I hate to be the bearer of bad news.

And this news that I needed to deliver was particularly bad. A phone call from an unnamed couple somewhere on Martha’s Vineyard (the reason for anonymity will soon be clear) asked if they could bring in an insect for me to identify. They feared the worst, believing that they knew what they had in their glass jar, and were looking for confirmation of their suspicions.

In this case, being right was all wrong.

Much to this couple’s dismay, they were correct in their identification of bed-bugs. (I can almost feel you shudder.)

Peering into the jar, I viewed the culprits. I can no better describe their appearance than did John Southall, who wrote an entire book on bedbugs in 1730. In his Treatise of Buggs, he observed that “A Bugg’s Body is shaped and shelled, and the shell as transparent and finely striped as the most beautiful amphibious Turtle, has six legs most exactly shaped, jointed and bristled as the Legs of a Crab. Its Neck and Head much resemble a Toad’s. On its Head are three Horns piqued and bristled; and at the end of their Nose they have a Sting sharper and much smaller than a Bee’s. The Use of the Horns is in Fight to assail their Enemies, or defend themselves. With the Sting they penetrate and wound our Skins, and then (tho’ the Wound is so small as to be almost imperceptible) they thence by Suction extract their most delicious Food, our Blood.”

By day, these insects can hide out in the cracks and crevasses of your mattress, rugs, curtains, walls or any dark, dry place in your home, until they emerge under the cloak of darkness to drink your blood.

You could easily be sleeping with the enemy and not know it. They conceal themselves well, coming out at around 3 or 4 a.m. attracted by body heat and exhalations of carbon dioxide. If you have an infestation and are quick, you can jump out of bed and turn on the lights to catch a glimpse of them. Likely you will only learn of the bedbug’s existence from the itchy, red bumps that their 10-minute feeding leaves behind on your exposed skin. These bites appear as three to four punctures in a row, affectionately (or ironically) called breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The rash and itchiness are caused by the bedbug’s distinct method of eating. As members of the order Hemiptera, or “true bugs,” they have a dual-channeled proboscis for feeding. After they’ve injected their proboscis into a victim, saliva is pumped through one channel to begin the digestion process. Their food, a mixture of their saliva and your blood, returns to the insect via the second channel. It’s really quite an elegant system, but it’s still creepy.

Bedbugs can quickly disappear after their meal and may not return for another snack for a week even when food is plentiful. Sometimes, though, food is hard to find, as in a not-so-busy hotel. Bedbugs can adapt to a slump in business far better than the hotel manager can, as the bugs can actually go without food for up to a year.

Thus it may seem that they miraculously appear. Aristotle hypothesized that these “bugs are generated from the moisture of living animals, as it dries outside of their bodies.” In truth, the spread of these vampire insects happens quite easily, through both passive and active means.

Wings are not part of this bug’s anatomy, so they cannot fly. Bedbugs move by walking or running — or hitchhiking — to a new locale. Most troublesome is their mode of passive movement on people and furniture. Just dragging an infected mattress to the dump provides for many opportunities of transmission to others’ bodies and possessions. Or consider a stay in an infected hotel room — your luggage provides all the public transportation that they need!

As the quote above from Aristotle shows, bedbugs are not a new problem. The ancient Greeks, though, made the best of a bad situation by finding uses for these vermin. Physician Dioscorides advised patients to mix these bugs with meat and consume this dish to treat malaria.

Another remedy suggested that one drink them with wine and vinegar to expel leaches. Perhaps their most disturbing use was as a treatment for painful urination, by mashing bedbugs and “inserting the mixture up the stricken orifice.”

Though this doesn’t sound very nice, neither are these bugs, to even their own kind. Bedbugs practice ‘traumatic insemination.’ Their method of reproduction involves the male bedbug inserting his sharp organ into the female’s abdomen. Sperm will swim from the wound through the blood in the abdominal cavity and then to her ovaries.

It’s hard to find anything that is not disgusting about these insects.

Therefore, it is not surprising that I root for the predators of the bedbugs. I highly encourage the spiders, ants, centipedes and masked bedbug hunters, and wish them the best of luck. Likely, however, these predators will not be able to make a dent in a bedbug infestation. Victims are, unfortunately, on their own in their quest to repel a bedbug invasion, and must try every (increasingly drastic) remedy at their disposal.

With all of this in my mind, I find it almost impossible to think of going to bed. I bet that you do, too. We can only hold on to the old saying, “Good night, sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

Suzan Bellincampi is director of the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Edgartown.