feed on chicken blood and things like that too. They just can't deal with fur very well. So they don't tend to feed on pets. You know, if you think about fleas, fleas are flattened from side to side, so they can go through fur like this. But bedbugs are flattened from top to bottom and they can't really get through fur. Okay. But if you have spaces like um the rear end of your dog or something where there isn't fur, they could technically feed there. But the thing about humans is we have a lot of sections of our bodies that don't have fur, so pretty convenient.

SPEAKER_02 23:11

Does it feel like uh a flea bite or a mosquito bite, itchy like that?

SPEAKER_03 23:16

Um, it depends. You know, we found every person is different. My ex-husband used to be my technician, and we fed hundreds and hundreds of bed bugs on him because he had no reaction at all. So cool. And I used to have a reaction that was bright red, very itchy, and even look like little blisters after a couple of days. But now my reaction has changed. So it's red at first, but that's about it. It doesn't itch anymore. But everybody's reaction is different.

SPEAKER_04 23:45

Deanny is also part of the recovery program I'm a part of, and that's how we initially met, which I think is also just paramount to your story. But she has gotten, and I've been volunteering, but she hasn't accepted my volunteers yet to uh go in and feed the bed bugs because unfortunately, Lindsay, uh Deanny, you lost your uh your uh funding and your technicians. I'm out of funding. So it's awful. So but people love her so much, and just we like uh she has people just walking up to her, like, I would like to donate, I would like to feed the bed bugs. Tell us, Deanny, how we feed the bed bugs.

SPEAKER_03 24:25

Well, I have them all in these jars. So if you can imagine a pill jar, but you flip it upside down, and the bottom has been removed and covered in mesh, and then we put cardboard harbridges in there so that they cross each other, kind of like this, and the bugs can crawl up to the top where the mesh is, and we put that mesh right against your arm, and then they can poke their mouth parts through that mesh and feed on you directly. Now, I also have an artificial feeder, okay. Oh, I didn't know that. Rabbit blood in every uh week, and then we set up uh, you know, a kind of warm water to warm up the bath and it circulates around, and we can put our individual jars under these different delivery systems, and they put their mouth parts through that. But I would love to do it.

SPEAKER_04 25:16

I would love to do it because I just think fed by you. Yeah, they'd like to do it. I would absolutely love to just have that experience. I'd love to know what my reaction is. I believe I get red bumps.

SPEAKER_03 25:26

I'm happy to come over and feed on you right now.

SPEAKER_04 25:29

I keep wanting you to pretend to accidentally spill it on the computer screen so that Emily thinks that it's all over her nose.

SPEAKER_02 25:37

Well, let me ask you, Deanny, who actually gets bed bugs? And like, how does that happen? How does one get bed bugs?

SPEAKER_03 25:45

Can it be anybody? It's these days the demographic that I'm seeing that really has a lot of bed bugs and is having to deal with them on a regular basis is the elderly.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

Oh, interesting. In like a lot of retirement communities, nursing homes?

SPEAKER_03 26:03

Well, it's nursing homes, assisted living facilities, dialysis centers, medical centers, and then people that live in individual homes, you know, because I just did a training presentation yesterday in Henrico for a bunch of social service uh people who go into homes. And one of the big problems they have is a lot of these social service people don't want to work with their clients anymore if they've got bed bugs in their house.

SPEAKER_07 26:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:33

And so that's one of the things is I'm training them, is they don't need to be afraid. I crawl around in these marvelously infested places all the time. And I've never once brought one home, and I'm not very careful. But uh extra sticky, extra sticky lint rollers, your best buddy, you know.

SPEAKER_04 26:51

She did that with me when we were in the house that she meanwhile she's vacuuming up bed bugs, and I'm trying to catch feral cats outside. The house was very messy, but she had me wear light-colored clothes, light-colored shoes. And then afterwards, we went to the uh lab and she lint rolled me and mainly in my zipper flap. And this I remember because that's a spot that they'll sneak into, but they're not they don't hop. They're not like fleas. So it's not like they're like gonna be all up in your everything. Like I learned that from Genie. You don't need to be afraid that they're gonna be like laying eggs on you.

