Bedbugs tuck into Southland - Calls to exterminators are rising. Eradication is neither quick nor cheap.

The Cimex lectularius, better known and despised as the common bedbug, is snuggling into households across Southern California, giving people the heebie- jeebies. The blood-sucking, heat-seeking, pint-size parasites aren't believed by the experts to transmit disease, but they do have a way of cranking up stress levels.

"It was just horrendous," said a West Hollywood middle-school teacher, who, like others who have been horrified to have lived with the uninvited guests, asked that she not be identified. "Think of how you wouldn't sleep at night if you had roaches, and this is even worse," she said. "These roaches feed on you."

They used to be associated with cramped and dirty living quarters, grimy motels and high-rise living in places like New York. For much of the second part of the last century the liberal use of the eventually banned pesticide DDT seemed to all but do away with them. Now bedbugs have moved into single-family homes with a vengeance and taken up lodging in schools, hospitals and college dormitories too. The wide-open spaces of the West are no defense.

"Bedbugs are just going ballistic everywhere," said Michael Potter, a professor of entomology at the University of Kentucky. "It is going to really rock this country. I'm not trying to sound sensationalist."

Bedbugs hitchhike on humans or in luggage and burrow into bedding, books, sofas and just about any cozy place, even picture frames. Once they establish squatter's rights, evicting them isn't easy. Or cheap. Casting them out of the average house in Southern California can cost thousands of dollars and require multiple visits.

"The last customer we dealt with compared it to having her home destroyed by fire or flood," said Sean Murray, manager of exterminator Orkin's branch in Pasadena.

Seven years ago, a pest control company may have received one or two bedbug calls a year, according to the National Pest Management Assn. Now there may be 50 or more calls a week.

Western Exterminator Co., which serves California, reported a 240% increase in bedbug work from 2000 to 2006. Isotech Pest Management Inc. in Pomona is conducting about 1,000 inspections a month -- 700% more than last year.

It's "a huge problem," said Isotech owner Mike Masterson, whose staff includes a pair of beagles professionally trained to sniff out bedbugs.