Theresa Braine

How to tell the difference between bed bugs and spider beetles, carpet beetles, book lice and bat bugs.

As bed bugs shut down one show and inspire another, I sit here reflecting on two years I've spent writing this column for BrickUnderground.

Bedbugged! is a column by journalist and bed bug survivor Theresa Braine. For more, click here. I came home recently from a 12-day trip, my first outside the country since my most recent visit to Mexico at the end of 2009.

Bedbugged! is a column by journalist and bed bug survivor Theresa Braine. For more, click here. When you see those damn bugs crawling across your mattress (in my case), or wherever and however you find them, your immediate reaction is to recoil in horror. Barely able to absorb the supreme yuckiness of the situation, your brain kind of shuts down. You just want it all to go away. 

Bedbugged! is a column by journalist and bed bug survivor Theresa Braine. For more, click here. It is now three years since I first discovered bed bugs crawling across my brand-new mattress, and two since I escaped. I now find myself—three apartments and three beds removed—finally ensconced in habitable living quarters, unpacking, on the verge of emptying the last of my things from storage and finally adding up the finances of the experience.