Bedbugs

New York is in the middle of bedbug paranoia and some of the anxiety is well placed according to the experts and amount of press coverage that one of the Museum's bedbug experts is receiving...Everybody in the office has sat through these interview where our resident expert intones mournfully about how to avoid bringing bedbugs home with you from a trip or explains how high heat that you use to kill them just might destroy everything in your apartment from melting the glue in your furniture to buckling the floor.

So in New York bedbugs have taken over from headlice as the #1 public enemy. This morning it was my turn to sit in Lou's overstuffed and skeezy office as he did a telephone interview with two major outlets about the prevalence of bedbugs, how he feeds them -- on his arm so they drink his blood - which always grosses me out and then began to hear the crunch of what sounded like paper or lettuce.

Oh, said a researcher, as she popped her head around the test tubes and stacks of books, I'm just making my lunch. And then she was eating it, too.

Double gross in that lab....