SPEAKER_02 27:26

Is it a sanitary thing? So like people just not washing their sheets and cleaning their homes.

SPEAKER_03 27:32

No, it's it's not really the the thing is is bedbugs only care about blood. So they're there because you have blood, you know? And I wish washing your sheets would get rid of them, but no, it doesn't. How do you get rid of them? Well, it's really challenging, and that's one of the problems we're still up against. You know, again, our insecticides, if you hire a professional, are the insecticides we're allowed to use in a home are about 55 years old, and they're all this pyrethroid chemistry that came from chrysanthemums initially, but it's been artificially manufactured now. And um, we do have uh some fungal spore insecticides that's relatively new, but that's up against some challenges too, is you know, making sure that all the fungal spores survive, especially if you're in a low-income home where the humidity is high, above 30%. So it is quite challenging. I mean, we're having to scrape up bugs and eggs with using a vacuum cleaner, and there are heat treatments that was a big deal here in the state of Virginia, but that's hasn't worked as well as it should because it really requires a lot of technician attention, moving the heaters around, checking the temperatures of every crack and crevice in your home. Oh gosh. And the challenge with that is a lot of people believed at first that you put the heaters in and you take them out four hours later, you're done. But we're finding out it requires a lot more work than that. So um fumigation is the only thing that is a hundred percent and here in the state of Virginia, because uh drywood termites, which are the fumigation market really across the United States, um, don't exist here in a lot of the uh more northern states. So it's not like California and Texas. So we only have one company, it's Dodson Pest Control, that does fumigation, but that's the only thing where they tent the house that is a hundred percent. Otherwise, you're relying on a human to inspect every crack and crevice in your home. Oh my god. And then hit each bug with a hammer, basically, whether you call that hammer a spray or something else.

SPEAKER_02 29:54

So do you can bag bugs live anywhere in the world, like any climate?

SPEAKER_03 30:01

Well, um, they don't do well in cold locations. However, that being said, you know, I've been to Antarctica and they've got research stations with people living in there with heaters. Yeah, if I brought some in, they'd stay there. So anybody accidentally with a bed bug on them. And they're a big problem known in Alaska among the native Alaskans, too, because they've been transported in. So if there's blood around, they can do fine.

SPEAKER_04 30:28

Man, it has never dawned on me in the 14 years that we have been friends. What a master um, what an opportunity it would be to utilize you if you wanted to get revenge on somebody. Emily, you better watch our staff because my girl Deenny's got access, and I'm gonna go feed them. And then oh my god. I've it's never crossed my mind. Deanny, has it ever crossed your mind to put fest anybody? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:01

No, no, not really.

SPEAKER_02 31:03

Yeah, that would be a horrible thing to do to anybody. I love it.

SPEAKER_03 31:08

I'm proud of myself that I've not thought of that. You know, I don't want to torture them unnecessarily, so they've done a lot for me.

SPEAKER_04 31:16

They have, and you've done a lot for them. They really have. I don't know if those bed bugs know they got it made right now. They're just hanging about and getting fed, hanging out with their buds. Um, I did ask Deany once, out of all the the crit the bugs that she has studied, which one is the cutest? And Deanny?

SPEAKER_03 31:36

Which one is the cutest? I remember which one you told me. The immature bed bugs are pretty darn cute, especially if you compare them to human babies, too. I I I must admit, my mother made it clear how much she enjoyed having children, so I've never wanted to have them. And I see human babies and they just freak me out, you know. The papered and pathogenic organisms. So you know, every time I've picked up a child, I swear I lose my voice like in 24 hours. You know? Wow. I I'm sticking to bugs. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:12

So unfortunately, we can't spay and neuter our cute little bed bugs, but how can we prevent them from spreading if we get them? Like from room to rumors, just they're not.

SPEAKER_03 32:23

That's a challenge because a lot of times, even if they're not hungry, they're active at night, and they may just do a lot of wandering around.

