Bed bugs and bus riders

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/09/2009 (5846 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s been a year since I ditched the keys and started hopping the bus. The jury’s out on whether I’ll be marking an anniversary again this time next year.

It’s been lovely being green and getting to know fellow busers. I like a lot of the people I’ve met, including those I get to know from half a cell-phone conversation.

Nothing beats leaving the driving to a professional when the snow falls. Dedicated bus lanes are to die for.

But there are drawbacks, not the least of which is the fact that my commute takes an hour each way, despite the fact I live in a central neighbourhood.

And, last week, there was this: About 10 minutes into my north Main ride, it dawned on me that the sustained warmth of my upholstered seat could not be explained by the relative weight of the last occupant. The seat was, in fact, wet.

The driver was terrific about it all. And given the array of ever-entertaining experiences on the bus, a part of me thinks, well, it’s happened only once over 12 months — probably not bad.

Still, walking to work (which I did, to dry off) wet is pretty much a deal breaker. Not even the thought of standing in the wind-swept reaches of a soulless industrial park in the dark of a mid-January evening approaches the distaste of a wet seat.

Truth be told, this is adding to a glass that’s half full of a brew of neuroses. People cough and sneeze on me almost daily on the bus — “promiscuous coughing and sneezing” was how Winnipeg’s medical health officer described it in Sept., 1918 — and I’m growing rapidly intolerant of it as the return of the H1N1 bug grows nearer. I’ve been waiting for the aggressive public health poster campaign to turn the free sneezers into social pariahs and shame them into smothering it in the crook of their arms. It hasn’t happened, so I expect I’ll continue to be a target well into flu season this fall.

Next, I cannot stop thinking about the bed bug infestations that have risen like a plague in this city. Poulin’s tells me that up until 2008, they rarely got calls for bed bugs. Last year, 1,000 visits. It’s a global phenomenon that has enveloped North America, blamed in part on the diminishing menu of pesticides available for battling the scourge and also increased global travel.

Lincoln Poulin travels Western Canada for his business and says infestations cross socio-economic boundaries. He’s treated a hotel where rooms run at $2,500 a night.

Bugs ride the bus. An entomologist told me a student collected a bed bug off the shoulder of a bus rider sitting in front of her.

Bed bugs are not a health threat, per se, but they can wreak havoc if they infiltrate your home, and getting rid of them comes at some cost and great inconvenience.

Poulin tells me it’s unlikely that you’ll carry home a bed bug from a bus, and if he were a transit rider, he wouldn’t change his routine out of fear of bugs. Since he knows how to spot and eliminate them, he may have a higher bug-risk tolerance than I do.

Winnipeg Transit does not have a routine de-infestation program for its buses, which I understand — it reacts to reports of bugs. But I got to wonder what are the chances of someone spotting a bed bug, and then take the time to report it to Transit.

Riding the bus should be a mindless, routine kind of thing. I get cranky having to check the seat, duck a nasal blowback or contemplate the possibility of hitchhiking vermin. I’m sure lots of other riders feel the same.

I’m not sure what the option is because you can’t eliminate the problems that naturally come with sharing your ride en masse.

I can grab the keys and take to the thoroughfare again, but I’ll miss those things that accompany transit, including stress-free commutes on snowy days and the daily mental margarita that those precious minutes of pleasure reading offer.

I’m not entirely sold on being a quitter, but I know I am not a die-hard transit rider. Maybe I’ll start drawing up some posters.