I recently received correspondence from Caesar S. Flaccus, of Charlottesville, Virginia. Inside a black engraved envelope, on a soft cotton card, offering a fine message.
The letter read:
Dear Mr. Parlato;
As your readers undoubtedly know, Bed Bug Awareness Week was June 4 – 10. With participation numbering in the millions, most focused on extermination.
As a business owner, who has been financially hurt by prejudice, I want to start a campaign to call “bedbugs” by their Latin name, “Cimex Lectularius.”
Enclosed, please find a check for $5,000 as payment for an advertorial which I wish you to publish on Frank Report.
Caesar S. Flaccus
Here we go Caesar
Cimex Lecturalius
Parvus Multi
Reddish, wingless, six-legged, with an attractive segmented antenna, Cimex Lectularius is easy to care for.
Valentina
Marcus
Bellae Facies
Augustus
Caecilia
Germanicus
Julius
All You Need Is a Mattress
Cimex Lectularius will never run away.
Feeding is simple. Lay in bed, expose skin, and wait.
..
[Not to scale]
Marius
Cimex inserts two pointy tubes into an access point.
Octavius (not to scale)
Portia
One tube injects saliva containing an anesthetic, so your rest is not disturbed. The other tube has an anticoagulant, so your blood flows freely. Cimex drinks six times its weight at every meal!
Nero
Caius
Please allow approximately nine minutes per meal
Cimex will spend a lifetime (nine months) within a few feet of you at night, and enjoy as many as 40 meals with you.
Not to scale
The human body contains about 5 liters of blood. Cimex consumes only 5 microliters or 1/1000 of a teaspoon per meal.
Purgatio
Small, dark, sand-like excreta, found in patches with slight blood smears on sheets, are easy to clean. Their exoskeletons, dappled around the bedroom, are so small that no cleanup is required.
Unlike the unpleasant indoor odor of cats and dogs, Cimex has a delicate perfume reminiscent of raspberry when its drupelets transform from dewy-wet red ripe into gray.
Pulchritudo
Cimex has inspired poets and minstrels since the dawn of time.
Hannah Maria Beaver-Frost wrote:
Like a vapor dainty on the downy bed
belly plump with treasure-red, enchantingly blood-fed.
Or Sylvan Rivus in Polchrum:
Tripping with night-dusk smile,
Swarming Hemiptera,
Come ye wild and merry
Sharing ichor
Tempus Praeteritum
Cimex has vestigial wings, which were used when Cimex partnered with Pteropodidae in caves.
Cimex [lower left] Pteropodidae [upper right]
As Beaver-Frost wrote in “Bedsong” –Cimex sang wild notes from Laurasia to Gondwana; his warbling is inaudible to human ear, but not unheard by angels.”
Copulatio
Cornelius and Gaia
Mila
Aurora before…
Aurora after a meal.
Aurora, ready to excite the amorous propensities of lovers.
Maximus, a suitor
Max puts his head over her left shoulder, an act done by the male Cimex since when dinosaurs began their slow march to extinction.
On Cretaceous wings, Cimex once united in copulation mid-air.
From grassy banks to stalagmite mounds, Cimex evolved to indoor glades.
Equester and Masculus
Romanus and Sabine
Miles and Ovaria
Cimex eschewed matriarchal mandates of consent in favor of traumatic insemination.
The male displays his aedeagus, then punctures her bursa copulatrix. His pip swims to the spermalege and sometimes beyond.
Completed in seconds, copulation leaves masculus unfulfilled. He scampers off to find another blood-rich female, or if no female is available, a red-fed male.
Lubricious
As for the female, soon another virile male appears with his dagger-appendage.
Made alluring by human blood, Cimex femina dispenses with patriarchal virginity preference bias dogma. She will entertain as many as 10 males within 36 hours of a blood meal.
Tatiana
The last male to proffer reaps last-sperm precedence and sires the most children.
His aedeagus is ready to pierce a blood-rich mate.
Trigger Warning
Inimici Mortales
Cimex has mortal enemies who hunt and eat them.
Beastly Formicidae:
“Consummationem saeculi ultimi Cimex.”
Matriarchal Arachnida:
Trombiculidae:
Scutigera Coleoptrata:
The only one predator, who does not eat what he kills.
Homo Sapiens
Requiem Cimex Vulgata
Henrietta Beaver-Frost spent her life researching Cimex Lectularius and writing about them
Sighing like the night wind,
Sobbing like the rain,
Wailing for lost ones
That n’er come again,
Not mattress,
nor bedsheets
or Eden bed,
They lived,
Unknow’d
drank blood
felt foam,
They are the dead.
No crosses,
row on row,
but streaks as markers
fading red
graves washed clean
with teardrops
mingled
now unseen.
Short days ago
They lived,
felt warm human body heat
were loved,
red-glow’d
Their nectar was
Your vein delight
break not the faith
with the poison’d-died
who drank’d.
now lie,
their cries
scarce heard
amid sprayer-gun
From murder-hand
of the Orkin man
Anatomia
The Homo Sapien and Cimex Lactularius are similar in many ways [not to scale]
Rufus
Sempronius
Wrong Way to Celebrate
Right Way to Celebrate
Cimex Sheets
Plastic Cimex toys
