Once again, out here in flyover land, we can only brace ourselves as a hot new trend sweeps the continent, led by those hipsters in New York City. I refer, of course, to bedbugs.

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They're finding their way to Pittsburgh already, no doubt drawn by the growing film industry and low housing prices.

Bedbugs don't buy airline tickets (too many little shoes to remove at the security checkpoint), and they don't have wings. But they are tremendous stowaways. All it takes to get your home infested is a night in some third-world city, like New York or Denver, a few six-legged adventurers in your jammies, and a suitcase open in your bedroom. Or anywhere -- they're attracted by heat and carbon dioxide, so they will find you eventually, unless you are hiding in your freezer.

"What?" you say indignantly. "I could never have a bedbug infestation in my home! I change my sheets and I vacuum frequently! Also, I don't wear jammies -- I climb into bed in a rubberized fat-burning cummerbund that melts inches away while I sleep!"

None of that will do you any good.

Bedbugs don't happen because your bed is dirty. Filth is not a prerequisite. They don't prefer poverty or squalor; they will hide in crevices of even very expensive bed frames. Infestations have been found in New York co-ops with addresses that most people can't even afford to park in front of. Exterminators have been very quietly summoned to the finest hotels (and told to enter and leave via a manhole six blocks away).

The problem is that once bedbugs get comfy, it's almost impossible to get rid of them. They're tiny, so they easily disappear deep into a carpet or mattress or piece of furniture and just sit there laughing until the exterminator is done charging you $500 to spritz some weak chemicals around and advise you to put everything you own in plastic bags. Like fashion models and starlets, an adult bedbug can live for a full year without eating. They can wait you out. You will still be there when the exterminator and his chemicals are gone, warm and fresh and full of yummy blood, unless you can figure out some way to spoil.

The ironic part is that, in the vast panorama of threats to your health and safety, bedbugs rank down around the level of chafing underwear. Even though they crawl on you, puncture your skin and suck your blood, they have never been known to transmit diseases to their human entrees, which makes them less dangerous than, say, mosquitoes, which similarly inflict itchy red bites but can also leave West Nile virus or malaria as a tip.

But their special combination of resilience and association with hobo camps and motels that charge by the hour gives bedbugs a cachet similar to that of rats or lice. In the city that invented and patented neurotic, eccentric urban living, afflicted citizens are breaking new ground as they try anything, anything, to free themselves of their nocturnal tormenters.

The pages of The New York Times and The Village Voice are full of shadowy, desperate figures who won't give their names for fear their neighbors will shun them. They leave lights blazing all night to discourage the darkness-loving vermin. They lie on the dining room table. They hunt for black-market DDT, change clothes when they visit friends, stay out drinking. One woman even admitted to letting some guy in a bar take her home with him just to escape the bedbugs, instead of for the usual reason.

There's a Bedbugger blog and a Yahoo bedbug-victim support group. Anxious people bring dead insects in baggies to exterminators, praying to be told they only have carpet beetles or parasitic wasps.

Though infestations have been reported from Nova Scotia to Edmonton and in all 50 states, New York is truly becoming the city that never sleeps.

But not everyone hates bedbugs. There is a children's television series, carried on a number of PBS stations, called, no kidding, "My Bedbugs." It features colorful bedbug characters named Gooby, Toofy and Woozy and a talking pillow named, of course, Snoozy. The plush toys based on these characters would make excellent gifts for any New Yorkers you would like to see jump off a bridge.

"Parents have asked us for My Bedbugs toys for some time," said the show's producer in a press release. "The timing was right. ... We are so happy that My Bedbugs has become part of many children's lives and now they can bring their Bedbug friends into their homes."

Mommy will be hiding in the freezer, drinking bathtub DDT with the Orkin man.