Ain’t No Bugs On Me: Part 2

Just prior to penning the first installment of my pigeon problem, my pigeon paranoia resurfaced when I noticed that an apartment two floors below mine had a pigeon nest above the back door. All of the other units in my part of the building have a similar ledge above the door too, but the rest, except for this one unit’s, are screened off. This is prime pigeon real estate; it’s still facing a courtyard that pigeons love, but it’s out of the wind.

I first noticed it one day when I started climbing my stairs only to find mama and papa pigeon trading places, which involved flying right over my head in the narrow stairwell, as they tended to the nest and eggs. I’m pretty sure I hit the deck while they swooped in and out. A day or two later, the remnants of the nest were on the stairway, where it looked like someone, smartly, tried to get rid of it. But pigeons are nothing if not persistent, and the nest was reassembled a couple days later.

Ever since, every time I enter or leave the building I have to come face to face with a pigeon. And I know what they’re thinking: “That’s the girl that had our last nest destroyed. Home wrecker! Let’s dive bomb her!”

Their beedy little eyes are full of loathing. Of that I’m certain.

But back to the first pigeon crisis.

On that rainy Monday morning where we left off, I made a run to the local Ace store frantically in search of bug bombs. I got back home just as the building engineer, Vasco, got there. He helped me identify them vaguely as “bird mites.” I had to vacate for a few hours while the bug bombs took effect, so I called in for a personal day from work and rounded up some things and took refuge at my sister’s, where I finally was able to take a shower. I made sure the water was as hot as I could tolerate and scrubbed and shampooed until I felt bug and itch free.

Vasco had promised me he’d call an exterminator in case the bombs didn’t finish the job and get rid of the nest. Despite numerous calls to Vasco throughout the day, I was not able to get through to him to find out the status of the bug bombs or to find out if the exterminator had been there yet. At that point I started looking in the yellow pages for exterminators to see if I could find someone who could at least tell me what the protocol was — did I need to boil and wash all my bed linens, clothes, rugs, furniture? Would the chemicals from the bombs and exterminator be harmful? And then, how to deal with the millions of dead bug carcasses after the fogger kicked in? Nobody could tell me. And Vasco was nowhere to be found.

I eventually decided Monday night to go back to my apartment, gather up enough clothes and necessities for a couple days, and stay at my sister’s, or somewhere else, until I could get in and do a thorough cleaning.

I entered through the back door, which has an outer screen door, and another door with a window. Immediately I noticed broken glass on the steps and saw a big triangular corner knocked out of the window. Flabbergasted and more than a tad upset, I called Vasco again, and finally got ahold of him. He was very apologetic and apologized for accidentally breaking my window with a hammer when he’d been there earlier. Still livid, I did a walk-through to evaluate whether there were any bugs left that were moving.

For the most part, everything was pretty much dead, though one or two were still crawling here and there. I rounded up another batch of clothes, which I was instructed to put in the dryer. Supposedly, the heat of a dryer would kill anything left on the fabric.

A friend told me I could stay at her place with her roommates since she was out of town, so I packed for the next night or two and went over to her place. But in the process of carrying my clothes down to her washer and dryer in the basement, some sort of giant beetle attached itself to my tee-shirt without my knowing it (to get to the basement, I had to go outside). With my clothes safely dried, I parked myself on their couch in front of the TV to unwind. But shortly after I sat down I felt something stinging me, like a bee-sting, on my lower back. I jumped up and found that huge, grayish/brown beetle and screamed. I decided to flee again to my sister’s for the night.

I had never particularly bug phobic — I stayed in Girl Scouts until I was in high school for crying out loud — but that day did me in.

I stayed with my sister for two nights as I was again playing phone tag with Vasco. It had taken him 2-3 days to get an exterminator over to fog and spray the place, and I told them I wouldn’t be back until they got rid of the offending nest. This, I didn’t realize, is a little controversial in the exterminating world. Some exterminators said spraying the nest would kill any remnants of bugs. However, the act of throwing it away could result in throwing all the bug exoskeletons into the air, which could be harmful to asthmatics or people with breathing problems. I asked Vasco to have the exterminator call me so I could ask him how to clean thoroughly and to find out exactly what kinds of mites I was dealing with (nobody seemed to know for sure).

By the third or fourth day of not hearing back from Vasco, my mom told me to go stay in a hotel out of courtesy to my sister. At this point the red bumps on my legs developed into irritated sores so I started calling doctors. One doctor I reached told me that whatever I had could be extremely contagious and that I shouldn’t be at work and should cancel the business trip I was scheduled to go on. I opted to go to an urgent care facility for a diagnosis since I didn’t want to wait for an appointment. I learned that I just had a skin infection, which was not contagious. I did not, the verynice doctor promised, have the scabies-like infection I was afraid I had. Oral and topical antibiotics would take care of it.

I had given up on getting ahold of Vasco and started calling management instead. I wanted to make sure the nest was gone and that my window units would get a thorough cleaning. I also wanted compensation for the hotel, doctor’s visit and belongings I had to replace as a result of this mess.

However, nobody called me back…until I called the Evanston health department.

To be continued….