Annex Evacuation: Something bugging visitors to City Hall Annex

The bedbug. (Image, Purdue University.)

The flea. (Image, University of Iowa.)

If you thought things are getting a bit buggy at Plainfield City Hall, you might not be far off.

Word comes that the first floor of the Annex, at 510 Watchung Avenue, was evacuated Wednesday after a member of the public complained of being bitten by an insect.

Rumors flew that the building had become infested with bedbugs.

The life cycle of the bedbug. (Purdue University.)
(Click to enlarge.)

This was an interesting conjecture, since I had picked up a handout produced by the Health Division on bedbug infestations just the other day in the City Hall rotunda.

Bedbugs do travel, and have been much in the news lately -- particularly some hotel infestations, which can be difficult and very expensive to eradicate. Bedbugs can travel in furniture, clothing and household linens if moved from place to place. In severe cases, they can even crawl onto people's clothing and be carried off.

Treatment can be demanding, as the article in Wikipedia points out --

It is important to inspect all adjacent rooms for infestation, as bedbugs travel easily and quickly along pipes and boards. In treatment, it is important to consider the insides of walls as potential places for bedbug infestation.

It occurred to me, though, that it is much more likely that fleas may have gotten into the first floor offices, brought inadvertently by a client or clients.

The life cycle of the flea. (Frontline/UK.)
(Click to enlarge.)

Since bedbugs do not come out in the daylight, but fleas have no such compunction, fleas might be the better indication.

I am told that the City quickly had a pest control specialist in, who sprayed thoroughly.

But if you've been itching to go down to City Hall, you may just want to hold off a bit.

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Wikipedia: "Bedbug"
Wikipedia: "Flea"

-- Dan Damon

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