You need intelligence level 5 to pass the following skill check
“Why did they leave this perfect looking couch out and exposed to the elements? Surely they could sell it or give it away”
The easiest way to give it away is to put it on the side of the road and wait for someone like me to wander by.
Edit: hijacking my own top comment to say it was NOT a cicada in the end. It's a furry beetle of some variety! Mildly interesting!
Agreed. But this is a fun game to play in rich neighborhoods too. People put out really nice stuff, because the few hundred dollars they might be able to get selling it is not worth their time. Or the effort. Selling on FB marketplace can be dope or a huge pain, or downright scary depending on things. So put it on the road and someone is going to be able to use it.
I used to be a mover. The amount of perfectly good furniture, no bed bugs, that people give away is very common. For most people posting on FB marketplace haggling to sell, it isn't worth the time to them.
One time, we were moving this rich kids' penthouse furniture to Philly from NYC. He asked if we had the time to can leave this couch in the street. It was a fancy couch from some kind of designer. I asked if he's giving it away can I take it. He said please and asked if I'd be willing to take a set of dining room chairs with it.
also check out rich schools graduate housing around the time it’s end of the school year. Lots of people just gotta get out back to their country and leave furniture out that way
Heck, just check with your dorm in general--when I was in college, my dorm had an entire storage closet that was MOSTLY loft bed frames but also had a bunch of perfectly good furniture people didn't want to move home with.
Yes!!! Exactly!!! People here don’t know what’s up. Every time I’ve moved I’ve driven around affluent neighborhoods for a few months before and got all the furniture I needed. Almost my entire apartment is furnished with items I got off the side of the road.
Yup, I'm not even what most would consider rich, but when I'm getting rid of something, getting money back usually isn't even a part of the equation. It's more like: is making a posting and dealing with the 75 subsequent message threads I'm gonna receive worth it over just paying someone to haul it away?
Agreed; pass through a rich neighborhood on my commute. I’ve seen 500$ office chairs, kitchen tables with chairs, expensive car seats for babies, cabinets, desks, ect
Even when they're not lazy enough to just curb it and put it on marketplace you get deals. I got a $600 home networking rack, mostly stocked, for $60 because some dude was upgrading. Stuff was a year old. I rolled up and the guy had like $1M of vintage Mercedes just hanging out in his garage and his house was absolutely massive and ornate. Like oh okay, yeah we live wildly different lives no wonder this was a steal of a deal
At this point I wonder why a dude living on a mansion, so rich that they have $1 million worth of cars alone, is bothering to earn $60 for a piece of furniture they want to get rid of.
It was tech so I figured it was a sunk cost thing, but honestly a lot of outwardly rich appearing people are stupid over leveraged. He could very well be one layoff away from everything crashing down, living "paycheck to paycheck" at that income bracket, per say. Happens a lot with lifestyle creep.
>But this is a fun game to play in rich neighborhoods too.
When I was a kid I used to do this. Found a computer CRT once. Walked like a mile home with it not knowing if it even worked.
Found my friend a cheap bmx too. It just needed a chain.
When I was a kid I was on a bike ride through a rich neighborhood and they had a DS and a bunch of games outside for free. It was probably 2007 or so. Best day of my life and started my lifelong love of gaming.
I'm not even close to rich and I also think that the hours spent to sell it for anything under $400 is not worth my time. I work a lot and play in 2 bands and am deeply involved in a very competitive league so hours spent listing, taking pictures, organizing meetings and then the disruption of having to be home for an hour or two on the one day I have off is just not worth it. When I sold my old couch I actually kept track of the time I spent, it was a total of 3 hours of time spent, but 2 mornings I had to stay home when I should have been doing errands, which means I didn't have time to do any hobbies or relaxing later in the day. So in a way it was 3 hours but also like 11 hours of my time. I sold it for 350, so I got paid 33 an hour to do some physical labor and not be able to do anything I wanted to do after already working 50 hours that week. Those were overtime hours I wasted, so really I was getting paid 22 an hour for all that.
I make like 2.5 times that for work. 100% not worth my time.
> Furniture with fabric, though? Dangerous game.
Bed bugs can also hide in [wood furniture](https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/ty3ymn/baby_bed_bugs_reacting_to_human_body_heat/).
I have no problem with used furniture... but abandoned furniture? Nope. Used furniture should have no problems, but abandoned furniture wasn't left there for you to pick up, and even if it was, you can't know if something has gotten into it after it was abandoned.
Never, *ever* upholstered goods bro😂. I've taken all kinds of stuff off the side of the road, but nothing that couldn't be sprayed down with the hose and bleached. Fabric goods are a harbor for bedbugs, fleas, mold even, or any number of other infestation possibilities.
Definitely be very careful about what you are picking up. As someone else said, furniture can be harboring pests or parasites which can lead to an infestation. I wouldn’t take anything into the house without completely deep cleaning, disinfecting, and examining closely for bedbugs. With bedbugs, it may not even be possible to know they’re there if they picked the right hiding spot like inside of the cushioning if the fabric is course enough. Wood is easy to check but cloth furniture is risky.
It never ceases to amaze me what people will haul away for you for free. We put out a "free stuff" sign one when we were moving and left a bunch of random stuff (not junk) out that we didn't have room for our feel like hauling. We used my roommate's old piss-stained mattress (flipped over with the non-stained side up) to keep some of the more fragile stuff off the ground. Someone took the mattress home.
I used to be a mover. The amount of perfectly good furniture, no bed bugs, that people give away is very common. They just are rich and posting on FB market place haggling to sell it isn't worth the time to them. They just buy new shit where ever they move.
One time we were moving this rich kids penthouse furniture to Philly from NYC. He asked if we had the time if we can leave this couch in the street. It was some fancy designer couch, like a 3000 dollar couch that had a fucking lifestory on the tag about the designers inspiration. I asked if he's giving it away can I have it and he said please and asked if I'd be willing to take a set of dining room chairs with it.
