After a good week spent trudging around downtown on the lookout for interesting job opportunities and religiously scanning every local & free paper available, the final motivator came this morning, as I woke in my windowless closet to discovering large red welts all over my legs and feet. I was pretty sure these had not been present the night before, and first thought they must be from some sort of invisible flying insect lurking in my room. Then I realised that it was fairly unlikely that such an insect would crawl all the way down the bottom of my sleeping bag for the express purpose of biting my toes, ignoring the rest of me. After a surprisingly unhelpful exchange of text messages with my family (Mum suggested I was probably suffering from the effects of skin-burrowing parasites), I resolved to consult Dr Google.
Some internet research, hanging halfway out the window to pick up the hostel's wi-fi signal, revealed something rather alarming. Bed bugs, far from being merely a cute way of getting children to go to sleep, are apparently making a 'comeback' in North America, and are commonly found at downmarket youth hostels and backpackers.
It was only slightly comforting to also find an article about an unnamed 'celebrity couple' in New York suing their building manager after they were 'bitten all over' by bedbugs in their apartment. I suspected this was not an option available to me, if only because it would involve having to listen to several more hours of 'forks' rambling, so I have vowed to find work and move into a normal place of residence as soon as humanly possible.
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