A friend and bed bug survivor emails us this exchange with a coat check attendant at a crowded Manhattan restaurant last week:
"I asked if they had any kind of bed bug protocol or at the very least could keep my coat at the far end of the closet beyond the bulk of them (of course, any bed bugs on the wall could have climbed aboard, but I figured if there were any there at all, the coats would be more likely to have them). The woman said, 'Oh honey, you are at risk for those things anytime you go anywhere, to a hotel, the movies, the office.... It's just a risk you take whenever you leave your house. I was in [name of well-known house of worship redacted] visiting all the saints, and I was kneeling and praying in front of one of them and looked down and saw a bedbug crawling near my foot.'"
In deference to a higher authority as well as the fact that the coat-check attendant did not identify herself as an entomologist or exterminator and might have seen a carpet beetle for all we know, BrickUnderground has withheld the name of the church. But it just goes to show that wherever you go these days, there "they" are--in spirit, if not body.