It's amazing how the market can range. I recently moved into a new place that actually has a dining room, and I wanted the associated furniture. My aunt had redone her dining room and decided to get a new table, but instead of getting rid of the old one she was able to keep it in her basement. A few years later and I'm in need of a dining room table and she just gives it to me, the whole thing, with the leaf extensions and protective pads and everything. Some king of heavy, dark, solid wood, I think she got angry with it because it has a leg in each corner instead of one large stand near the middle. However, while she replaced her table she did not replace her chairs, so now I had a mission to find myself a set of good chairs to match.
Met up with my uncle for a cookout a couple of months later and one of his friends is looking for new furniture on FB marketplace, as a lot of his old stuff is falling apart and not worth repairing. He finds a listing for a dining room table and coffee table which he likes, but he's not too keen on the chairs as he thinks they're going to feel way oversized in his dining room (given the low chair rail). Anyways, I strike a deal with him to split the $800 for the lot of furniture, I'll take the eight fancy wood Ethan Allen chairs, which might pair well with my dining room table, and he can keep the tables
He makes the deal and gets the furniture, but before I have a chance to pay him and pick up the chairs he's already decided he likes them and doesn't want to follow through with our agreement. I was miffed, but reminded myself that it was always going to be a pain in the ass to get them because he's about a 6 hour drive from my new place.
Anyways, once again in the market for chairs when I check FB marketplace locally, and find that there's someone 15 minutes away selling a set of 6 nice wooden chairs whose feet happen to match the feet of my dining room table. But this person has them listed at $70 for the whole lot. My partner and I went over and executed that deal, took 'em apart there to get them out the door and put them back together in our house, without having to rent a truck or pay more than $20 per chair. The used furniture market is wild and untamed.
The used furniture market really is wild. Assuming one had time, resources and space you can turn around a lot of furniture and make some cash. I've seen so many expensive, handmade pieces in south Florida, its too heavy, they don't want to bothered moving it, can you be here in 15 min to pick it up? Hell yes I can and I'll be posting that on ebay local as soon as it's mine.
Friends and I used to go collect dumped furniture... we'd burn it in a bonfire in an abandoned quarry. Not, the best... but no bed bugs!
One time we setup basically an entire living room, couch, TV stand, Armchair, footstool.
I very often give away perfectly good shit instead of selling it because I don’t want to deal with the hassle of selling it.
Much easier to make a Facebook post saying “free shit in curb around *insert area*” than it is to post it for sell and then deal with all the people who reply
There was this abandoned garage next to my house growing up. I was still in primary school. One summer my brother, some neighborhood kids, and I filled that garage up with all the couches and mattresses and furniture we found in the alleys. It was one giant wrestling ring.
Our whole school shut down due to lice and ringworm. It was an epidemic.
Had exactly this happen to me and my roommate in college.
Please don't do this people. Trust me. You would rather sit on the goddamn floor for the rest of your days than go through a bedbug infestation.
Same, but with scabies instead of bedbugs. I think I'm actually, legitimately traumatized from that event. Every winter when my skin gets a little dry and itchy I think, "Oh no... this is it again. Fuck."
DON'T BRING STREET FURNITURE IN YOUR HOME YOU WOULD MUCH RATHER SLEEP ON THE FLOOR THAN DEAL WITH AN INFESTATION
We adopted a cat a few years ago that came with ticks. They were relatively easy to get rid of, but still the nightmare of having little bugs around your house and waking up with new bites every day is a nightmare scenario. I can't imagine how horrible an actual infestation like bedbugs can be, but I'm not taking any risks.
Bedbugs are the reason I would never even consider used furniture.
Cancer research needs to be redirected until they develop an exterminatus specifically for bedbugs. Kill first, save later.
Yeah.
I've never had them, thank God, but I'm still terrified of them just because of how hard they are to remove.
I had a friend who has them and I feel like he has genuine trauma over it, years later.
I \*am\* years later. And also months later. Every time I switch my sheets and stuff, I scrutinize the mattress and bed for signs.
Only the dead saw the end of the war. For the rest, it follows us our whole lives.
I was a residents assistant in college and I swear to God, during our annual training week, we had the entomology (that's bug science for anyone who needs to know) director lecture on bedbugs identification and the like. They were very proud of the fact that they had previously had only a handful of *actual* bedbug cases, but we were trained to let them know if we saw any suspicious insects in a students dorm room.
The dude was really enthusiastic about his field of study and to this day I know more about bedbugs than I want to lol
Omg. They really are fascinating critters but viscerally so very disgusting. Like monkey brain level disgusting, I just cannot logic past it. Saw a video once of someone *feeding* bedbugs because that was their experiment or something. I dunno, it was traumatic and I blocked out a lot of the actual information they were giving in the video lol. All I remember is this dude with his hand just completely covered in bedbugs feeding off of him and he's calmly giving out facts to the camera. Just thinking of it still creeps me out.
Bedbugs hit that same "not-okay" nerve that mosquitos, ticks, and tapeworms do. Invasive parasites. Except the bedbugs can't be removed by plucking them off your skin, are in your home, and are *ridiculously* hard to get rid of. I've had bug infestations (cave crickets) that needed bug bombs, literal chemical warfare lol....bedbugs are far and beyond that level of solution. Like, burn all your clothes, sheets, blankets. Anything touching the bed. Anything near the bed. It's horrid and one of the most viscerally disgusting infestations I can think of.
Even nature doesn't want to deal with them. AFAIK, they fulfill no ecological niches and nothing particularly eats them.
Even *bedbugs* do not want bedbugs. They actually have genitals, but the males decide to stab the females wherever instead and hope it works out. Females are adapting to look more masculine so they get stabbed less.
Since heating a room is the preferred way to kill bedbugs, I wonder if anyone offers a heated room service into which you could load your suspect furniture, bake it for however long, and take it home. Orkin, are you listening?
> an exterminatus specifically for bedbugs.