SPEAKER_04 32:33

Sound like us in LA, Emily.

SPEAKER_03 32:35

Scientific literature. Yeah, that they just move around, you know, and they don't um research studies have shown that our CO2 really stimulates them to get them moving because it's like walking into a place and go, Wow, I smell bacon. You don't know where it is, but it smells good, and so you start looking for it. Wow. Um, but these guys, even if they've already eaten it, a lot of times will hang out in an aggregation with each other, but then females, because they're sick of the males trying to mate with them, they have a method called traumatic insemination. Oh, that's right, I forgot about this. Where the female is literally stabbed in the side by the male's parameter, and she uh is injured from that, and actually, females that are able to get blood meals and get away from boyfriends and stuff have 25% more eggs they produce than the ones that are mated with consistently because they don't have to like recover from their injuries.

SPEAKER_02 33:38

Can you believe that? Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 33:40

Yeah, at first I was excited because I remembered it, I thought it was reversed, but it's actually the male bed bug stabs the female.

SPEAKER_03 33:48

Yes. And that causes the female to wander away from the aggregation and then start laying eggs in different locations. And she's gonna lay like 10 eggs over the next five days or so, but there'll be two of them here and two of them there and two of them there, and that's another challenge we're up against because we'd have to find all of those eggs to get rid of the infestation. And that single female is the one that's capable of starting an infestation if she gets transported to your home on somebody's sweater. How many eggs generally will a female lay? Well, over time, it really depends. It's probably about 70 during her lifetime, given the correct temperature and things like that. You know, in the old literature it says, oh, they lay 500 eggs. No, that's not modern bed bugs at all.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 34:43

But if they have regular blood meals, you know, they tend to lay eggs about every week and they'll lay a couple a day each day.

SPEAKER_04 34:51

Is the egg filled with a lot of bed bugs or is it one baby bedbug per se? One baby. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:58

One embryo in there.

SPEAKER_04 35:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 35:00

Oh.

SPEAKER_04 35:01

I mean, isn't that horrible? The poor female bed bug.

SPEAKER_03 35:05

Well, she's got kind of a tough life, but if she can get away from the dudes and just have access to blood, she'll be fine.

SPEAKER_02 35:11

I mean, that sounds about right for any female. I'm I'm telling you, I'm like, sign me up. I'll drink blood. I I just need access to food, and I am good.

unknown 35:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:26

So it's kind of her life.

SPEAKER_02 35:27

If somebody who's listening thinks that they have bed bugs, what should they do within like the first 24 hours of noticing it?

SPEAKER_03 35:35

Well, they need to find out if they really do. So they need to look for fecal spots. And again, the immature bed bugs have to shed their skins, shed their exoskeletons on a regular basis in order to molt to the next life stage and get larger. And I was on that Dateline show years ago, and I was one of the few non-pedophiles on there, and they took a few hotels in New York City that had been put on the bed bug registry because you can go on the bed bug registry and put down a hotel where you think there's such a thing as a should I just Google the hotel bed bug registry? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:18

Oh, I had no idea.

SPEAKER_03 36:20

But the thing is, let me just say, I'm in a different hotel every other week. I was in a hotel not last night, but the night before. And in the last 20 years, I've never once looked for bed bugs and never once received a bite or anything. So hotels are kind of the focus of the media because they like name brands. And you know, when it's Paris Fashion Week, I start getting calls from all these media outlets that want to talk about, oh, what if bed bugs are found in hotels? And that is just not the problem. Apartments in the United States are about 92% of the bed bug treatments done by the pest control industry. Interesting. So going over to your friend's house and sitting on their couch in their apartment is a little more risky than going and staying in a hotel.

SPEAKER_02 37:12

Yeah, I believe that. So when we are traveling, what's a good way to check like our Airbnb or hotel for bed bugs? Do you just or is it just the fecal stuff? Oh, lint rollers.

SPEAKER_03 37:23

Go over the furniture, go over the bed and stuff. And if you don't see anything stuck here, there's nothing. Oh, fantastic. Right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 37:32

Lint rollers.

