"echinosum" wrote in message
...

OK, a bit off-topic, but some people here seem to know their insects.

For a couple of weeks we've been a bit concerned we have had bugs, as we
keep on getting bitten at night and occasionally we have been finding
bits of insect in the bed, though with my 50-yr-old eyesight it is hard
to be sure they are insect fragments as opposed to bits rubbed off
clothing (my socks are especially prone to shedding fragments). Though
having caught what I presume to be the offenders, I'm fairly sure they
aren't bedbugs. But what?

So, finally, yesterday, my wife caught a live insect in the bed, and
boxed it, but only after manually killing it. But examining this 3-4mm
object? The best I could think of was to take a photo of it with the
macro setting on the camera and try to blow it up on the computer.
Unfortunately it was a bit squashed and the technique was rather less
effective than using a microscope, which in our case we have not got.
And being squashed I wasn't really sure of its true shape. I could just
about see that the abdomen is segmented, which is true of bedbugs, but
many other insects also.

But then later yesterday evening I was just sitting there in the front
room and I found an insect walking up my shirt that I'm pretty sure was
just the same as the one I had recently been examining, and it did seem
to attempt to bite me from time to time when it got onto my hands,
though I persuaded it not to.

I'm pretty clear that this is not a bedbug. The most clear reason for
this is that it is laterally flattened, like a flea, whereas a bed bug,
so far as I can find out, is flattened topically. Also it is very dark,
pretty nearly black, though very dark brown on closer examination, and
shiny, whereas bedbugs, especially younger ones, tend to light brown. It
clearly isn't a flea, as it walked over me with the locomotion similar
to that of a beetle, and it had a pointy end at the back. Though it did
have the tiny head and swollen body typical of various biting things.
Nothing in the insect book seem to correspond very well. My best guess
at the moment is that it is a true bug, ie same family as a bed bug,
though I'd need a microscope to be sure that its body layout
corresponds.

Any thoughts on what this might be, why it is in my bed at night, and is
it going to sod off of its own accord when the seasons turn?


Bed bugs have to shed off their skin 5 times to grow to an adult and that
might be what you are finding in your bed.
My money is on bed bugs.
Have you recently gone abroad? You can bring them back on your
suitcases. There seems to be a severe infestion in London postcodes.
It might be fleas if you have a cat or dog, but fleas do not shuck their
skins in your bed.
Bed bugs do.
I would get a pest control firm in.
Tina