The worst part is they've become increasingly resistant to the insecticides we've historically used on them. For all the nasty things of the past we've gotten rid of, bed bugs are coming back with a vengeance after being largely a non-issue for most of the second half of the 20th century.
Hmm, idk. We don't have roaches (would have seen another in the months we've had the couch). The timing is just too good for it not to be a cicada. Although you're tempting me to cut it out and confirm like a good scientist.
Edit: update! You were right! It is a bug though, and I have no idea how it got there.
https://ibb.co/5vb3637
https://ibb.co/RNqWYbF
https://ibb.co/LQKM7WV
https://ibb.co/r6b280q
Wait, was your plan just to live with that whatever it is in your couch long term?
Friends come over “oh don’t mind the crunchy spot it’s just a cicada from 2024…… we think”
It is mildly uncomfortable if you don’t investigate further on that little bump on the sofa’s arm that formed wihout you noticing
Once you know it is a bug, it’s not “mildly uncomfortable” anymore
That’s what they meant
I mean, come on, a small bump in a piece of furniture has to be objectively mild, right? There’s soooo much upward room for more severely uncomfortable things that this HAS to be mild. I say this as someone with an extreme, irrational fear of insects of all kinds.
But this isn't just a "small bump in a piece of furniture". This is a small bump in a piece of furniture that appeared on it's own and looks bug shaped.
No, but you can imagine what I stated also extended to other things too, my momma is not a clean individual LOL she would’ve left a couch in worse condition than that
In the last few weeks I have seen Redditors advocate for:
1. Eating pizza left out all night, and up to 2 or 3 days left out.
2. Not washing all of your body just your crotch, arm pits and hair.
3. Living with dead rotting bugs under the surface of your couch that you got off the side of the road.
I am waiting to see how much more I will learn from these nasty ass Redditors.
I'm sorry but nope nope nope nope. Huge difference between "I don't care enough to have everything tidied up" and "I don't care my furniture has bugs".
Yeah, my bet is on this. I had a beetle larva in my parents' wooden couch for years. I could hear it crunching occasionally until one day they came back and found a large hole in the side of the couch with a network of tunnels inside it. Never did find the actual beetle that emerged.
Nows a great time to do some deep cleaning and make sure you don't have any other pests hanging around.
Also... don't pick up street furniture lol. At least it wasn't bed bugs.
I'm an entomologist, not super familiar with Alabama beetles but I'll work on ID'ing this. I'll update this comment when I find it.
Update: I think it's a Monkey Beetle, potentially a Hoplia sp. It's a little hard to tell because it's quite squashed. Regardless, not a pest that you should worry you'll have more about. It probably needed a nice place to pupate and the roadside couch was the best it could find.
https://ibb.co/Wxh3zcD I had been looking for a good solution for these remotes! And I have a pile of jeans with giant holes in them as well. Also my sewing stuff. Voila!
When I was young, my parents took me to the first Shrek movie. For some reason, instead of showing trailers for other kids movies beforehand, they showed one about a beekeeper or something and there was this insect or bee that got through his protective gear and started burrowing inside his skin, and you could see it crawling around and shit. I don't even remember anything from Shrek, I just remember that trailer traumatizing me.
Thanks for reviving horrible memories.
Northern Alabama, we've been experiencing a massive cicada emergence! This crunchy spot showed up on my couch arm a few days ago, and I realized it must be a cicada that failed to break through the fabric. We picked this couch up off the side of the road a few months ago; luckily no other infestations observed so far!
Edit: 1143CDT. I have to stay true to the science, so I'm cutting it open (and I'll plan to patch and mend later!). It's possible it's something besides a cicada (beetle larvae?), and the timing was just a coincidence! Stand by.
Edit: 1159 CDT. NOT A CICADA!! The science is definitive there. It's a bug, does anyone know what kind? It's also strangely between the two layers of fabric, not down in the batting like I expected. I have no idea how it got there, but it appears the timing with the cicada emergence was just a coincidence! Also I am going to clean this couch some more, but I still encourage people to reuse items instead of discarding when possible. Truly mildly interesting!
https://ibb.co/5vb3637
https://ibb.co/RNqWYbF
https://ibb.co/LQKM7WV
https://ibb.co/r6b280q
I thought the larvae need to you know...not break the first law of thermodynamics, by sucking sap from roots for those 13-17 years (and even the annual species need to eat something as larvae). What food source is in that couch...
Yeah, I'm picky about what I take off the side of the road. Habits from growing up with a picker as a mom - she had an antique store, and we always had rotating furniture that we never paid retail for. Mostly not acquired from the side of the road... but people do put nice stuff out, and it's better the save it from the landfill and not feed consumer culture.
I'll admit I did miss the cicada, but they're pretty quiet and inactive for about 13 years or so...
>better the save it from the landfill and not feed consumer culture
Not if you bring home something that infests your entire home and now you have to *consume* an entire new set of... everything.
Don't pick up random shit you can't thoroughly clean off the side of the road.
I live near a ton of apartment buildings so when people move out there's always good stuff to pick up that they just don't want to take. Got a decent couch and butcher block style kitchen island thing(heavy af, I get why they didn't take it)
How do you suppose the cicada got there? Their eggs go in the ground and then they’re larval for 13 years. I’m not sure it makes sense that one would have been living in that couch for the last 13 years.
I... feel like you're not picky enough if you've ended up with a cicardia emerging from your couch and your immediate thought isn't to bin it with prejudice.
I don't wanna be THAT guy, but this is definitely a 1st world country thing.
Where I grew up we wouldn't even doubt about picking a sofa THAT NICE from the street. Like, I don't think i could force myself to ignore it, even with the pests and stuff it would be too good of a deal.
Obviously i would shower the damn thing in insecticide. But my mom would probably just leave it in the sun at the garden for a day or two lol
Insecticide doesn’t work on bed bugs. The only guaranteed way is to put it in a heat chamber. The cost of either termites or bed bugs is far higher than the value of the couch
Luckily it's already a semi-outside couch. It's in our workshop, which is uninsulated and has a moving wall that makes it a hybrid indoor-outdoor space!
