Ain’t No Bugs on Me: Part III

In the spirit of reconciliation and atonement — (last night was the first time I’ve been to confession since I was 13) — I was prepared to make peace with all of pigeonkind, including the nest above the doorway of an apartment two floors below me. The first time I saw the nest back in January, I contemplated calling Vasco again to see about removal. But, it was in the middle of a long winter and I didn’t want to render two proud pigeon parents childless yet again. 

Besides, I had noticed that someone got rid of the initial nest, leaving the eggs unattended for what I thought was a fatal length of time. When I saw the nest had been re-built I was kind of touched to find the parents tending to it again. When I asked an uncle, a bird expert of sorts, about the eggs’ chances for survival, he said the odds were low that baby birds would result. The pigeon parents, however, would be just as likely to tend to marbles as they would viable eggs.

But no such luck. Before long, the eggs hatched. I couldn’t very well ask for the nest’s destruction at this point. That would mean committing avian infanticide. So I kept my mouth shut as long as I could. As the babies grew, the nest started to fall apart and scatter all over the landing. Also, four pigeons means four times the pigeon poo, which for a tiny space is a lot of poo. Getting the situation solved took three phone calls and a lot of psychosomatic itching. But at least it’s gone and I remain guilt-free.

So, back to last summer.

After three days of getting nowhere on the extermination and delousing front, I took up residence at a Fairfield Inn where the bed linens were gloriously white and free from the creepy crawlies. If there were any residual mites left on me or my clothing, I would surely find them on the spotless sheets and commence killing. After finding out that the skin infection I had, called impetigo, wasn’t contagious, I went back to work as usual.

Having not heard from my building’s management for days at this point, I started calling all the departments in Cook County and the city of Evanston that I thought might be able to intercede. After a couple calls, I was able to determine that this could easily be considered a public health issue and went from there. The kind man who answered my call at the Health Dept. said he’d call management and see that it got taken care of.

Within minutes the building manager got back to me after three days of missed calls, and agreed to pay for half of the time spent in the hotel; for a cleaning service to come in; the doctor and drug bills; the cost of cleaning supplies; the cost of laundering all of my clothing, bed linens, futon cover, throw rugs and blankets; as well as the cosmetics, toiletries and pillows that I had to replace.

After that, everything rapidly started to improve. Giddy with relief, I was able to find a nice cleaning service that could thoroughly remove all traces of dead mite exoskeletons and remnants my Raid foggers. Then my mom, God bless her, came up to Evanston to help me with the laundry nightmare that was stuffing every stitch of fabric in my apartment into a front-loading washing machine at my dilapidated neighborhood laundromat — a feat that cost $40 in quarters.

But before the professionals came in to clean, my mom and I donned masks and charged into my apartment to bag up my clothes and vacuum what we could with our Shop-Vac. We were chagrined to find that while the building engineer dutifully removed my two window A/C units for cleaning, he neglected to put up anything to cover the open window left behind, leaving god knows what to fly in and wreak bird havoc in my already ravaged apartment. I ended up taping a street map of Chicago over one empty window and a piece of cardboard over the other. Exhausted after our cleaning binge, we returned to the hotel and its pristine white sheets and retired for the night.

The next morning we got up early so we could let the cleaning service in and then resigned ourselves to the laundromat for what turned out to be about 14 loads of laundry. We ran a shockingly efficient operation, shuffling loads between the washers and dryers and making polite small talk with the homeless people that wander in and out of the facility all day. By noon, we were done with the laundry just in time to pay the cleaning service.

The hard part, now, was keeping my paranoia at bay while I got used to life without bugs.

I vacuumed every inch of my mattress and furniture and invested in a Dustbuster in case I ever had trouble telling the difference between lint and mites. Still traumatized, it took me three nights to work up the nerve to actually sleep in my bed. I was convinced that the mites had all laid eggs in the mattress and that hatching was imminent. Then, it was weeks before I could get into bed without giving my sheets a good once-over. I briefly considered buying a magnifying glass for this purpose.

In another exercise in paranoia, I asked the building manager to install pigeon spikes outside all of my windows. Through a little online research I learned that pigeons prefer to roost on ledges on a building’s top floor, and especially on ledges facing a courtyard, which mine did. Since I knew it could be a few days until the landlord got around to doing it, I bought what I can only describe as anti-pigeon goo. This concoction is designed to burn the feet of any pigeon that chooses to land on a surface covered with it. It only bothers me a little bit that I have no reservations about being this vigilant.

Thus far, my paranoia has paid off as my apartment has been spared from any further infestations. However, this is just the first step in my crusade against infestation. I will not rest until I see pigeon spikes on every ledge of my building. And my neighbors will thank me. Oh, how they will thank me.