I recently received correspondence from Caesar S. Flaccus, of Charlottesville, Virginia. Inside a black engraved envelope, on a soft cotton card, offering a fine message.

The letter read:

Dear Mr. Parlato; 

As your readers undoubtedly know, Bed Bug Awareness Week was June 4 – 10.  With participation numbering in the millions, most focused on extermination.

As a business owner, who has been financially hurt by prejudice, I want to start a campaign to call “bedbugs” by their Latin name, “Cimex Lectularius.”

Enclosed, please find a check for $5,000 as payment for an advertorial which I wish you to publish on Frank Report.

Caesar S. Flaccus 

Here we go Caesar

Cimex Lecturalius

Parvus Multi

Reddish, wingless, six-legged, with an attractive segmented antenna, Cimex Lectularius is easy to care for.

Valentina

Marcus

Bellae Facies

Bat bugs typically feed on bats. But when no bats are available, these parasitic creatures will happily feed on humans, too.

Augustus 

Female of the bed bug - Cimex lectularius - on the fur of one of its hosts, a bat. Scale : bug length ~ 5 mm Technical settings : - Focus stack of 78 images - Microscope objective (Nikon achromatic 10x 160/0.25) on bellow

Caecilia 

How Bed Bugs Appear Or Look

 Germanicus 

Julius

All You Need Is a Mattress

Cimex Lectularius will never run away.

Feeding is simple. Lay in bed, expose skin, and wait.

..

[Not to scale]

Marius

Cimex inserts two pointy tubes into an access point.

Octavius (not to scale)

Portia

One tube injects saliva containing an anesthetic, so your rest is not  disturbed. The other tube has an anticoagulant, so your blood flows freely. Cimex drinks six times its weight at every meal!

Nero

Caius

Please allow approximately nine minutes per meal 

Cimex will spend a lifetime (nine months) within a few feet of you at night, and enjoy as many as 40 meals with you.

Not to scale

The human body contains about 5 liters of blood.  Cimex consumes only 5 microliters or 1/1000 of a teaspoon per meal.

Purgatio

Small, dark, sand-like excreta, found in patches with slight blood smears on sheets, are easy to clean. Their exoskeletons, dappled around the bedroom, are so small that no cleanup is required.

Unlike the unpleasant indoor odor of cats and dogs, Cimex has a delicate perfume reminiscent of raspberry when its drupelets transform from dewy-wet red ripe into gray.

Pulchritudo

Cimex has inspired poets and minstrels since the dawn of time.

Hannah Maria Beaver-Frost wrote:

Like a vapor dainty on the downy bed

belly plump with treasure-red, enchantingly blood-fed.

Or Sylvan Rivus in Polchrum:

Tripping with night-dusk smile,

Swarming Hemiptera,

Come ye wild and merry

Sharing ichor

Tempus Praeteritum

Cimex has vestigial wings, which were used when Cimex partnered with Pteropodidae in caves.

Cimex [lower left] Pteropodidae [upper right]

As Beaver-Frost wrote in “Bedsong” –Cimex sang wild notes from Laurasia to Gondwana; his warbling is inaudible to human ear, but not unheard by angels.”

Copulatio

Cornelius and Gaia

Mila

Aurora before…

Aurora after a meal.

Aurora, ready to excite the amorous propensities of lovers.

How Bed Bugs Appear Or Look

Maximus, a suitor

Max puts his head over her left shoulder, an act done by the male Cimex since when dinosaurs began their slow march to extinction.

On Cretaceous wings, Cimex once united in copulation mid-air.

From grassy banks to stalagmite mounds, Cimex evolved to indoor glades.

Equester and Masculus

Romanus and Sabine

Miles and Ovaria

Cimex eschewed matriarchal mandates of consent in favor of traumatic insemination.

The male displays his aedeagus, then punctures her bursa copulatrix. His pip swims to the spermalege and sometimes beyond.

Completed in seconds, copulation leaves masculus unfulfilled. He scampers off to find another blood-rich female, or if no female is available, a red-fed male.

Lubricious

As for the female, soon another virile male appears with his dagger-appendage.

Made alluring by human blood, Cimex femina dispenses with patriarchal virginity preference bias dogma. She will entertain as many as 10 males within 36 hours of a blood meal.

Tatiana 

The last male to proffer reaps last-sperm precedence and sires the most children.

His aedeagus is ready to pierce a blood-rich mate.

Trigger Warning

Inimici Mortales

Cimex has mortal enemies who hunt and eat them.

Beastly Formicidae:

“Consummationem saeculi ultimi Cimex.”

Matriarchal Arachnida:

Trombiculidae:

Scutigera Coleoptrata:

The only one predator, who does not eat what he kills.

Homo Sapiens

Requiem Cimex Vulgata

Henrietta Beaver-Frost spent her life researching Cimex Lectularius and writing about them

Sighing like the night wind,

Sobbing like the rain,

Wailing for lost ones

That n’er come again,

Not mattress,

nor bedsheets

or Eden bed,

They lived,

Unknow’d

drank blood

felt foam,

They are the dead.

No crosses,

row on row,

but streaks as markers

fading red

graves washed clean

with teardrops

mingled

now unseen.

Short days ago

They lived,

felt warm human body heat

were loved,

red-glow’d

Their nectar was

Your vein delight

break not the faith

with the poison’d-died

who drank’d.

now lie,

their cries

scarce heard

amid sprayer-gun

From murder-hand

of the Orkin man

Anatomia

The Homo Sapien and Cimex Lactularius are similar in many ways [not to scale]

Rufus

Sempronius

Wrong Way to Celebrate

Right Way to Celebrate

Cimex Sheets

Plastic Cimex toys