Sorry, Bed Bugs, We Can't Return Your Love

Dear Bed Bugs,

On behalf of humans everywhere, I’d like to take this opportunity to recognize your amazing love for us. I did not realize the depth of your love until I read about a research study at Virginia Tech that indicated that you have been attached to us for about 245,000 years — even longer than we humans have been attached to beer. Back then, we lived in caves and did not have beds and couches, so you were just “floor bugs” to us. You had previously lived on bats, another cave-dwelling creature, and decided that we would make better hosts. This was a brilliant choice. Bats would not have taken you to as many places as we did: ships, apartment buildings, cheap motels. You flew on Turkish Airlines, British Airways and a number of other airlines. You even flew first class, something you could have never imagined when you left a cave on the hairy back of a Neanderthal.

Your relationship with humans has been a great one for you (not so much for us). As Andrew Jacobs writes in the New York Times, “When it comes to successful relationships, there’s nothing quite like the long, long marriage between bedbugs and humans, even if the affection goes in one direction.” It’s worth noting, however, that affection going in one direction is something we humans are quite familiar with. You haven’t been to high school if you haven’t experienced one-way love. We don’t know what it’s like to be a bug, but we do know what it’s like to have someone say to us, “Stop bugging me!”

Your relationship with humans is extraordinary not just for duration, but also devotion. As Jacobs notes, ever since you dumped bats for us, you’ve been “monogamous” with us. You do not sleep around with other species. Not once did you even consider leaving a scruffy human for a cute dog. You like to move around, not fool around.

You love us dearly, but the best part is, you do not love us to death. You transmit no diseases. All you do is give us a little bite. Sometimes you leave patterns on our skin, perhaps realizing that many of us can never have enough patterns on our skin. We even put them on our necks and faces. But for some reason, when you leave dots on our skin, we never try to connect the dots and see what appears. A picture of the Pope? A bar of soap? Our horoscope?

Photo from Wikipedia

It’s important for me to note that not all bed bugs dumped bats for us. Some of your relatives stayed on bats, eventually forming a different species from those of you who were smart enough to switch allegiance to the cave-dwellers with considerably more surface area. According to scientists, those guys — a little too batty — just haven’t thrived like you guys. About 12,000 years ago, when many humans stopped migrating and settled down in cities, you guys enjoyed a resurgence. You had been dwindling in numbers, but now, living in cozy buildings with humans, you decided to reproduce like Elon Musk.

That is an understatement, of course, because as Jacobs writes, “a single pregnant female stowed away in a suitcase or hitched to a pant leg can produce 30,000 offspring in six months, all genetically related.” That’s a lot of mouths to feed. No wonder you love motels. Every day, a new human.

According to Dr. Warren Booth, lead author of the Virginia Tech study, one of your superpowers is your ability to overcome what we humans try to do to you. We keep rejecting you, trying our best to make you go away permanently, but you keep coming back, saying, “Will you love me this time?”

No, I’m sorry bed bugs, but after 245,000 years, we still can’t love you back.