SPEAKER_03 37:33

Never worry about that. But the one thing I am hearing about is more Airbnbs because people tend to stay there longer. There's more people in there rather than somebody just spending the night on business at a holiday inn. Right.

SPEAKER_02 37:46

So they can latch on to people and get in your clothes and you can take them from one location to another.

SPEAKER_03 37:52

Well, yes, I have seen that. I was over at this one couple's house. They were an elderly couple that were having their home fumigated. And it was kind of a fancy house, but uh they were leaving, getting in their car, and I'm talking to the lady outside picking bed bugs off her sweater. Oh, okay. And they're gonna go stay in a hotel ever out, you know, overnight. So I'm like, oh, that hotel's kind of at risk, kind of thing. But that's yeah, one of the issues is people can carry them on themselves.

SPEAKER_04 38:24

But a lint roller, man. Lint just always.

SPEAKER_03 38:27

A lint roller is the answer. That's so cool.

SPEAKER_02 38:31

Um, what have you seen? What does like an infestation do to people emotionally?

SPEAKER_03 38:38

Well, it depends on whether they're conscious of it or not. Okay. So I'm going into a lot of these elderly homes, and these will be private homes, fancy homes, and the people are not really affected by the bed bugs there. And I'll talk to these social service organizations and I'll show them all these pictures of these infested places, and I'll always get the question, how can people live like that? Well, these people have about 15 other problems that take priority, you know, mental health issues, physical health issues. And the other thing about getting older is your immune response gets older also, so you don't necessarily have these itching bred welts. Now, people who are younger or have kids that are in apartments that are marvelously infested, there's a lot of shame associated with it. And they don't want to have people coming over, you know. And I did just talk to an elderly couple, as a matter of fact, that thought they had an infestation, and I saw a couple shed skins, but that was it. But they hadn't had anybody come and visit them for over a year, you know, and goodness isolate and things like that, and that's really a shame because you've just got to go on living, you know.

SPEAKER_02 39:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:59

So, but there's a lot of shame usually associated with having bed bugs, and of course, people don't like the bites if they are really susceptible. Some people have much more uh vigorous reactions than others, and that makes life a lot tougher.

SPEAKER_00 40:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:13

And then we have delusory parasitosis people who just believe they have bed bugs, even though they don't have any biological evidence of any kind, and they'll obsess and spray their insecticide on their beds every night. There was one gentleman I talked to who was bald, and he would take raw hamburger and mix it with gasoline and put that on his head to sleep every night. And eventually, yes, his house burnt down. I had talked to his wife on the phone, and she said, Oh, yes, she totally was in line with him about the fact he had bed bugs, not her. And that he was the one getting bitten. I'm like, that's not that doesn't make biological sense, you know. But I'll go into these places where a lot of people will have 30 prescription medications, and Dr. Nancy Hinkle at the University of Georgia, who I was in grad school with, is really an expert on this, that delusory parasitosis in some cases may be caused by prescription medication interactions. Really? Because certain medications make you feel like you have crawling underneath your skin, or they may give you some hallucinations, so some real challenges out there.

SPEAKER_04 41:28

I've definitely had a medication that I was certain I had lice. Um and this was I hadn't I was after rehab, but not in recovery yet. And I remember I had my sister check my hair because I could feel it. There was and I feel it on my skin sometimes too. It's a side effect of one of my um medications, one of my many medications. You gotta keep me medicated, folks. What's the worst infestation you've ever seen, Deanny? What what what comes to mind?

SPEAKER_03 42:00

Well, um, the one that I have pictures of is where we were inventing. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. I've seen some really bad ones since then, but that one was really the most extreme as far as you know, the couple that were in that couch bed 20 hours a day because he had pancreatic cancer, she had had multiple strokes, and just the sheer number of bugs there, you know, it's just crazy. And the idea of trying to get them all out of the house, you know, we finally ended up fumigating that place. Oh, you did, okay. That worked, yeah. But it's just, you know, people with are living with thousands upon thousands and having to have them in bed with them on a regular basis and then worry about their clothing and everything else. Right. You know, cars, all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 42:51

So other than like bites and just what that can do, bed bugs don't harm you or do they?

