DENVER -- They’re creepy and crawly -- and they’re here in the Mile High City in very large numbers.

Terminex has compiled a list of cities with the largest infestations of bedbugs based on the number of calls for service.

Denver ranks sixth on that list.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” said Assistant Professor of Biology Bob Hancock, of Metro State College. “We’re a destination city.”

Hancock has been studying bedbugs for years.

He told 7NEWS that bedbugs don’t move on people they move on people’s belongings.

“They like to hide in cracks and crevasses in and around areas where you sleep,” he said.

“These guys are particularly diabolical,” Hancock addedd. “You don’t know they’re doing it. They’re incredibly surgical. They bite you at night and you won’t even feel it.”

Monet and Terence Collins know exactly what Hancock is talking about.

“I cried when I found them on my baby’s crib,” Monet Collins said.

“We had to throw everything away. We lost all of our stuff, a lot of our stuff, our furniture and the kids toys.”

“We had to bag everything up,” Terence added. “Terminex told us if we didn’t, it could spread to other people’s homes.”

The Collins’ asked their neighbors if they had bedbugs and when the neighbors said yes, they decided to move.

Hancock said that when there’s an infestation in one unit of an apartment complex or set of row homes the bugs tend to move from one unit to another.

He said there are two ways to get rid of them. One is with heat.

“You can use special heaters to raise the temperature inside a home to 115 degrees,” Hancock said. “That will take care of them.”

He said the other method is with chemicals.

“Chemical companies are a lot less expensive, but they’re going to have to come in multiple time to get them because the chemicals are not going to get down in all the cracks and crevasses and they’re not going to get the eggs,” he said.

The Collins’ are convinced that the bedbugs were in their townhome before they started renting it.

They said the landlord never mentioned any problem when they signed their lease.

“I wouldn’t want anyone to ever have to go through what we went through, having to replace everything,” Monet said.

Hancock said anyone can get bedbugs.

“You are not a dirty person because you’ve got bedbugs,” he said. “You’re an unlucky person.”

The 2010 most bedbug infested cities include:

1. New York
2. Philadelphia
3. Detroit
4. Cincinnati
5. Chicago
6. Denver
7. Columbus, OH
8. Dayton, OH
9. Washington, D.C.
10. Los Angeles
11. Boston
12. Indianapolis
13. Louisville, KY
14. Cleveland
15. Minneapolis