Let me just start off by saying that I hate and fear bugs more than anyone else I know. So, when my roommate started showing me dead little larvae that she was finding in her belongings (I wouldn't let her show me the live ones), it was my worst nightmare. One day, everything in our dorm room was fine, and then the next was total mayhem, full of screaming and panicking and looking up pictures of what bed bugs look like. Thankfully, we did not have bed bugs. Unfortunately, we did have carpet beetles. This is the super fun (please note the sarcasm) story of our experience with carpet bugs.
It started the first week of classes, when my roommate found a tiny empty insect shell in our room. "It's probably nothing," my other roommates and I told her. "Don't worry about it." Oh, how wrong we were.
In the following couple of weeks she found two squirmy larvae in her clothes. IN. HER. CLOTHES. We were both freaked out, to say the least. However, since we didn't have any evidence up to this point that there was anything going on besides two random bugs living in my roommates bottom drawer, we did nothing. No way this could be something bigger. So, my roommate re-washed her bottom drawer of clothing and everything went back to normal.
Or so we thought. My roommate started finding the bugs in more and more of her stuff. I never found anything in my belongings, thank goodness, but my roommate had finally had enough and wanted a solution to the problem. She started panicking more and more, looking up pictures of what it could be. Eventually, she realized we were living with carpet beetles.
She reported the problem the minute we found out what was going on, and the RA's, RLC's, and Residential Life team in general were very helpful and quick to respond to the issue. They had my roommate describe the bug situation in detail and then they sent professionals to our room to spray insecticide.
However, the first time the people came to spray our room, we weren't notified that they were coming, so none of our personal belongings were moved out of the way and they had no idea where to spray. The second time they came out we were told the day that they were coming, but it was very short notice, so we were rushing around on a Tuesday night to get most of our stuff either into the common space in our quad or covered with trash bags, so the insecticide wouldn't damage it. Not something we really wanted to do (or had time for) on a weeknight.
At the end of the day, I'm grateful that the problem was solved and the bugs (to our knowledge) are gone, but it's pretty annoying that they were even there in the first place. Our university claims to deep clean the dorm rooms over the summer, so why were there bugs waiting to infiltrate my roommates belongings when we moved in? Like I mentioned, my roommate started finding shells the very first week of school, so they didn't come from us. We eventually found out that the majority of the bugs were living under my roommates dorm bed, which is property of the school. As students paying a ridiculous amount of money to go to this institution (one which requires all students to live on campus for all four years, might I add) we shouldn't have to deal with problems like carpet beetles. So, while the situation was handled correctly, the university really needs to get it together when it comes to providing clean and safe environments for its students to live in.