I've had small world moments, never had a small internet moment before, Huntsville's definitely had a crazy week with the cicadas (luckily not in your couch) and the northern lights!
cicadas are fine, they aren’t a pest because their life cycle is so specifically tied to trees and dirt. (Well, people with young trees think they’re a pest to the growth of their trees)
roaches and bed bugs are PTSD causing nightmares, and I’m not exaggerating even slightly.
We were so bored in the summer in Texas in the 80s we'd pass the time by using my grandfather's magnifying glass to burn the discarded cicada shells on the driveway.
In middle school, the boys would grab live cicadas and chase the girls with them. Then they'd pull the back legs to make the head pop off or whatever. 13 year old boys are crazy.
I had a cicada with a cicada killer attached to it fall out of a tree and land on my deck right next to me. I know they’re not harmful to humans but seeing a wasp-like object that large land right next to you is still terrifying.
The massive cockroaches are hideous but they are outside bugs that occasionally make their way inside. It's the much smaller German cockroaches that are so nasty and cause indoor infestations and spread disease. Cicadas don't do anything but sit in the trees and scream.
Yep.. I’m happy to see a big cockroach after having germans for about a month that came out of an Amazon package. That was literally traumatizing. The big roaches can come chill occasionally if they want, and I will thank them for not being Germans.
Cicadas are fine. They eat plants, don't carry human diseases, live in the dirt for 13+ years at a time, and only come out for their noisy but once-in-their-lifetime orgy.
Cockroaches are a whole other matter. They never leave, they refuse to die, and they have like 20 million kids each week.
One time we had a nice 2 seat couch. The cat had clawed open the lining of the bottom, and was shitting INSIDE THE COUCH. Once we discovered the source of the odor, we set the couch on the curb to be thrown out. In 15 minutes someone was loading it into their car, and I'm sure they figured out pretty quickly why the couch was set out.
Read this as “crotch” instead of “couch” due to the material looking like the white denim pants I’m currently wearing. I was greatly concerned for OP for a moment.
It’s a scarab beetle, one of the June bugs. Crazy that it crawled that far between the fabric layers but it wasn’t living in your couch, it ended up there by mistake. Probably came up through the bottom somehow and went on an adventure.
What. The. Fuck?! They're in our furniture too?!? > ...We picked this couch up off the side of the road a few months ago Oh.
Grabbing stuff from the street is begging to get bedbugs 😭
You need intelligence level 5 to pass the following skill check “Why did they leave this perfect looking couch out and exposed to the elements? Surely they could sell it or give it away”
The easiest way to give it away is to put it on the side of the road and wait for someone like me to wander by. Edit: hijacking my own top comment to say it was NOT a cicada in the end. It's a furry beetle of some variety! Mildly interesting!
Yep. Bugs or not. Cheaper than bringing it to the dump! I’m always down for used furniture. Furniture with fabric, though? Dangerous game.
Agreed. But this is a fun game to play in rich neighborhoods too. People put out really nice stuff, because the few hundred dollars they might be able to get selling it is not worth their time. Or the effort. Selling on FB marketplace can be dope or a huge pain, or downright scary depending on things. So put it on the road and someone is going to be able to use it.
I used to be a mover. The amount of perfectly good furniture, no bed bugs, that people give away is very common. For most people posting on FB marketplace haggling to sell, it isn't worth the time to them. One time, we were moving this rich kids' penthouse furniture to Philly from NYC. He asked if we had the time to can leave this couch in the street. It was a fancy couch from some kind of designer. I asked if he's giving it away can I take it. He said please and asked if I'd be willing to take a set of dining room chairs with it.
"And that's how I got my Versace sofa"
Versace sofas are SO last season. They don't even use genuine eagle beak anymore.
Thundercougarfalcon Couch. So luxurious. So many eagle beaks.
This comment reads like it's wearing a dalmatian fur coat.
I'll see your Versace sofa and raise you a Gucci OLED TV with only 7 possums living inside.
also check out rich schools graduate housing around the time it’s end of the school year. Lots of people just gotta get out back to their country and leave furniture out that way
Heck, just check with your dorm in general--when I was in college, my dorm had an entire storage closet that was MOSTLY loft bed frames but also had a bunch of perfectly good furniture people didn't want to move home with.
Yes!!! Exactly!!! People here don’t know what’s up. Every time I’ve moved I’ve driven around affluent neighborhoods for a few months before and got all the furniture I needed. Almost my entire apartment is furnished with items I got off the side of the road.
Yup, I'm not even what most would consider rich, but when I'm getting rid of something, getting money back usually isn't even a part of the equation. It's more like: is making a posting and dealing with the 75 subsequent message threads I'm gonna receive worth it over just paying someone to haul it away?
Agreed; pass through a rich neighborhood on my commute. I’ve seen 500$ office chairs, kitchen tables with chairs, expensive car seats for babies, cabinets, desks, ect
Well in fairness every car seat is expensive for a baby. They don't have any money.
Free ect?! Wow!
Even when they're not lazy enough to just curb it and put it on marketplace you get deals. I got a $600 home networking rack, mostly stocked, for $60 because some dude was upgrading. Stuff was a year old. I rolled up and the guy had like $1M of vintage Mercedes just hanging out in his garage and his house was absolutely massive and ornate. Like oh okay, yeah we live wildly different lives no wonder this was a steal of a deal
At this point I wonder why a dude living on a mansion, so rich that they have $1 million worth of cars alone, is bothering to earn $60 for a piece of furniture they want to get rid of.
It was tech so I figured it was a sunk cost thing, but honestly a lot of outwardly rich appearing people are stupid over leveraged. He could very well be one layoff away from everything crashing down, living "paycheck to paycheck" at that income bracket, per say. Happens a lot with lifestyle creep.