SPEAKER_03 42:59

Not really. No, just the bites. So it's not like ticks. Ticks are known among entomologists for transmitting several diseases, and Lyme disease is of course a very long-lasting issue. Um, but no, bedbugs have evolved with humans, and it you know, evolutionarily that would be very um disadvantageous if they passed on you know, diseases to their food source. They are not known to transmit diseases or anything like that. But they will poop all over you. That's not very romantic.

SPEAKER_04 43:36

Deanny, the house that we went to and you we took the cats and you got them fixed, which is incredible. What would have happened to that house to those people had you not done that? Because I believe, if I remember correctly, you just were doing it because they needed it.

SPEAKER_03 43:53

Well, right. Um, I got called by this social service organization that was working out there, and one of the problems they were having. Is again the social service workers had to take the 77-year-old lady who lived there out to medical appointments and they were refusing to do that going forward. So that's that's one of the main problems is if you need this service and you need this help and you've got bed bugs there, and then suddenly these organizations are arbitrarily making these policies that they aren't going to have their employees go into these um facilities anymore, these homes, then that's leaves these people at risk. Right. You know, if they're not able to see the doctor and you know get their medications and the things that they need, that is very, very challenging. So that's a good thing to point out as a health risk.

SPEAKER_04 44:44

It's incredible, Deanny, because you do you do so much. So I I mean, do you consider yourself a humanitarian?

SPEAKER_03 44:53

I you know, I really don't use that word for myself at all. I'd say more that my um because I'm an entomologist and I work on urban pests in particular, the human factor is such a big issue. Like my colleagues that work on agricultural pests, they work with pesticides, they work with crops, they work with insects and things. But how people feel about certain insects or how they feel about pesticides is really not a factor that comes into it. But when I'm teaching my urban pest course, I always tell the students that we have to deal with the human aspect, their behaviors, their feelings towards insects, their feelings towards insecticides and stuff so much that it's really a social science. So I would say instead of humanitarian, I'm also a social scientist because I have to deal with humans on such a regular basis. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:53

And then while you're doing that, Deanny, you're going to this house and that you think ahead and you're like, you know, they had a bunch of cats. I'd like to go and let's catch those cats while we're also and and you do it without any kind of like, I'm a really good person. I'm about to do this stuff. You were like, Courtney, do you think you could help me come to um I I can't remember how it came up, but you were like, we need to catch some feral cats, and then we need to vacuum up bed bugs. And I was like, Absolutely, like what an adventure. And she does, I mean, it's incredible, Deanny, the work you do. And I I was really inspired about the stuff, the work you were doing in the Richmond government housing. And that was not bedbugs, that was the German cockroaches, but correct the uh if you'll just give a brief of what what that was, what a nightmare that was.

SPEAKER_03 46:43

Yeah, well, the problem there is that our government has this policy that when they are hiring contractors, they will go with what is called the lowest responsive and responsible bidder. And the consequence of this is if you're going with the lowest bidder, responsive means they're willing to go online and fill out the forms and all that sort of stuff. And responsible typically means that they have a history of actually doing pest control. And um, what happens is though, is that these managers at these apartment um complexes, these communities and stuff, will end up going with the lowest bidder. And if they have 4,000 units, like Richmond Public Housing, for example, and they have a bidder that bids $5 a door and another one that bids $6 a door, they'll go with $5 a door. But, you know, so one of the things I saw that happened at Richmond Housing, they paid $6.10 a door in 2010 and then $5.44 a door in 2020. Wow. You know, think about that. Stephen. And what that is, the break-even cost is about $1.50 per minute, and it takes an average of 49 seconds to get inside the door. This is knock, knock, knock, wait, wait, wait, knock, knock, knock, wait, wait, wait, knock, knock. Okay, pest control coming in. Then you hear a voice in the back. Just a minute. Okay. And so the technician has about two minutes to get in and out of there. So they'll spray these 55-year-old insecticides for two minutes, okay, in cracks and crevices and whatever, and then on to the next unit. And if anybody complains that they still have cockroaches afterwards, it's like, well, you brought them in, you know, you're not cleaning up. And this has been the excuse for literally more than 30 years, my entire career.

