The Tale of Mr. Bedbug

Made up on the spot, regaled to a friend via Gmail chat, and now shared with you. Capitalized and punctuated for your reading pleasure.

So once, there was a bedbug. Now this bedbug was really friendly and outgoing, or wanted to be, but he was really lonely. He didn't have any bedbug friends!

Mr. Bedbug lived inside the walls of the bedroom of a little girl named Louisa.

Mr. Bedbug didn't like living in the walls. The spiders and other small bugs didn't talk to him, and the old crochety cockroach that lived down the hall scared him a lot.

One day, Mr. Bedbug crawled out of Louisa's wall, and decided to eat himself a little home in Louisa's dresser.

But Louisa's dresser wasn't ideal. He got a little bit of light, but only when Louisa opened the drawer to pull out some clothes. Sometimes, Louisa's mother opened the drawer, to put clothes back in, but somehow, that was never as much fun.

"The clothes!", thought Mr. Bedbug. "What if I lived in the clothes? There's that green sweater that Louisa really likes. If I lived in that, then I would be around Louisa all of the time! I could see the world, and make friends!"

So Mr. Bedbug packed up his nonexistent belongings, and waited patiently.

In a few days, Louisa's mother put the green sweater in the dresser drawer. Mr. Bedbug hopped onto it and nestled in. Living in a sweater was wonderful! Louisa saw and did so many wonderful things every day! But one thing still made Mr. Bedbug sad. Louisa would talk, but every time Mr. Bedbug responded, Louisa ignored him! He really wanted a friend, and Mr. Bedbug thought he was being very nice. But it was like she barely even noticed him.

So one day, he got angry.

And you know what happens when bedbugs get angry.

They BITE!

But Louisa still didn't notice. She said something about maybe being allergic to something and asked her mother about going to a dermatologist. So Louisa's mother set up an appointment. Mr. Bedbug was very sad, and still very lonely.

So the night before the appointment, when Louisa was getting ready for to go to sleep, she took off her green sweater and threw it onto the bed. Mr. Bedbug was feeling quite cynical (and maybe the sweater was starting to smell, or maybe it was going to get washed tomorrow), so Mr. Bedbug decided to leave.

"Anywhere is better that here!", he thought. So he jumped onto the bed.

Nestling down into the bed, Mr. Bedbug heard a noise.

Lots of noises.

Big, noisy noises.

Party noises.

Noises, that kind of sounded like him! Mr. Bedbug went to investigate.

And he found

a GIANT party. Hundreds of other bedbugs! Chatting and eating hors douvres and knocking over the punch bowl. He casually strolled over and introduced himself. By the end of the night he had many, many new friends, who listened to him when he talked, and even talked back to him!

So Mr. Bedbug, Roger, Gertrude, Eugene and Rhonda went on many adventures together and had a grand time.

And Louisa had a terrible bedbug infestation. Once they finally figured out what was going on, the only answer was to burn the mattress, and the dresser and the sweater.

The moral of the story is: Catch bedbug infestations while they're small.