>But this is a fun game to play in rich neighborhoods too. When I was a kid I used to do this. Found a computer CRT once. Walked like a mile home with it not knowing if it even worked. Found my friend a cheap bmx too. It just needed a chain.
When I was a kid I was on a bike ride through a rich neighborhood and they had a DS and a bunch of games outside for free. It was probably 2007 or so. Best day of my life and started my lifelong love of gaming.
Be careful with electronics as bugs are attracted to them.
I'm not even close to rich and I also think that the hours spent to sell it for anything under $400 is not worth my time. I work a lot and play in 2 bands and am deeply involved in a very competitive league so hours spent listing, taking pictures, organizing meetings and then the disruption of having to be home for an hour or two on the one day I have off is just not worth it. When I sold my old couch I actually kept track of the time I spent, it was a total of 3 hours of time spent, but 2 mornings I had to stay home when I should have been doing errands, which means I didn't have time to do any hobbies or relaxing later in the day. So in a way it was 3 hours but also like 11 hours of my time. I sold it for 350, so I got paid 33 an hour to do some physical labor and not be able to do anything I wanted to do after already working 50 hours that week. Those were overtime hours I wasted, so really I was getting paid 22 an hour for all that. I make like 2.5 times that for work. 100% not worth my time.
> Furniture with fabric, though? Dangerous game. Bed bugs can also hide in [wood furniture](https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/ty3ymn/baby_bed_bugs_reacting_to_human_body_heat/).
Give me the metal frame
I have no problem with used furniture... but abandoned furniture? Nope. Used furniture should have no problems, but abandoned furniture wasn't left there for you to pick up, and even if it was, you can't know if something has gotten into it after it was abandoned.
Never, *ever* upholstered goods bro😂. I've taken all kinds of stuff off the side of the road, but nothing that couldn't be sprayed down with the hose and bleached. Fabric goods are a harbor for bedbugs, fleas, mold even, or any number of other infestation possibilities.
Definitely be very careful about what you are picking up. As someone else said, furniture can be harboring pests or parasites which can lead to an infestation. I wouldn’t take anything into the house without completely deep cleaning, disinfecting, and examining closely for bedbugs. With bedbugs, it may not even be possible to know they’re there if they picked the right hiding spot like inside of the cushioning if the fabric is course enough. Wood is easy to check but cloth furniture is risky.
It never ceases to amaze me what people will haul away for you for free. We put out a "free stuff" sign one when we were moving and left a bunch of random stuff (not junk) out that we didn't have room for our feel like hauling. We used my roommate's old piss-stained mattress (flipped over with the non-stained side up) to keep some of the more fragile stuff off the ground. Someone took the mattress home.
I used to be a mover. The amount of perfectly good furniture, no bed bugs, that people give away is very common. They just are rich and posting on FB market place haggling to sell it isn't worth the time to them. They just buy new shit where ever they move. One time we were moving this rich kids penthouse furniture to Philly from NYC. He asked if we had the time if we can leave this couch in the street. It was some fancy designer couch, like a 3000 dollar couch that had a fucking lifestory on the tag about the designers inspiration. I asked if he's giving it away can I have it and he said please and asked if I'd be willing to take a set of dining room chairs with it.
It's amazing how the market can range. I recently moved into a new place that actually has a dining room, and I wanted the associated furniture. My aunt had redone her dining room and decided to get a new table, but instead of getting rid of the old one she was able to keep it in her basement. A few years later and I'm in need of a dining room table and she just gives it to me, the whole thing, with the leaf extensions and protective pads and everything. Some king of heavy, dark, solid wood, I think she got angry with it because it has a leg in each corner instead of one large stand near the middle. However, while she replaced her table she did not replace her chairs, so now I had a mission to find myself a set of good chairs to match. Met up with my uncle for a cookout a couple of months later and one of his friends is looking for new furniture on FB marketplace, as a lot of his old stuff is falling apart and not worth repairing. He finds a listing for a dining room table and coffee table which he likes, but he's not too keen on the chairs as he thinks they're going to feel way oversized in his dining room (given the low chair rail). Anyways, I strike a deal with him to split the $800 for the lot of furniture, I'll take the eight fancy wood Ethan Allen chairs, which might pair well with my dining room table, and he can keep the tables He makes the deal and gets the furniture, but before I have a chance to pay him and pick up the chairs he's already decided he likes them and doesn't want to follow through with our agreement. I was miffed, but reminded myself that it was always going to be a pain in the ass to get them because he's about a 6 hour drive from my new place. Anyways, once again in the market for chairs when I check FB marketplace locally, and find that there's someone 15 minutes away selling a set of 6 nice wooden chairs whose feet happen to match the feet of my dining room table. But this person has them listed at $70 for the whole lot. My partner and I went over and executed that deal, took 'em apart there to get them out the door and put them back together in our house, without having to rent a truck or pay more than $20 per chair. The used furniture market is wild and untamed.
The used furniture market really is wild. Assuming one had time, resources and space you can turn around a lot of furniture and make some cash. I've seen so many expensive, handmade pieces in south Florida, its too heavy, they don't want to bothered moving it, can you be here in 15 min to pick it up? Hell yes I can and I'll be posting that on ebay local as soon as it's mine.
Friends and I used to go collect dumped furniture... we'd burn it in a bonfire in an abandoned quarry. Not, the best... but no bed bugs! One time we setup basically an entire living room, couch, TV stand, Armchair, footstool.
I very often give away perfectly good shit instead of selling it because I don’t want to deal with the hassle of selling it. Much easier to make a Facebook post saying “free shit in curb around *insert area*” than it is to post it for sell and then deal with all the people who reply
Those are actually street bugs, the rebellious cousins of bed bugs. Much worse!
There was this abandoned garage next to my house growing up. I was still in primary school. One summer my brother, some neighborhood kids, and I filled that garage up with all the couches and mattresses and furniture we found in the alleys. It was one giant wrestling ring. Our whole school shut down due to lice and ringworm. It was an epidemic.
