A bedbug with the travel bug samples T.O.

City budget chief Mike Del Grande is reported to have picked up bedbugs on a recent trade mission to The Windy City. A bedbug offers an explanation . . .

I never know whose blood I’m sucking, nor do I care. All I know is, I need to eat. I do it for the kids, I mean the eggs; the missus likes to lay them everywhere she can: in the seams of the mattress; on the chair near the TV; anywhere it’s snug, including — this is such a cliché — the rug.

All along the baseboards, as Bedbug Jimi Hendrix used to sing.

Speaking of blood, if you think about it — and I do, a lot — I can tell you that it is like wine; it has a vintage; you can taste the terroir. The last guy was flinty. That’s a tip-off: older fellow, rightwinger, probably an accountant, surely a politician, no sense of humour, obviously from Canada. How do I know this stuff? You don’t have to be Nero Wolfe. In the first place, nobody from Chicago stays in hotels; therefore, a traveller.

Also, after dining — I’m a wrist man, I like to eat where I can feel a pulse — I crawled off and checked the luggage tag on his suitcase.

What, you think we can’t read? In truth, bedbugs love books.

Also, some of my pals made their way through his papers, and they said they saw lots of numbers in lots of columns, not all of which added up; some stuff written in the margins about gravy and trains, and so on. Therefore, Toronto. I hear it’s a nice place, good for my kind of people, which is why I crawled into the suitcase. Travel is in our blood, blood is in our travel, and we are what we eat; we pick up wanderlust from travellers just as easily as they pick up us. Or, as I like to say, suck a little and see the world. Also, Toronto has virtues. I know this because, according to the rest of the bugs, there were a couple of big guys staying nearby, juicy types, up all night, tired and emotional, talking loudly about respect for the taxpayers.

That’s a tip-off: pols who yap about respect for the taxpayers usually don’t like to spend money on public services used by those very same taxpayers, which usually means underfunded social programs, which usually means not a lot of money spent on eradicating creatures like me.

Look, you seem like a tasty — I mean a nice — person.

Let me wise you up. There are a couple of things you should know.

First, we don’t just come out at night. We come out whenever we smell, not blood, but breath. So, naturally, when you’re lying down and not moving, we know soup’s on.

Second, you don’t feel me biting you because I inject you with a local anesthetic. I guess that’s why mom wanted me to be a doctor. She said I was a natural.

But, like I told her, why go off to school when you can live in hotels and eat for free.

Third, the accountant should have known that the first thing you do, when you check into a hotel, is to draw the bedcovers back, pull up the sheets and look for evidence of us. Let me be blunt. I’m from Chicago. I poop where I eat. The evidence is spotty, but it’s usually visible on the mattress — all you have to do is look.

Now, if you will excuse me, I’m thirsty again. I could use a drink. And so to the Starbugs.

For a Del Grande. Joe Fiorito appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. You can email: jfiorito@thestar.ca