Bedbugs empty college dormitory in Cherokee Co.

Davante Hudson said his good nights, and he tried to sleep tight, as the nursery rhyme suggested. But the Reinhardt University freshman awoke to, not one, but two bedbug bites.

Hudson and his roommate were victims of the impervious insect, leading their Waleska school to evacuate their entire 71-man dormitory, relocate everyone to bunk beds in the gymnasium for a week and put out the call for exterminators.

Along the East Coast, the emergence of these hibernating, bloodsucking insects has caused a stir as they seem to be turning up everywhere: from a popular teen clothing store in New York City; to a Baltimore neighborhood, where one man threw out his possessions and fled his apartment with only a bag of clothes and a handful of papers; to the college dormitory in Cherokee County.

Bedbugs were nearly eradicated in the U.S. following World War II, but increasing international travel and the ban of high-level pesticides have allowed them to regain a foothold.

At Reinhardt University, school officials said the ordeal, which began a week ago, was expected to end Friday, with the students, mostly freshmen athletes, given the go-ahead to return to their rooms in the Cobb Hall dormitory.

At first, Hudson, who lives in Rome, and his roommate thought they had been bitten by mosquitoes. That is, until they squashed one of the bed bugs and realized it was no normal pest.

But just how did these biting buggers come to burrow their collective way into the dormitory?

The bugs, explained Chuck Tindol, co-owner of All-Good Pest Solutions and leader of the three-day dorm clean-up, often hop rides in backpacks and suitcases, and emerge when they find themselves in a dark and cool place, such as a bedroom at night.

On a college campus rife with a transient population there was plenty of opportunity for bedbugs to turn up, said Roger Lee, Reinhardt’s vice president of student affairs.

Tindol said his crew found no more than 10 of the creepy crawlers after searching all three floors in Cobb Hall and a half dozen other dorms.

“The best thing they did was catch it early,” he said. “Typically, a place like that is teaming with them — hundreds of bedbugs.”

Hudson and another dormitory resident, Warren Staples, said they will take heed when cautioned not to let the bedbugs bite.

“I thought it was a myth,” Staples said of the age-old warning. “Now I know better.”

Staff writers Larry Hartstein and Dan Raley contributed to this article.

How to keep the pests at bay

The insect is known as Cimex lectularius is reddish-brown, has six legs and is roughly a quarter-inch in length; its bite injects an anticoagulant, and causes skin to itch and swell.

• Treating infestations can involve sprays or powders using high heat or freezing temperatures; tenting a home, which can take a week and cost $10,000, is an extreme measure.