Sonia & Jeff – La Quinta, CA (Black Rats)
“It became a nightly occurrence where we’d be awakened by the scratching and the clawing and the squealing.”
Forget Flowers In The Attic — this infestation deals with rats in the attic. Black rats, to be more specific, which apparently are excellent climbers and — get this — jumpers. Ew! So those are the type of rats I saw jumping onto the subway platform in New York at 2 a.m.!
While the exterminators are attempting to rid the attic of the vermin, they keep multiplying. In addition, a nice large stain appears on the ceiling of their son’s bedroom from — you guessed it — rat feces and urine. And it only gets worse. Kevin recalls, “The ceiling had become so thin and moist that I was able to put my finger through it.” Um, okay, but why would you do that?!? Gross!
However, this leads Jeff to knock down portions of the ceiling, allowing the exterminators to find the source of the problem — a pipe which was acting as a direct line from the sewer. When they rerouted the pipe to another location … the rats went away. Imagine that. (Now,why didn’t the last owner of the house do something?)
Lauren & Frank – Matawan, New Jersey (Bed Bugs)
” They were on my baby, on his blanket, on his bed frame … they were crawling and living there like this was their schedule.”
Every time I think of bed bugs, I think of the beginning of Sarah MacLachlan’s “Building a Mystery“: “You come out at night / That’s when the energy comes / And the dark side’s light / And the vampires roam.” Bed bugs are vampires that really only make an appearance in the middle of the night. This makes it incredibly difficult to find them and kill them. During the daylight hours, they are usually hiding — in walls, floorboards, bed frames, and other (mostly wooden) locations. They are incredibly hard to get rid of, because they multiply quickly, and spraying the eggs doesn’t work — you have to spray the actual bug. So even if you think you’ve taken care of the problem and don’t see bugs for a week or so, the eggs hatch and have to be sprayed again. And, in the meantime, you have to do about a zillion loads of laundry, inspect every inch of your mattress, empty your entire room (or apartment, or house) of everything and put it all in garbage bags so that your belongings don’t get sprayed when the exterminators come.
(How do I know so much about this? I have had a number of unlucky friends who have dealt with this problem, primarily in New York City, which had a pretty bad infestation a few years ago.) And this is what Lauren and Frank of Matawan, New Jersey, along with their two sons, had to deal with — not to mention the intense itching from the bites themselves.
Having bed bugs is expensive, frustrating, embarrassing, and frankly, horrifying. And you can’t sleep, pretty much ever. You’re either waking up from bugs crawling on you, or you can’t fall asleep because you’re thinking about when they will come out. As Lauren says, “psychologically, everything has changed.” She can’t stop thinking about where they will be or could be: clothing stores, movie theaters, libraries, and so forth. Plus, there’s a stigma attached to it, as if you’re not clean because you have them.
Lauren and Frank finally get the problem under control when they found out about heat treatment — they got some people to come in and use a gas heater to blow 150-degree air into their home, killing the bugs quickly and efficiently. But despite being free from the bugs, they had ended up in debt because of the amount of money spent on treatments.
Janet & Tom – Marietta, Georgia (Argentine Ants)
“You do feel like you are under siege, so what are you willing to do to win this war?”
Shortly after moving into a new home in Marietta, Georgia, Janet and Tom’s young daughter spots some ants in their backyard. They seem harmless — and they are in the country — so they are pretty much ignored. Until, that is, hundreds of ants are found on the grill, on the car (when a donut is left inside), and then inside the house. Janet has to do daily “sweeps” where she has to spray the entire counter, floor, and many other surfaces and literally wipe away scores of ants at a time.
After Tom finds ants swirling around his wine glass and crawling all over his computer keyboard, he enlists the help of an exterminator. However, the tried and true methods only made the problem worse. It seems as though the ants are getting stronger, even “supernatural,” says Tom. It is discovered that the ants that had taken over are called Argentine Ants, and Tom isn’t too far off when he said that they had super powers.
According to Entomologist Dr. Daniel Suiter, Argentine ants differ from other types of ants in terms of sheer numbers. “The colonies can be in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.” Apparently a network of “supercolonies” stretches from California to Georgia, and one of these just happened to be passing through Janet and Tom’s home.
The turning point came when Tom took a drink of water and had to spit out “20-30 ants,” and his daughter found herself bathing with thousands of them. At a large cost, they tore down the entire structure of their home (which was made of wood), and refinished it with concrete. So far, so good — but there are obviously no guarantees.
I think I’ve had enough scratching and squirming for one day … it’s time for a shower! But … I’m checking the tub first.
Catch new episodes of Infested on Fridays at 9pm Eastern on Animal Planet.
Clacked by Rachel Blum-Jose 
on Jun 07, 2012 @ 18:29 EST5EDT
Hobo spiders are found in US probably from the start of 20th century and at this time they can be found in many states of US including Oregon, Idaho and Nevada, Montana and Utah. I watched animal planet quite but unfortunately I have missed this program, hopefully I will catch this some time in the future in its repeat telecast.