Fleas, not bedbugs.

So, I have been realizing more and more that the bites that I was getting that began this summer probably weren't bedbugs, but were rather fleas (perhaps via a cat that the former upstairs neighbors secretly had before they moved out, the fleas being transferred via the laundry room or when I did a walk-around in their apartment just to see the space, before they moved out).

For one, the bites didn't swell like bedbug bites, and they were towards my legs, and not up towards my buttocks and back and all of the large warm muscles that bedbugs prefer.

For another, whatever it was came back after the cycle for bedbugs should have been broken -- it's usually two months for bedbugs -- and it was beyond that when whatever this was reappeared, and that would have been in the timeframe for a delayed hatch for flea eggs.

Really, it's just very annoying... I have next to no fibers in my apartment, but eggs can lay dormant for a very long time, and you just have to catch the newly hatched eggs or the adults and kill them every time right away, until over time all the eggs are hatched and everything is gone and there's nothing left to lay any new ones.

Right now my strategy is not to worry, and if I get a bite -- something that happens every six to ten weeks -- at that point I do my laundry intensively, spray down my bed and much of my apartment with rubbing alcohol, and lay out diatomaceous earth everywhere, to kill those active adults, which (it seems) usually happens right away, since no bites recur right then like if adults were around and feeding.

At some point if I keep doing that, I'll have worn them down, and they'll be gone and it all will stop.

What a pain.