USA: Bedbugs: First, very itchy bites, raised welts overnight; Second, scarlet spots on your sheets, or clusters of little black dots; Third, red bugs, slightly bigger than ticks, crawling on sheets, pillows, legs. ‘This insect is a cryptic, bloodsucking parasite that bites people at night while sleeping, and it’s one tough critter….They used to be extremely common in hospitals and movie theaters, and now, that’s where you pick them up’, says Michael Potter, entomology professor at University of Kentucky. He adds, ‘Every major university in the US has bedbugs in their housing, but they don’t know it or don’t want to admit it.’ (So that tells us his university does.) Bedbugs often feast on one person and ignore another—even in the same bed. They want human blood, but don’t spread a known disease. When they appear to be gone, that’s not the end. ‘They can live for up to a year without a meal….You’ll always have these lingering questions. It’s a little like living with cockroaches, but these guys are living off you’, says Michael Raupp, entomology professor at University of Maryland. They can burrow and live in spaces as thin as a credit card—behind picture frames, in floor cracks and crevices, inside wooden hangers.

They’ve returned to life in the West due to: cheap air travel to exotic locales where the pest was never eradicated; elimination of long-lived pesticides people placed along baseboards. If you go four months or longer without being bitten, you’re probably safe, but check hotel mattress and linens.