Good night, sleep tight.
Don’t let the fleas bite.
Our family said that a lot when I was a kid. But whenever I said it after I married, Andy would say, “No! It’s not fleas, it’s bedbugs.”
I stuck to my guns until a couple of weeks ago. Now I’m considering the bedbug version. Do you think that might have anything to do with the recent trip we took to see Kaitlin, Torben, and the pups?
December 13, 2017
yep, it was always ‘bedbugs’ here…
and it might have more metaphorical in my earlier days, although in later years there was many stories of bed bugs especially when in holiday accommodation mode…
fleas were more associated with pets…until collars and like came into being.
I assumed most people knew the bedbug version, and at the moment in the U.S. there seem to be more problems with bedbugs than with fleas. As you say, those flea collars have made a big difference.
Here too we have always used bedbugs.
I’m not surprised.
maybe it was your own family’s take on it?
I think fleas were/are more common than bedbugs. (well maybe not now. :))
but I also always heard it to be bed bugs. not even really knowing what they were. but just assuming from the rhyme that they obviously bit you!
now reading about it all it sounds like a minor epidemic of them!
especially in public buildings. yikes!
Yes, apparently some pesticides were effective but are now banned for health reasons. It’s a bit more time consuming to get rid of them, and now it’s easier for them to hitchhike to new locations before they are discovered.
Yup, bed bugs. The origin of “sleep tight” was bed frames strung with ropes to hold the mattress. When the ropes stretched you had to tighten them so you wouldn’t roll into the middle and get stuck there. Useless but interesting information. 🙂
Thank you, I love information like that!
My mother used the bedbugs version of that rhyme often.
We had a bed bug infestation a few years back, my son would often sleep at a friends house and I think they hitchhiked here from one of those places. Fortunately I figured out what it was quite quickly and we got rid of the affected mattress before they spread
We caught ours early too. They were mostly in one box springs, so we encased all of our mattresses and box springs in bedbug proof covers and made islands of our beds with homemade interceptors. We saw only four more crawling on the walls the next couple of days, then none.
There’s a district of Glasgow that’s now so overrun with bedbugs the residents have given up trying to get rid of them and just put up with them. What a symbol of increasing poverty and deprivation….
I agree! That is so sad.