A video that appears to show a gigantic bedbug infestation at a New York City hotel has gone viral, disgusting hundreds of thousands.
A couple from California stayed at the Astor on the Park Hotel on the Upper West Side near Central Park, claiming they found an infestation of the tiny insects in a mattress. One of the guests took out his phone and started recording.
Elgin Ozlen and his girlfriend were in New York City during the New Year’s celebration and stayed at the hotel. The couple arrived at the hotel on Wednesday.
“It looked like black mud was jammed into the seam of the bed,” he told the New York Daily News. “I lost it. They looked like they could hurt horses. It was a colony, a breeding ground.”
He said his girlfriend suffered approximately 75 bedbug bites on her fingers, arms, toes, and stomach.
Hotel guests were shocked to see the video footage, with some saying they would find another place to stay, the Daily News reported.
For those unfamiliar with bedbugs, they’re a small, oval shaped insect that live on the blood of humans and other animals. Female bedbugs can lay hundreds of eggs, which are about the size of a speck of dust, over their lifetime. They do not transmit any disease, but they usually live in and near beds, feed at night without being noticed, and are notoriously hard to exterminate. By around 1940, they were mostly eradicated in the developed world, but there’s been an uptick in their prevalence since around 1995, which has been attributed to a ban on certain pesticides.
“Bedbugs may enter your home undetected through luggage, clothing, used beds and couches, and other items. Their flattened bodies make it possible for them to fit into tiny spaces, about the width of a credit card. Bedbugs do not have nests like ants or bees, but tend to live in groups in hiding places. Their initial hiding places are typically in mattresses, box springs, bed frames, and headboards where they have easy access to people to bite in the night,” says WebMD.
