Enter the bedbug.

In the past two days, UMaine’s almost six-year-old video “How to Look for and Avoid Bedbugs in Hotel or Motel Rooms” has been viewed 800,000 times after the website Lifehacker picked it up and Yahoo Travel and Fox News followed suit.

“Then it went into the Facebook world,” said John Rebar, executive director of the cooperative extension. “On Tuesday, it crossed a half-million mark and here it is Thursday and it’s at 1.3 million. It was pretty exciting before, and now it’s 1.3 million and growing. I don’t know when it’s going to stop.”

The video is five minutes of pest management specialist Jim Dill combing a hotel room with his flashlight, pulling out dresser drawers, checking the seams of a mattress and suggesting the best spots to look for tell-tale blood. 

“Yahoo described him as having a sweet New England accent,” Rebar said.

Lifehacker, a how-to website of everyday fixes and advice, highlighted the video on Jan. 25 in an article about searching out bedbugs in hotel rooms.

“Somebody texted me and said, ‘Some blog picked up your video, so you might get a few more hits,'” said Dill, who’s worked at the cooperative extension for 35 years.

His video has been online since Oct. 1, 2010, around the time bedbugs started becoming a pronounced nuisance, and had about 100,000 views, great by extension standards.

Dill plays it very straight and practical in the clip, talking viewers through how to check a room and where to look, and above all, how they ought to keep luggage in the bathtub until the room gets the all-clear.

“For a lot of people, the thought of being fed upon while you’re sleeping is really creepy,” Rebar said. “Eradicating bedbugs can be very hard and very expensive. It’s not something the typical homeowner can do themselves very successfully.”

Hence, the educational video. And bam! The unexpected takeoff and a million-plus educated.

“I don’t think we’ve ever reached that many people so efficiently and inexpensively before,” he said. “For the University of Maine, we’re a pretty big institution and we have a lot of video content out there, but to have the most popular videos in our history be about planting raspberries and bedbugs is really kind of funny.”

Dill has rolled with the ribbing about the unexpected YouTube fame.

“I’m often at the Legislature,” he said. “Everybody down there is giving me good-natured grief, but the funny thing is they’ve all watched it.”

He’s at work now on follow-ups. Ticks. Mosquitoes. Maybe a nod to the Zika virus.

“We’re wondering now: How do you capitalize on that to get more education out?” Rebar said.

He has, of course, watched the video and followed Dill’s advice — mostly with good results.

“(Once) I went to a national conference,” Rebar said. “I went to my hotel room. I was running late. I threw my luggage in the bathtub, went to my meeting, came back a few hours later, well, the faucet had been dripping, so all my stuff was wet. I sent (Jim) an email and he laughed about that one. I was bedbug-free.”

kskelton@sunjournal.com