There will be blood
Toronto Life|February 2024
Bedbugs are-no exaggeration-everywhere in Toronto: our libraries, offices, schools, hospitals, hotels, transit and homes. Inside the always expensive, often traumatic, probably futile battle to eradicate the bloodsucking parasites that are ruining our lives
By Lauren McKeon. Illustration by Alex Antonescu
There will be blood

IN the spring of 2017, I moved into a grubby basement apartment in the Beaches. When I went to view it, I could already tell that it would be perpetually damp-it smelled faintly of turned earth and musty sock. It was depressingly dark. There was no place for my desk, and I would have to store my cat's litter box in the shower. Yet I was desperate to move out of the apartment I shared with my soon-to-be ex-boyfriend, and I couldn't afford much else on my freelancer income. Besides, the space did have a few things going for it. I liked the industrial-boho aesthetic of its exposed-brick wall and concrete floors, and there was a washer and dryer squeezed into the bathroom. Plus, the location: I could leave my cave for the sandy, sunny shores of the lake any time I wanted. In a moment of willful delusion, I told myself I could make it work.

I couldn't. Despite the $300 dehumidifier I splurged on, my apartment remained stubbornly soggy. Then, in my first winter there, a couple of days before New Year's Eve, the pipes froze. When the plumber finally arrived, his strategy was to hack into the drywall-raining debris on my floors and furniture-until he found the offending pipe; it took days for my landlord to (badly) patch the gaping holes. After that, ants streamed in, forming undulating lines across my bookshelves, my kitchen counters, my bed. I stocked up on traps and diatomaceous earth, orchestrating the colony's demise with the glee of a serial killer. My relief was fleeting. One day that summer, I arrived home to find an anonymous note in the mailbox. It helpfully informed me that a few houses on the block were battling rats-rats!-and that the rodents could squeeze through the smallest of cracks.

この記事は Toronto Life の February 2024 版に掲載されています。

7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。

この記事は Toronto Life の February 2024 版に掲載されています。

7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。

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