“Because the female bedbug has no genital opening, the male inseminates her by using his hardened, sharpened genitalia to punch a hole through her abdomen. With no elaborate courtship ritual, males in a frenzied pursuit of sexual congress often blunder into and puncture the bodies of other males, occasionally inflicting fatal wounds.”

–Good news about bedbugs: They only want to anesthetize us while we’re sleeping, bite holes in our skin, administer an anticoagulant and suck up to three times their own bodyweight of our blood in each ten-minute feeding session-not have sex with us! The bad news is, they’re spreading basically unimpeded throughout our cities now because the they’ve become resistant to the chemical pesticides that eradicated them 50 years ago. Entomologist May Berenbaum’s op-ed in yesterday’s Times was as fascinating as it was disgusting.