SPEAKER_04 48:45

That's been what everybody's you're not cleaning up, it's your fault.

SPEAKER_03 48:49

Yeah. And therefore, don't expect much from pest control if you don't clean. And the thing is, is we've been able to show using this assessment-based pest management method that we can actually eliminate the cockroaches. Now, instead of being there once every quarter, we're there every month. We're applying these baits according to the trap catch. So that dictates how much bait we apply, which will make a difference in the cost because the bait's about $6 a tube. And then the amount of technician time, if you've got a heavy infestation, which means we caught more than 500 roaches in all three traps overnight, then that's going to be about 15 minutes. We'll be in there. And so that increases the cost, you know, to maybe as much as $40. That's just the cost. That's no profit or anything. But arguably, US HUD has not paid for pest control for close to 40 years. They've been paying for pesticide application only. Okay. Realize those are not the same things. Pesticide application is not pest control. And so I'm trying to, I really want to get our federal government to pay for pest control and require, rather than having just somebody somebody come in and treat, whatever that might mean, to actually provide documentation of what the pest population was before and after and show that they're actually having an impact, reducing and eliminating. Because we've been able to show if we started in the wintertime and stuff, because the cockroach populations double, triple, and quadruple during the summer, that we can actually eliminate them and then go on for the next seven months of the study, even going through the summer, and they never come back. And everybody wants to say, oh, they're coming from next door. Well, we've got data to show that in these eightplexes where we've done one unit, if they don't come back over the next seven months, they're not coming from next door. So we have shown that we can get rid of them, and it doesn't take anything superhuman, but you've got to pay what pest control costs. And if I went over to one of your ladies' houses and you had 16,000 cockroaches there, you would think twice about paying $80 for me to go and do baiting every month. Absolutely. You know? And then we'd get rid of them. But nobody has asked for any documentation of actually getting pest elimination, and that's what we need to do there. And that was the mission I was on. Is that something you're currently working on then? It was until the Trump administration, because US HUD has now, they used to have a grant program and they had all these um home inspectors and everything. All the home inspection positions have been completely eliminated across the United States. Their granting program, they have eliminated probably more than half of their employees, and that is at the government level, you know, all the way down to the housing level. So nothing's gonna happen anytime soon.

SPEAKER_02 52:09

Ladies and gentlemen, whoever's listening out there, your bedbugs and cockroaches are brought to you by the Trump administration. I don't know what song that was, but I'm sorry, but that is horrible. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:31

The cut to those federal funds for something that and that's, you know, one of the issues I worry about with the elderly in particular is that this is going to be another demographic that is living with these large numbers of bedbugs. And assisted living facilities that might be dependent on federal funding are not going to be able to afford what it takes to actually get rid of the bedbugs. And I've already seen situations where the guy who prepares lunch for everybody was told to go out and buy some diatomaceous earth at Lowe's and then apply it on people's beds. Now that's one thing, but not all diatomaceous earth is the same. So there is a pesticide grade that is registered, but then there's another type that's used for pool filters that's heat treated and it's converted into shards of glass and no lumber kills bedbugs, but it is an inhalation hazard.

SPEAKER_04 53:27

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_03 53:27

And imagine applying that to elderly people's bedding.

SPEAKER_04 53:32

So they told their chef to go to the store and get what was it called? It's fascinating.

SPEAKER_03 53:35

Diatomaceous earth. Diatomaceous. Because people will read on the internet that diatomaceous earth kills bedbugs, but there's different types of diatomaceous earth that are used for different things. It's fascinating. What?

