When Vinnie Orene Fennell got her first bedbug bite, she thought it was a mosquito bite. She didnt think much of it.
Over the course of the next few days, she noticed more red spots on her arms but assumed it was some kind of light rash. Then one night she saw a little bug crawling on her bed at the Rodeway Inn on Eisenhower Parkway, where the Mobile, Ala., resident was staying while dealing with a legal matter in Macon.
I went to flick it off and that thing burst and there was just a good quarter(-sized) area of blood, and I about fainted, Fennell said.
She slept in the other bed that night, but when she checked herself the next morning she realized she had so many bites over her left side, she appeared to have measles. Finally it struck her: She had been a meal for bedbugs.
It took a few minutes for me to wrap my mind around that sudden realization, the 72-year-old Fennell wrote in a letter to the hotel chain. Seriously, it was like someone telling me that people had been discovered on Mars. It was just that alien to me.
Fennell is not the only visitor to Middle Georgia to encounter these blood suckers of yesteryear.
The 13 counties that make up the North Central Health District have had 38 verified bedbug complaints since the beginning of 2011, said Carla Coley, the district environmental health director.
Statewide, there were 132 verified complaints within the same period, but the true statewide number is almost certainly higher because of the way the records were searched and because they include only the 131 counties that use the same reporting system, Coley said.
Plus, the majority of bedbug infestations probably arent reported, Coley said.
For every one where the public calls us, there are going to be five to 10 were not going to get, she said.
Read more from the original source:
Bedbug infestations not uncommon at Middle Georgia hotels, apartments
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