In case you haven’t heard: Bedbugs are back, baby. The little nightmares seem to be making their return via subway, having been found on four N trains, as well as in MTA employee lockers in Coney Island and Astoria. Now, the New York Daily News reports that “a No. 5 train was taken out of service on Friday after a rider reported seeing one fall off a homeless man.” Oh god.
To our great disappointment, MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg said that his employer does not plan to fumigate its entire underground territory. “The subway system has 5.5 million riders every single day and we can’t check all of them for bedbugs before letting them on the train,” he said, practically inviting the bedbugs into each and every one of our homes. “That said, when we get reports of bedbug sightings we investigate — and exterminate. This is an interesting story but not a big problem.”
So, basically, it’s only a matter of time until another train falls to the invading vermin hordes. Which one will it be? Well, a guy from Brooklyn, Hector Berrios, told the Daily News that he spotted — and killed — a bedbug on a 4 train on Friday morning. He sent the paper a photo of the dead insect as proof, but we’d have believed him without the photographic evidence, since the 4 and the 5 share so many stops. Watch out, green-line riders — and everybody else.