SPEAKER_02 53:49

So it's complex. I can only imagine that getting into your lungs and what that would do. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:55

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_04 53:56

I mean, it's returned to it.

SPEAKER_03 53:57

There's a lot of craziness that goes on out there, and I'm just worried about, you know, elder care facilities and organizations and stuff that are going to have to deal with these bed bugs going forward and how they're going to do it.

SPEAKER_04 54:10

Deany, can you tell me what would be the most helpful for you, being someone in the trenches, literally, um, the taco trenches, you know, the taco vape things. What would be the most helpful thing for you? Like, I know you need funding. Like, what can a person like me or Emily pretend we're not friends and I can't just go to you? What would be the most helpful thing to do?

SPEAKER_03 54:32

Well, um, my job right now, and the one grant that I do have some funding in connection with somebody else is to do training for these different facilities that service the elderly and social service work. But trying to make connections to those places is really one of the challenges out there. If you go online and try and connect with them, they always want, they have this kind of big website that they want the age of the parent and they want your um zip code and things like that. When I'm trying to actually locate a human and get a phone number and tell them that I'm offering this training for their people for free. And it's free because it's part of Virginia Cooperative Extension and everything. So, and they need it. And the more everybody knows about bed bugs, the more we can reduce this fear and get everybody to just deal with them in a more effective way rather than a you know kind of approach to everything. So that's what I'm trying to do right now is get hold of these organizations. And if you guys could reach out or you find the names of anybody or you hear of anybody and connect them to me and allow them to know that this is free training.

unknown 55:51

Gosh.

SPEAKER_03 55:51

And I just want to get, you know, people on board. My opening slide is always bedbugs are now part of your job. Yeah. Yeah. You know, because if you deal with other humans, yeah, that's part of the deal. And just being um in fear is not a benefit to you or anyone else. No, you know. No, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:10

Living in fear is not the way to go through life. But uh back to that, if people need to find you, where can we find you?

SPEAKER_03 56:17

Well, I'm here at Virginia Tech. Um I my email is deenym at VT.edu and my phone number 540231 4045. That's gonna be ringing off the hook.

SPEAKER_04 56:37

I know, Deenny, oh gosh. Yeah, they're coming for you, Dee.

SPEAKER_03 56:43

Yeah, I have people call me every day that are aware, you know, and I talk to them. A lot of people call me about things that they see or they think in their home that might be a problem. So that's my job.

SPEAKER_02 56:55

Yeah, what other resources can you share with our listeners to help them be more educated instead of going down that dark, fearful rabbit hole on the internet?

SPEAKER_03 57:05

Well, if you go to VDAX, the VDAX website, V D A C S, that's in Virginia. Okay, so that's the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. It's a mouthful. So you type in to Google VDAX bed bug, all my fact sheets will come up. And I've written fact sheets on, you know, bed bugs in social service organizations, bed bugs in apartments, how to use heat to treat bed bugs, you know, how to deal with um chemical methods, non-chemical methods, how to identify an infestation. And it's all got pictures and text, and each one of them is about four pages long. So cool. So I have to produce all of these fact sheets and make them available for the citizens of the state. And VDAX paid for these a while back. That was really nice. They gave me some funding to actually write these and post them. Thank goodness. And it's it is, it's people just need to understand what's real and not some of the crazy stuff that's out there, you know, that's just intended to get people scared and things.

SPEAKER_04 58:15

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 58:15

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 58:16

What if someone wants to donate?

SPEAKER_03 58:18

What would be the best place for them to donate to for the well they would need to call me because there's some instructions on how checks have to be made out. Oh, the university is very complex. But it's usually the checks that has to be sent to our department, it has to have an accompanying letter that says they're donating it, donating it to my research program on bed bugs and things like that. Okay, fantastic.

SPEAKER_04 58:43

Dee, you're just the frickin' coolest. I just can't get over how cool you are.

SPEAKER_03 58:48

Well, thanks for asking all these questions.

SPEAKER_02 58:51

We'll definitely have you back on because I could talk to you for hours and hours.

