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Wear vinyl or latex gloves when you check for bedbugs. This can protect your hands from being bitten by live bed bugs and the gloves will prevent you from coming into contact with blood from smashed bed bugs. If you don't have any gloves around, wrap a plastic bag over your hand before looking for the bed bugs. Adult bed bugs are around 1⁄4 inch (0.64 cm) long and they have 6 legs. A bed bug that's recently fed on blood will be bright red and round. Once it digests the blood, it will turn a darker brown color and become flat. If the bed bug hasn't fed in a while, it will be a pale brown color. Since bed bugs feed on blood, they can leave behind red or rusty stains if they get smashed. The color may be bright red if the bed bug was recently crushed or the stain may be dark if the bed bug was smashed a while ago. The stains might look like single drops of blood or there will be smears and streaks. Bed bug excrement will look like very small black spots (about this size: •). The excrement can stain the fabric that's underneath it, so you may see dark streaks as well. You should also look for small pale white eggs that are around 1 millimetre (0.10 cm) in size. You may also see pale skins that the bed bug nymphs shed as they grow larger.
Put on gloves to protect your hands. Identify small bed bugs that are red or brown. Look for red stains from crushed bed bugs. Check for bed bug eggs and excrement.