and for a moment, I thought I had bedbugs

When I was undoing my bedding in preparation for my move, I rolled back a blanket and stared in horror at the mattress cover, which was positively riddled with what appeared to be tiny, brown eggs. Holy fuck, I've got bedbugs, was my automatic thought. Immediately after that, I thought about the number of guests who have sat or lain down on my bed. Did they find themselves getting itchy on the way home? I looked up "bedbug eggs" on Google Images, and I saw that the typical color of a bedbug egg (there are apparently several varieties of bedbug) didn't match the particular brown hue of the "eggs" on my mattress cover. I used my lint roller to remove the offending bits from the cover and vowed to wash all my bed linens over the weekend (I'm currently at the office, so I'll start laundering everything tonight).

I thought hard about what was happening. First, I noted that I myself was not covered in bedbug bites—had never been covered in bites, in fact. Putting that fact together with the Google Images search results, I tentatively concluded that the "eggs" might not even be eggs. So what the hell were they? A flash of insight occurred to me late last night, just as I was turning in, and I tested my idea this morning: the blanket that sits directly on the mattress cover is dotted with these minuscule rubber pips that add a bit of texture to the cloth, but no real functionality. Could it be that these little pips had been falling off, perhaps rubbed off the blanket and onto the mattress cover by the action of my tossing and turning, night after night? I couldn't remember what color those pips were, so this morning, I found the blanket, unrolled it, and looked at its bottom side.

Sure enough, the bottom of the blanket proved to be covered in tiny brown, rubber pips that were the exact shape and color of the "eggs" I had seen on the mattress cover. The pips had simply (and annoyingly) been falling off the blanket, scaring me into believing I had bedbugs. Cthulhu be praised, that is not the case. If you're a faithful blog reader who has sat or lain on my bed, you have nothing to fear!

I'm still laundering all my bed linens, though.