Beastly business

Infestations of bedbugs have spread across New York and no-one understands wherever they will flip up next.

In latest days there continues to be a buzz of activity inside the UN's corridors of electrical power: intensive discussions inside the hallways, reporters conferring in hushed tones, a flurry of e-mails.

Would be the Palestinians about to declare statehood? Would be the Safety Council about to authorise a military strike on Iran? Is civil war breaking out once more in Sudan?

Nope. A little something of considerably better import should you be a UN correspondent: a creeping infestation of bedbugs.

This can be a scourge presently afflicting New York, with the bugs running rampant by way of resorts and, if one believes the rather hysterical media protection, spreading in an uncontrolled contagion to buildings these as theatres, stores, eating places and properties.

Bloodsucking pests

Now, bedbugs usually are not hazardous or life-threatening, whilst their bites itch and sting.

The true pain is that, as soon as a place is infested, a serious and costly fumigation method is necessary to have rid of them.

A month in the past, the UN finally admitted it had been battling the blood-sucking pests in several parts of its sprawling office complex for over a yr.

So their eventual discovery inside the UN media centre had an air of grim inevitability about it.

There's only one method to sniff out bedbugs - with dogs. If a dog smells a bedbug, she or he will bark.

So at the demand with the UN press corps, Rover (or some model of him) was enlisted, and we waited with bated breath for that final results.

The e-mail came at midnight and yes - in contrast to the renowned Sherlock Holmes story through which the dog isn't going to bark inside the night time time - this time, it did (in two studios, no less).

And one of them was ours. Oh the disgrace. Oh the horror.

Stigma

But what to accomplish?

At first we had incredibly quiet conversations about fumigation, seeking to delay the inevitable exposure. It was hopeless.

We agreed that worse than the BBC acquiring bedbugs would be for that BBC to cover up acquiring bed bugs.

In any case, all people by now knew. That is certainly one with the banes of operating in the media centre wherever journalists have a Rover-like nose for stories.

Some turned it into a joke.

A single threw caution for the wind and knocked on our door to specific solidarity: "I know what it looks like to become stigmatised," he stated, "I've had bedbugs."

But most gave the BBC office a large berth.

In panic, I turned to my husband.

He was dismissive. This terror of bedbugs is ludicrous, he stated. It is all component with the culture of anxiety in America, the most recent model of "reds underneath the bed". Initial it was communists, then Obama the Islamist terrorist, and now bedbugs.