Beastly business enterprise

Infestations of bedbugs have spread throughout New York and no-one is aware where they may flip up upcoming.

In latest days there has been a buzz of exercise inside UN's corridors of electrical power: intense discussions inside hallways, reporters conferring in hushed tones, a flurry of e-mails.

Are the Palestinians about to declare statehood? Is a Security Council about to authorise a military strike on Iran? Is civil war breaking out once more in Sudan?

Nope. Anything of a lot better import if you are a UN correspondent: a creeping infestation of bedbugs.

This can be a scourge at this time afflicting New York, together with the bugs operating rampant by means of hotels and, if one believes the fairly hysterical media coverage, spreading in an uncontrolled contagion to buildings such as theatres, stores, eating places and properties.

Bloodsucking pests

Now, bedbugs usually are not dangerous or life-threatening, although their bites itch and sting.

The actual ache is that, once a place is infested, a significant and expensive fumigation procedure is necessary to acquire rid of them.

A month ago, the UN as a final point admitted it had been battling the blood-sucking pests in a variety of parts of its sprawling office advanced for over a yr.

So their eventual discovery inside UN media centre had an air of grim inevitability about it.

There's only one approach to sniff out bedbugs - with canines. If a canine smells a bedbug, she or he will bark.

So in the demand with the UN press corps, Rover (or some model of him) was enlisted, and we waited with bated breath for the benefits.

The e-mail came at midnight and yes - as opposed to the renowned Sherlock Holmes story wherein the canine will not bark inside night time time - this time, it did (in two studios, no much less).

And one of them was ours. Oh the disgrace. Oh the horror.

Stigma

But what to do?

In the beginning we had very peaceful conversations about fumigation, trying to delay the inevitable publicity. It was hopeless.

We agreed that worse than the BBC possessing bedbugs will be for the BBC to cover up possessing mattress bugs.

In any situation, everyone by now knew. That's one with the banes of functioning in a media centre where journalists have a Rover-like nose for stories.

Some turned it into a joke.

A single threw caution to your wind and knocked on our door to specific solidarity: "I know what it looks like to be stigmatised," he said, "I've had bedbugs."

But most gave the BBC office a wide berth.

In panic, I turned to my husband.

He was dismissive. This terror of bedbugs is ludicrous, he said. It is all component with the culture of fear in America, the most recent model of "reds under the bed". Very first it was communists, then Obama the Islamist terrorist, and now bedbugs.