Kevin Riordan: When the bedbugs bite, he can set things right

January 15, 2012|By Kevin Riordan, Inquirer Columnist

Nocturnal intruders that feast on human flesh are making a star out of Jeff White.

Vampires? Zombies?

Please.

"Bedbugs. They've changed my life," says White, an entomologist whose witty online Bed Bug TV show landed him a recurring - and recently expanded - role on the Animal Planet documentary series Infested!

"An interviewer told me there's something about my face that makes me the person to talk about bedbugs," says White, 33. The goateed Rutgers grad does, indeed, have an appealing and affable presence.

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Consider: Not until 20 minutes into our conversation at the Lawrenceville, N.J., headquarters of his employer, Cooper Pest Solutions, do I find myself saying, "Eeewwww.";

I can't help but react that way after White tells me one too many repulsive facts about bedbugs, which hide in box springs to be closer to their food supply - us.

Thousands of the little bloodsuckers can infest our homes and bite us - typically three times per bug per feeding, for some reason - while we snore.

Fortunately, bedbugs don't live in our hair or under our skin. They don't carry disease and they don't fly, either. But that's about it for the good news.

Bedbugs crawl from room to room, or apartment to apartment. They hitch rides on our clothing and can lurk in upholstered furniture, such as movie-theater seats. They can live for up to a year, too.

And though it takes a pair to reproduce, the sight of even one of the little nasties can be sufficient to ruin a person's sleep for a week.

"They're invading your sanctuary," notes White, who lives in Jackson Township, Ocean County, with his wife, veterinarian Jessica Schulze, and their year-old son, Evan.

In 2007, White inadvertently brought home a most unwelcome visitor.

"I woke up with three bites down the back of my arm," White recalls. "And I thought, 'I know who this is.' I flipped the box spring and saw it.

"My wife handled things very well. She said: 'When I come home tomorrow, there aren't going to be any bugs in our house. If there are, we're going to have an issue,' " he adds. "I took care of it."

How to do that is a focus of Cooper Pest Solution's BedBug Central website, and its series, Bed Bug TV.

Inspired by the Wine Library TV online series, White launched the show in 2008. The 70 fast and often funny clips posted on Cooper's bedbugcentral.com have drawn more than 700,000 hits.

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