Latest wave of NYC transplants has six legs and piercing sucking mouthparts

If you thought bedbugs were strictly a downstate problem, think again, says the Times Herald-Record.

...[T]hey've also been found in a Kingston clothing store, a City of Newburgh apartment complex, and local movie theaters, office buildings, taxis, moving trucks, homeless shelters and laundromats.

Local pest-control companies say bedbugs are all over the mid-Hudson.

"It has nothing to do with cleanliness or social status at all," said Paul Alley, president of the Pestmaster Services franchise in Kingston. "Everybody goes to the movies, onto planes, trains and automobiles. If you are riding on them or anywhere near where the public gathers, that's where you might pick bedbugs up."

Which Kingston clothing store? The story doesn't say. But, even more terrifyingly -- laundromats? Really? Aren't they supposed to be part of the solution?

We blame Brooklyn.

Photo of Cimex lectularius by Whitney Cranshaw, courtesy of InsectImages.org. Published under Creative Commons license.

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