Jul 27, 2007 10:20 pm US/Eastern
Flea Market Find Turns Into Bedbug Nightmare
ST. CHARLES, Ill. (CBS) ―
A family in St. Charles, Ill., hopes its horrendous experience with a vicious pest will help others avoid getting bitten by the same problem.
As WBBM-TV reporter Mike Puccinelli reports, a flea market bargain led to a bloody encounter with bed bugs.
Amanda Thor has welts where bedbugs feasted on her legs. It's been three weeks since the nasty bugs have been exterminated, but her scars still remain. There are bite marks on her leg and stains from the bloodsuckers' droppings on her mattress.
"You need to make sure you look for little brown specks such as this," she advises as she inspects the mattress.
It all started in April when she bought a nightstand from a vendor in this lot in the Kane County Flea Market.
"The first time we knew something was wrong we saw a bedbug here by the leg of the nightstand," she said.
Then her daughter Ellie complained about what she thought were dozen of mosquito bites. Pretty soon they started biting Amanda and her newborn daughter.
Less than a week after the infestation began, Thor figured out that the nightstand was the culprit.
"So the $10 nightstand is now about a $3,000 nightstand," Thor said after having spent thousands to have the bugs eradicated from her home.
Thor says at times she thought the bed bugs might actually take over her house.
"We really thought about boarding up and just moving," she said.
Instead, Thor and her family had to leave their home for a day while it was sealed and treated. With bed bug calls to exterminators rising by more than 75 percent over the past five years, Thor hopes others will learn from her experience.
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