It's hard to imagine Knoxville being #27 considering the size of the city as compared to other cities much larger but further down the list. It does show Knoxville has moved up from #38 last year. What's going on?

The clue may be in the first sentence of the article, where it says "business is booming for pest control companies like Orkin" and the fact that the info is from a report provided by Orkin.

Maybe the Knoxville office is more aggressively reporting. Or maybe Orkin's marketing database analytics noted an opportunity for better penetration (i.e. bedbug remediation and prevention product not achieving expected targets) in this market.

The 1982 World's Fair era motel across the interstate from Turkey Creek (most recently Park something)is supposedly infested with them. It's been closed (condemned?) for several months, but was recently listed for sale. They need to burn the place down.

I travel a lot for business, and I am meticulous about how I handle staying in a hotel room. I check inside the curtains, under the mattress and behind the headboard for evidence of bedbugs, I never unpack my bags, I don't hang anything in the closet, and I never set my bags on the bed or the sofa in a hotel room.

Bedbugs are icky, but the carry no zoonoses. The main problem with them is sleep disturbance, rashes, and the Ick factor. I had to get over my fear of these things when I started doing fieldwork with peasants in the Balkans.