I have been lucky enough to stay in many high priced hotels in my lifetime.  The knowledge about the resurgence of bed bugs has likely afforded me from taking the bloodsuckers home with me over the years.  Two years ago while staying in a pricey hotel in Philadelphia I performed my typical hotel room inspection for bed bugs.  The room was spectacular and cleaned to perfection.  No signs of bed bugs.  As is always my routine when looking for bed bugs, I work from the walls, searching every nook and cranny to the bed (my last stop).

As I peeled back the beautiful Egyptian cotton bedding, at the foot of the bed, there was a strange gathering of unidentifiable material.  It looked oddly like someone had eaten a pile of chocolate chip cookies, not like typical bed bug fecal matter.  As I collected the material with my tweezers and ran the tweezers along the stitching of the mattress, I was surprised to dislodge five live bed bugs of various sizes.  Needless to say, I gathered my bugs and fecal matter and headed off for a conversation with the hotel manager.

Despite me just leaving the room, and even with the live bed bugs in hand, the manager insisted that they call a bed bug sniffing dog in to confirm the whereabouts of the infestation.  The dog and handler would not arrive until the following day, which gave the existing bed bugs time to move on to another room due to the delay in treatment of the pests.  Incidentally, the bed bug sniffing dog did indeed confirm the exact location of the bed bugs in the bed once he arrived.

Please check back on Friday for the conclusion.