We all know the familiar bedtime mantra — goodnight, sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite. I remember hearing this as a child and thinking, “That’s nice… wait a minute, did you say bedbugs?” Nobody ever informed me just what a bedbug was. In my mind it was a fearsome bloodsucking creature. Turns out I wasn’t too far off. I didn’t have much to worry about though, since bedbugs were largely eradicated during the 1950s.

Since that time these pests have made quite a comeback. The Guardian in England reports today that bedbugs have risen anywhere from 300 to 1,500 percent over the past six years in some parts of London. There are fears that the problem could get as bad as it was in the 1930s, when one in three homes were infested with bedbugs.