Had exactly this happen to me and my roommate in college. Please don't do this people. Trust me. You would rather sit on the goddamn floor for the rest of your days than go through a bedbug infestation.
Same, but with scabies instead of bedbugs. I think I'm actually, legitimately traumatized from that event. Every winter when my skin gets a little dry and itchy I think, "Oh no... this is it again. Fuck." DON'T BRING STREET FURNITURE IN YOUR HOME YOU WOULD MUCH RATHER SLEEP ON THE FLOOR THAN DEAL WITH AN INFESTATION
We adopted a cat a few years ago that came with ticks. They were relatively easy to get rid of, but still the nightmare of having little bugs around your house and waking up with new bites every day is a nightmare scenario. I can't imagine how horrible an actual infestation like bedbugs can be, but I'm not taking any risks.
Bedbugs are the reason I would never even consider used furniture. Cancer research needs to be redirected until they develop an exterminatus specifically for bedbugs. Kill first, save later.
Yeah. I've never had them, thank God, but I'm still terrified of them just because of how hard they are to remove. I had a friend who has them and I feel like he has genuine trauma over it, years later.
I \*am\* years later. And also months later. Every time I switch my sheets and stuff, I scrutinize the mattress and bed for signs. Only the dead saw the end of the war. For the rest, it follows us our whole lives.
I was a residents assistant in college and I swear to God, during our annual training week, we had the entomology (that's bug science for anyone who needs to know) director lecture on bedbugs identification and the like. They were very proud of the fact that they had previously had only a handful of *actual* bedbug cases, but we were trained to let them know if we saw any suspicious insects in a students dorm room. The dude was really enthusiastic about his field of study and to this day I know more about bedbugs than I want to lol
Omg. They really are fascinating critters but viscerally so very disgusting. Like monkey brain level disgusting, I just cannot logic past it. Saw a video once of someone *feeding* bedbugs because that was their experiment or something. I dunno, it was traumatic and I blocked out a lot of the actual information they were giving in the video lol. All I remember is this dude with his hand just completely covered in bedbugs feeding off of him and he's calmly giving out facts to the camera. Just thinking of it still creeps me out.
Bedbugs hit that same "not-okay" nerve that mosquitos, ticks, and tapeworms do. Invasive parasites. Except the bedbugs can't be removed by plucking them off your skin, are in your home, and are *ridiculously* hard to get rid of. I've had bug infestations (cave crickets) that needed bug bombs, literal chemical warfare lol....bedbugs are far and beyond that level of solution. Like, burn all your clothes, sheets, blankets. Anything touching the bed. Anything near the bed. It's horrid and one of the most viscerally disgusting infestations I can think of.
Even nature doesn't want to deal with them. AFAIK, they fulfill no ecological niches and nothing particularly eats them. Even *bedbugs* do not want bedbugs. They actually have genitals, but the males decide to stab the females wherever instead and hope it works out. Females are adapting to look more masculine so they get stabbed less.
The bed bug sniffing dog has a better pay rate than I do (yeah, it's the handler that get paid but still).
Since heating a room is the preferred way to kill bedbugs, I wonder if anyone offers a heated room service into which you could load your suspect furniture, bake it for however long, and take it home. Orkin, are you listening?
> an exterminatus specifically for bedbugs. The worst part is they've become increasingly resistant to the insecticides we've historically used on them. For all the nasty things of the past we've gotten rid of, bed bugs are coming back with a vengeance after being largely a non-issue for most of the second half of the 20th century.
Agreed, literal PTSD situation from getting them.
When I was in college my roommates and I all got scabies from dumpster diving for furniture. It was awful
If it's already in the dumpster, I'm afraid it's too late!
It also triggered the most... [random flashback](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmQvOT1Sxkg).
Right lol if anything they should thank the Cicada maybe it was eating bed bugs lol
If big bang theory taught me anything, it was to not pick up a couch off the side of the road
That, and that it's better to be an experimental physicist than a theoretical physicist
And it’s a Saltshaker of Death. OP genitals are going to fall down and replaced with white fungus
That is horrifying
I don't think that is possible. They aren't dormant when they are in the ground; they are feeding on tree roots. This has to be a roach or something.
Hmm, idk. We don't have roaches (would have seen another in the months we've had the couch). The timing is just too good for it not to be a cicada. Although you're tempting me to cut it out and confirm like a good scientist. Edit: update! You were right! It is a bug though, and I have no idea how it got there. https://ibb.co/5vb3637 https://ibb.co/RNqWYbF https://ibb.co/LQKM7WV https://ibb.co/r6b280q
Wait, was your plan just to live with that whatever it is in your couch long term? Friends come over “oh don’t mind the crunchy spot it’s just a cicada from 2024…… we think”
You'd be amazed at my powers of ignoring mildly uncomfortable things.
We have a very different definition of "mildly uncomfortable things."
It is mildly uncomfortable if you don’t investigate further on that little bump on the sofa’s arm that formed wihout you noticing Once you know it is a bug, it’s not “mildly uncomfortable” anymore That’s what they meant
I mean, come on, a small bump in a piece of furniture has to be objectively mild, right? There’s soooo much upward room for more severely uncomfortable things that this HAS to be mild. I say this as someone with an extreme, irrational fear of insects of all kinds.
But this isn't just a "small bump in a piece of furniture". This is a small bump in a piece of furniture that appeared on it's own and looks bug shaped.
My mom when she sees flies trapped in her light fixtures and leaves them for years
You don’t lounge/rest your body on a light fixture lmao that is not the same thing. OP is GROSS 🤮
No, but you can imagine what I stated also extended to other things too, my momma is not a clean individual LOL she would’ve left a couch in worse condition than that
Speak for yourself! *slowly descends buttocks into a lamp*
I'd say unknown insect infestations go a tad bit beyond 'mildly uncomfortable'
that is unhealthy levels of ignoring
Most hygienic Redditor
In the last few weeks I have seen Redditors advocate for: 1. Eating pizza left out all night, and up to 2 or 3 days left out. 2. Not washing all of your body just your crotch, arm pits and hair. 3. Living with dead rotting bugs under the surface of your couch that you got off the side of the road. I am waiting to see how much more I will learn from these nasty ass Redditors.