SPEAKER_04 58:56

I'm telling you, I told you, I told you. I'm telling you, there's so much more to Dee Dee and all of her animals. Dee, how many cats do you have right now? How many cats?

SPEAKER_03 59:06

Well, if you work at public housing, you'll just find these cats that people will say she's been pregnant 12 times. And then I pick them up with the idea that I'm gonna get them fixed and find them a home, and then I fall in love. So I have seven now. Oh, seven cats and a dog. Carol's here with me in the Carol.

SPEAKER_04 59:26

She found Carol and Carol County, and that's why Carol's named Carol. And Carol comes to the women's meeting every night. I've watched that dog go from dark and now she's all gray and the snoop. And she is she used to be really timid and scared.

SPEAKER_03 59:42

And she's the best. She's the best thing that ever happened to me. You know, having this dog adopt me when I thought I told her when I first met her, she's like, I'm your dog. And I'm like, no, I can't have a dog. I travel too much. And she's like, No, I'm your dog. It's her best thing that ever happened to me.

SPEAKER_04 59:59

It's so true. I remember when you got her and me and our friend Sarah, I we were like, Deanny, you you probably have to. You're like, I can't, I can't do it. I'm busy. I can't. I can't travel. And sure enough, you couldn't let her go. She's too special. She's but isn't that amazing? Can you name off your cats really quick before we go? I just love hearing animals now.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:17

Okay, so I have Olive, who is one that I collected from Richmond Public Housing, and Belle, who is 20 years old that I've had for a very long time. Pixie, who's 17 years old, that I adopted, and she loves Carol. Sleeps with her, licks her face every night and everything. So cute. And then I Tiny, she's also from Richmond Housing, and then I Stash, which is short for mustache, but she's a female that identifies as a male, so that's why she's Stash. Respect. And um Stash came from Hopewell Housing. And then I have Tomas, who's my new husband, and he is from South Florida, was part of a feral colony, and I'm babysitting Smokey for over a year, who is our friend Lina's cat. And uh Smokey's the second male in the house, and he has kind of a hard time living with other cats, but he's very loving with people.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:14

Oh so sweet. And Pixie has really short baby legs. I don't know why. Um, but all you know, cats have longer legs. Pixie's like, she's precious.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:24

She's a tiny cat, always has been. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:27

But she's taking care of my dog. Thank you so much for coming on our podcast today. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:33

Oh, well, thank you for having me. And thanks for all your great questions. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:38

You're the coolest Deanie. You're the Dosecchi man of the world. Except you also don't drink much Corbyn. She is the most interesting woman in the whole world.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:48

Awesome. Well, Courtney, thank you. Emily, thank you. I know. You're welcome to all of our listeners. If you have any further questions for Deanie, you can always reach out to her or you can reach out to us at that wasn't the planpod at gmail.com. And you can find us on Instagram at that wasn't the planned underscore podcast or our website, that wasn't the plan.com. And until next time, Courtney, Deanny, thank you so much. Thank you, Dean.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:17

And let me tell you, that wasn't the plan was so great because just that title, you know, I never could have dreamed my life was going to be about bedbugs and cockroaches. And it's gotten me all over the world. My my life has been amazing. So you never know what the plan is going to be. You don't.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:35

And that I was going to say this earlier when you were talking about how your life just kind of unfolded that way is always have an open mind. Yes. Be willing to say yes when new interesting opportunities pop up. You never know where life's going to take you. That's right.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:53

That's so true.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:54

I'm that perfect example of example.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:57

You really are. And the coolest and the most bodacious.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:02

God.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:04

Rare.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:05

I love her. I'm her biggest fan. I've got to lock it with Deanny's face and it'll keep it.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:14

Ladies, thank you so much. Well, Emily. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:17

Yes, indeed.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:18

Bye.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:19

Thanks. Bye. Thanks for listening to That Wasn't the Plan. If you found it helpful or at least mildly entertaining, a quick grading review and a click on the subscribe button would be lovely. And it genuinely helps us. And if a friend comes to mind, please share. Until next time. Bye.