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Walter Penny watches as his dog, Macaroni, sniffs a blanket for bed bugs during a training session on July 30. Penny runs a company called Colorado Bed Bug K9 and says he and Macaroni can accurately cover more ground than a human inspection could. ( Photos by Karl Gehring, The Denver Post )
A growing infestation of blood-sucking bugs is making it increasingly difficult for Coloradans and people across the country to sleep tight.
Bed bugs were largely eradicated in the U.S. after World War II, but now they're making a comeback. In the past decade they have increasingly infected homes, hotels, summer camps, and even buses, taxis, movie theaters and a New York City courthouse. Their bites cause skin to swell and itch.
Already, more than 30 members of the Colorado Pest Control Association said the problem of bed bugs has "increased greatly" as a problem in the past five years, according to a survey conducted by Whitney Cranshaw, an entomologist at Colorado State University .
These bedbugs belong to Walter Penny, who uses them to train his dog, Macaroni. The bugs are about the size of this capital "O."
Michael Potter, an urban entomologist at the University of Kentucky, blamed the bug boom on increased international travel and the elimination of pesticides such as DDT.
Potter's studies suggest that bed bugs are becoming resistant to the insecticides typically used to kill them.
"People need to understand that we have a globally building problem that is not going to go away, but will increasingly touch more and more people's lives," he said. "It isn't a huge problem in cities like Denver yet, but it's only a matter of time."
Anecdotal reports of the growing bug problem in Colorado include stories from Halcyon House, a low-income apartment complex in Denver, where an infestation has continued for three years despite weekly applications of pesticides at the building.
"We think these treatments will have to be ongoing forever," said Annette Peterson , the chief operating officer for Kier Property Management and Real Estate , which owns Halcyon House. "I don't think we'll ever be a hundred percent free of them."
See more here:
Bed Bugs Stage A Comeback In Colorado