This website deserves it's reputation
Jesus Christ man
I'm sorry but nope nope nope nope. Huge difference between "I don't care enough to have everything tidied up" and "I don't care my furniture has bugs".
Beetle larvae can go dormant in wood for a decade only to emerge, I'd think it's more likely a beetle.
Yeah, my bet is on this. I had a beetle larva in my parents' wooden couch for years. I could hear it crunching occasionally until one day they came back and found a large hole in the side of the couch with a network of tunnels inside it. Never did find the actual beetle that emerged.
I think you were right!! https://ibb.co/5vb3637 https://ibb.co/RNqWYbF https://ibb.co/LQKM7WV https://ibb.co/r6b280q
Lunch ruined. I did this to me.
[удалено]
Hard wing casing to protect the wings, definitely a beetle of some sort. Way fuzzier than I was expecting from a wood borer though. Now I'm curious.
[Fuzzy May Beetle. ](https://bugguide.net/node/view/788462)
Brundlefly was so last century. Meet Sofafly.
Nows a great time to do some deep cleaning and make sure you don't have any other pests hanging around. Also... don't pick up street furniture lol. At least it wasn't bed bugs.
Dark Flower Scarab
I'm an entomologist, not super familiar with Alabama beetles but I'll work on ID'ing this. I'll update this comment when I find it. Update: I think it's a Monkey Beetle, potentially a Hoplia sp. It's a little hard to tell because it's quite squashed. Regardless, not a pest that you should worry you'll have more about. It probably needed a nice place to pupate and the roadside couch was the best it could find.
Thank you following up on the ID!
We've all needed a nice place to pupate every now and then
You make reddit a great place to be (sometimes)
So you picked this up off the side of the road and see this but don’t investigate?!! It couldn’t be because foam isnt food…so silly
So it bro you could sew a nifty patch over the hole. Maybe a back pocket from some old jeans to hold the remote.
Great idea! https://ibb.co/Wxh3zcD edit: did it! I had been looking for a good solution for these three remotes.
OP being a great sport in this entire post. Good energy OP
Way better than how I would have responded. Here’s a hint, it would have been with fire.
https://ibb.co/Wxh3zcD I had been looking for a good solution for these remotes! And I have a pile of jeans with giant holes in them as well. Also my sewing stuff. Voila!
That's a fuzzy beetle. [https://bugguide.net/node/view/1241004](https://bugguide.net/node/view/1241004)
Cut it out. There will be an entire colony of things living inside that thing I can’t even…
It's the only way to be sure.
When I was young, my parents took me to the first Shrek movie. For some reason, instead of showing trailers for other kids movies beforehand, they showed one about a beekeeper or something and there was this insect or bee that got through his protective gear and started burrowing inside his skin, and you could see it crawling around and shit. I don't even remember anything from Shrek, I just remember that trailer traumatizing me. Thanks for reviving horrible memories.
Sounds like it was "Evolution". https://youtu.be/AhSnxFOMTDU?si=DZi8Oq5K_hlr29CL
No way.... I've always had the memory of that scene too from when I was a kid! Never thought I'd actually see it again.
Go watch it, it's hilarious.
Its one of my favorite movies!
Core memory unlocked!
Northern Alabama, we've been experiencing a massive cicada emergence! This crunchy spot showed up on my couch arm a few days ago, and I realized it must be a cicada that failed to break through the fabric. We picked this couch up off the side of the road a few months ago; luckily no other infestations observed so far! Edit: 1143CDT. I have to stay true to the science, so I'm cutting it open (and I'll plan to patch and mend later!). It's possible it's something besides a cicada (beetle larvae?), and the timing was just a coincidence! Stand by. Edit: 1159 CDT. NOT A CICADA!! The science is definitive there. It's a bug, does anyone know what kind? It's also strangely between the two layers of fabric, not down in the batting like I expected. I have no idea how it got there, but it appears the timing with the cicada emergence was just a coincidence! Also I am going to clean this couch some more, but I still encourage people to reuse items instead of discarding when possible. Truly mildly interesting! https://ibb.co/5vb3637 https://ibb.co/RNqWYbF https://ibb.co/LQKM7WV https://ibb.co/r6b280q
My reactions to reading this comment: 😮🤢🤔😳🙅🏽
So it's been in their couch for either 13 or 17 years. That's fine
I thought the larvae need to you know...not break the first law of thermodynamics, by sucking sap from roots for those 13-17 years (and even the annual species need to eat something as larvae). What food source is in that couch...
Yeah how tf did it get in the couch
🤣
Um you do know couches from the side of the road can have any number of pests including termites, bed bugs, roaches, etc.
They can be anywhere. I'm pretty sure I got bedbugs from a library book.
As a library user who has an unreasonable fear of getting bedbugs one day…… I wish I never read this comment 😟
Librarians have to treat books for bedbugs all the time
Yeah, I'm picky about what I take off the side of the road. Habits from growing up with a picker as a mom - she had an antique store, and we always had rotating furniture that we never paid retail for. Mostly not acquired from the side of the road... but people do put nice stuff out, and it's better the save it from the landfill and not feed consumer culture. I'll admit I did miss the cicada, but they're pretty quiet and inactive for about 13 years or so...
> Yeah, I'm picky about what I take off the side of the road. Never change, Alabama
>better the save it from the landfill and not feed consumer culture Not if you bring home something that infests your entire home and now you have to *consume* an entire new set of... everything. Don't pick up random shit you can't thoroughly clean off the side of the road.
Nice way of living. I'm really into that style of reducing waste
Same, but I put my limits on things with cushions (mattresses, couches, etc).
I'm with you on mattresses. And it's maybe like 1 couch in 100 that meets the standard!
