The itching had gone on for three weeks before Betty finally called for help. Her daughter had suggested that bedbugs might be to blame, but Betty (not her real name) was skeptical. After all, she thought, bedbugs don't travel to affluent neighbourhoods like hers, located just east of Toronto. "That's something they get in Regent Park," she said. "Not here." Contacting Carlo Panacci, a nine-year veteran of the war on bugs, was therefore nothing more than a precautionary measure. But soon after arriving at her home later that October day, Panacci found some troubling signs--rust-coloured spots--in every bedroom. He even uncovered a few live bedbugs hiding in the seams of Betty's mattress.

These tiny bloodsuckers are no longer just in children's rhymes and homeless shelters. In fact, bedbugs, nearly eradicated in North America in the 1950s thanks to DDT, are enjoying a modern-day resurgence. Some blame the green movement and the banning of many pesticides. Others say it's due to the increase in international travel. Whatever the case, bedbugs (dubbed "the pest of the 21st century" by experts) are multiplying at a horrific pace and are being found in all kinds of high-traffic areas--cruise ships, college dorms, doctors' offices, nursing homes, movie theatres, hospitals, airplanes, coffee shops, homes, even five-star hotels. "There is no class discrimination," says Michael Goldman, who owns Purity Pest Control in Concord, Ont., and found some last year in a 6,000-sq.-foot house in Forest Hill, a tony Toronto neighbourhood.

To get a full sense of the bedbug boom, ask any pest control expert. Panacci, for one, used to have a 1-800 number for his company, Cain Pest Control, but cancelled it because he was getting overwhelmed by cries for help from people in B.C., Newfoundland and everywhere in between. He now averages about eight to 10 bedbug inquiries a day. "I got so busy with bedbugs I gave up on raccoons and squirrels," he says. Doug Wadlow, who runs Orkin Pest Control in Edmonton, says bedbug calls are up 300 per cent from 2004. Meanwhile, John Mitten, branch manager of Poulin's Pest Control in Vancouver, says bedbugs will total 25 per cent of his firm's work this year. That's up from 13 per cent in '06. Some U.S. companies are getting as many as 50 bedbug calls a day. "You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see which way this is headed," says Michael Potter, an entomology professor at the University of Kentucky and one of the world's top bedbug researchers. Potter describes the spread of bedbugs as "a bit like a communicable disease."

Since bedbugs don't transmit diseases (the common result of a bite is itchy red welts), public health agencies consider them more of a nuisance than a threat. Try telling that, however, to anyone who has gone through the mental anguish of an infestation. Panacci recently treated the apartment of a middle-class Toronto woman who had thrown away most of her clothes and was living with little more than a single bed, a small TV, a folding tray and a lawn chair. Potter knows someone who slept in a pup tent in his living room for four months, long after the bugs were gone. And Mitten tells the story of a Vancouver nurse who was so desperate for a good night's sleep that she moved into the doctors' on-call room in the busy intensive care unit where she worked while her apartment was being treated (her home required five sweeps before getting a clean bill of health). Even after two treatments, Betty still has trouble sleeping at night and often thinks she sees things when doing chores like dusting. In nearly every case, the slightest itch refuels the paranoia.

Many pest control experts, therefore, split their time on the clock between killing bugs and acting as therapist. "I've had people sitting here in tears, absolutely distraught," says Mitten from his Vancouver office. "It's as if their world has ended." Despite the fact that bedbugs, unlike filth-seeking cockroaches, thrive just as well in pristine environments, the stigma attached to having them weighs heavily. When asked if any of her neighbours have gone through a similar hell, Betty wonders how she would ever know. "This isn't something you talk about," she says. One study of pest control professionals found that 60 per cent of clients are more upset by the discovery of bedbugs than ro­­dents, termites or roaches. It's no wonder bedbug support groups and message boards have popped up on­­line. Even pest control ex­­­­perts suffer the occasional anxiety attack. "A couple of times, I've woken up in the middle of the night, felt some­­thing crawl on me, and just freaked out," says Goldman. "It turned out to be my wife's hair."

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