‘I’m sleeping with the bugs,’ Macon woman says of distressing pests

Clara Hunter is on her screened-in porch. It overlooks the corner of Ninadel Drive and Jasamine Avenue, side streets a block or so east of where Montpelier and Pio Nono avenues intersect. The porch is her haven. There’s a sofa, some chairs.

Hunter, who at 75 is lean and agile, has a low, soft voice. When she talks, you sometimes have to lean in to hear her.

Here on her porch on a recent afternoon, her neighbors are out of earshot. Even so, Hunter all but whispers when she tells of her trouble, of the infestation inside her home. It is, for her, as unsavory to speak of as it may be to read about. So be warned.

Her place has bedbugs — and has for two years. They keep her up at night.

They usually roust her about 3 a.m., and after that she can’t rest.

“I’m sleeping with the bugs,” she says. “Every night. Them bugs don’t go away.”

When Hunter was born, she lived in the Round Oak community in Jones County. She and her folks later moved to Macon, to Alabama Street on the eastern edge of the Tindall Heights housing project. She recalls getting skates for Christmas when she was 9 or 10.

“My Mama and Daddy was together,” she says. “We were really happy. Them were some good days.”

Hunter became pregnant and dropped out of school in the 10th grade. She found work for a time making salads at Idle Hour Country Club. Later on, she was a housekeeper.

In 1974, she moved into her 1,500-square-foot place on Ninadel, which was built in 1920. There are azaleas around the porch, and the yard sits up high over the corner atop a brick retaining wall.

She has a son and a daughter and, over the years, has raised her share of foster children. She babysits their kids at the holidays.

Hunter gets a lot of her food from Meals on Wheels.

Tamica Freeman, that organization’s director of social services, says Hunter is “full of humility.”

“She’s very appreciative no matter what you do for her,” Freeman says. “And she’s proud of her property.”

As for the bedbugs, Hunter can’t afford to get rid of them. An exterminator has told her it will cost at least $1,000. She has no idea where the bugs came from.

“This has got me upset,” she says, “because I’ve got to live with them.”

She uses a special bug spray, but it doesn’t help much.

“You can see them coming up from out of the mattress,” she says of the bugs. “I wake up and I’m itching all over. … They get in bed with you and they bite. … I take my fingernails and I pop ’em. … You’ll see ’em hopping up and down. Every night.”

Exterminating the things would probably require her tossing out much of her furniture. Until then, she can’t just throw away her mattress. “If I do,” she says, “what am I gonna sleep on?”

So she is stuck. For now anyway.

“It’s me and the bugs in the bed,” Hunter says. “They ain’t nothing to play with.”

This story was originally published November 25, 2016 at 1:53 PM with the headline "‘I’m sleeping with the bugs,’ Macon woman says of distressing pests."