Volunteering at a church camp as a camp counselor or at VBS should be a lot of fun and give you great memories, new friends, amazing stories to tell but not bed bugs!
Well that is not always the case but it does happen. One of the many times I went to church camp with my family we came back with bed bugs. I was rather glad that the church told us while we were at camp about the bed bugs. I knew nothing about bed bugs when we went to camp but I sure learned a lot about them.
I learned that not everyone reacts to the bugs the same way. After I was told that there were bed bugs in my room and they were moving me to a different room, I did not notice any bites on my skin but I noticed a boy at the camp was ferociously scratching his arm where the bed bugs had bitten him. I remember thinking I did not know that people reacted so quickly. Some people react rather quickly others never react, while others react after 3 to 4 days, and still others can take a week to react. It took me a week to react.
The bites reminded me of mosquito bites and itched as badly as mosquito bites! Another thing when the bed bugs are biting you and sucking your blood, you most likely will not feel it because they inject a sort of “sedation” to keep you asleep. I do remember waking up the first night thinking I never sleep that well the first night at camp.
Our church gave us black industrial trash bags to put our luggage and bedding in when we got back home and told us to put them in the bags when we got home. Thankfully the ride home was long enough to do some research on the internet. I did not want an infestation in my house. So, I learned I needed to put the suitcases and anything else in the minivan, close up the windows and leave it in the sun for three days. The weather needed to be over 100 degrees which was not hard to achieve in the city I lived in. And then before we went inside, we stripped down to our underwear and ran to the shower. Those clothes and underwear also went in the minivan. After three days we took our clothes and our backpacks to the laundry mat and placed them in the dryer on high for over thirty minutes, in case we did not get everything. Things that could not be placed in the dryer remained in a black bag for a year and a half unless we could not live without it, like retainers and glasses, those things were cleaned.
When I did go through the bags that had been stored away for a year and a half, I found dead Bed Bugs in the bag. So, I am glad our church told us that we had bed bugs at camp and we able to avoid getting an infestation in my house..
Thankfully we avoided those pesky bed bugs from getting in our house!
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