“They Came in the Night to Suck Your Blood!” No. It’s not the latest episode of “True Blood,” it’s just another headline about the latest plague, bedbugs.

Bedbugs sound like such an old-fashioned nuisance, something that had gone the way of buckled shoes, powdered wigs, bloodletting and books. Having bedbugs is like waking up to find that you suffer from dropsy and chilblains. They come from an age before bug spray, indoor plumbing and wrinkle-free sheets. Bedbugs, like pirates, are things we thought we no longer had to worry about, like weevils in the hardtack and putting antimacassars on the furniture. It makes you wonder what other long-forgotten tribulations will hit us next. If only we could get bed bugs to eat salmonella-laced eggs, we could solve two problems at once. But they lust only for our pure, sweet blood.

There’s good news and bad news about bedbugs. The bad news is that most pesticides won’t work on them anymore, and even the ones that work don’t seem to kill all of them. They can live for a year without eating. They will be here long after the last cockroach dies. They also don’t just live in beds. Homes and offices can get infestations. To get rid of them, men in hazmat suits have to move you out and fumigate your place for a few days.