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Why we truly fear bedbugs
Their blood-sucking ways are just one part of it.
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These little biters have an association with uncleanliness and poverty that makes us fear for our self-worth.
PHOTO: AFP
Howard Chua-Eoan
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If the bedbug and the flea had a contest, the flea would be running far ahead – at least in literary and historical terms.
In the late 16th century, John Donne wrote an erotic poem about the flea (the parasite bites you and then your lover, conjoining the fluids in out-of-body intercourse). Around 1820, William Blake painted the terrifying Ghost Of A Flea, a human-shaped monster carrying a goblet of blood. The flea has certainly been more murderous. Think bubonic plague.