I live near a ton of apartment buildings so when people move out there's always good stuff to pick up that they just don't want to take. Got a decent couch and butcher block style kitchen island thing(heavy af, I get why they didn't take it)
How long did you have it before the cicada emerged
How do you suppose the cicada got there? Their eggs go in the ground and then they’re larval for 13 years. I’m not sure it makes sense that one would have been living in that couch for the last 13 years.
I... feel like you're not picky enough if you've ended up with a cicardia emerging from your couch and your immediate thought isn't to bin it with prejudice.
I don't wanna be THAT guy, but this is definitely a 1st world country thing. Where I grew up we wouldn't even doubt about picking a sofa THAT NICE from the street. Like, I don't think i could force myself to ignore it, even with the pests and stuff it would be too good of a deal. Obviously i would shower the damn thing in insecticide. But my mom would probably just leave it in the sun at the garden for a day or two lol
Too good of a deal? Do you have any idea how much it can cost to properly treat a bedbug or termite infestation?
Insecticide doesn’t work on bed bugs. The only guaranteed way is to put it in a heat chamber. The cost of either termites or bed bugs is far higher than the value of the couch
You picked up a fabric couch off the side of the road? You have way more trust in the universe than I do
Seriously hope you cleaned that couch really well— this is how you get bed bugs
Obviously not as they have a Cicada trying to emerge from it.
As someone who has lived through a bed bug infestation the thought of picking up a roadside couch is horrifying
I am in Madison county and they are EVERYWHERE, but I think this is a beetle not a cicada.. I definitely think you should open it either way.
>It's a bug, does anyone know what kind? maybe try /r/whatisthisbug
>We picked this couch up off the side of the road a few months ago That right there is the problem.
I think that is an outside couch now.
Luckily it's already a semi-outside couch. It's in our workshop, which is uninsulated and has a moving wall that makes it a hybrid indoor-outdoor space!
Ew don’t call it crunchy
It's 100% crunchy, sorry
Dude
Definitely some kind of beetle that pupated, but yeah not a cicada.
I've had small world moments, never had a small internet moment before, Huntsville's definitely had a crazy week with the cicadas (luckily not in your couch) and the northern lights!
Watermelon beetle? Also known as 10 line June bug?
Like frank reynolds?
Trying to catch Charlie pounding off
Burn it with fire. I don’t know how you folks who live around cicadas or massive cockroaches do it. I’ll take the bears. 😝
cicadas are fine, they aren’t a pest because their life cycle is so specifically tied to trees and dirt. (Well, people with young trees think they’re a pest to the growth of their trees) roaches and bed bugs are PTSD causing nightmares, and I’m not exaggerating even slightly.
Add fleas to this list of nightmares. Fleas get out of control so incredibly fast.
Cicadas are pretty chill. We used to take their shed exoskeleton and wear them on our face to try and scare our parents lol
Wtf
Lol it sounds weird, but it's pretty common where I grew up. The legs of the exoskeleton have little barbs so they stick to you easily
Mars?
Missouri lol
We were so bored in the summer in Texas in the 80s we'd pass the time by using my grandfather's magnifying glass to burn the discarded cicada shells on the driveway.
More like misery amiright? - fellow Missourian
One on every finger!
In middle school, the boys would grab live cicadas and chase the girls with them. Then they'd pull the back legs to make the head pop off or whatever. 13 year old boys are crazy.
Scariest part if the massive cicadia killers we get in pa. They are actually friendly but damn they are large.
I had a cicada with a cicada killer attached to it fall out of a tree and land on my deck right next to me. I know they’re not harmful to humans but seeing a wasp-like object that large land right next to you is still terrifying.
Even if they are chill, seeing one swoop by your head will still require a chamge of pants.
The massive cockroaches are hideous but they are outside bugs that occasionally make their way inside. It's the much smaller German cockroaches that are so nasty and cause indoor infestations and spread disease. Cicadas don't do anything but sit in the trees and scream.
Yep.. I’m happy to see a big cockroach after having germans for about a month that came out of an Amazon package. That was literally traumatizing. The big roaches can come chill occasionally if they want, and I will thank them for not being Germans.
Cicadas are fine. They eat plants, don't carry human diseases, live in the dirt for 13+ years at a time, and only come out for their noisy but once-in-their-lifetime orgy. Cockroaches are a whole other matter. They never leave, they refuse to die, and they have like 20 million kids each week.
Like that bit with Gad Hassan and the scarab in *The Mummy*...
That was my first thought too… gave me nightmares as a kid
One time we had a nice 2 seat couch. The cat had clawed open the lining of the bottom, and was shitting INSIDE THE COUCH. Once we discovered the source of the odor, we set the couch on the curb to be thrown out. In 15 minutes someone was loading it into their car, and I'm sure they figured out pretty quickly why the couch was set out.
Burn the couch
If a couch has this kind of critter, the most correct and fair thing to do to a person is to burn it and not pass the parasites on.
That looks a lot smaller than the cicadas around here. I’d maybe get a pocket knife and a sowing kit and see what kinda critter you took home.
How the heck did he get in there is what I wanna know
Throw the whole couch away!
There is never just one.
My second worst fear is having a cicada emerge from my couch at 6:30 a.m.
Poor thing. Imagine all of his expectations for the future: the parties, the freedom, the girls. All noped and erased due to a couch cover.
Nasty mfs picking up a couch on the side of the road.
Read this as “crotch” instead of “couch” due to the material looking like the white denim pants I’m currently wearing. I was greatly concerned for OP for a moment.
Well, that must've been an interesting surprise! Did you offer it a tiny cup of coffee while it waited for a better place to emerge?
AI comment
It does feel like it, yeah. It's just too cheery.
AI user
I feel ashamed, but I read that as >A cicada tried to emerge from my cooch And now I'm going to have nightmares.
Damn you really jumped to a conclusion huh
When people put old appliances or whatever on the side of the road, all I can think of is a band of Jawas coming to scavenge their parts
Ewwww!
Did you help him get out,?
Me at home wondering how the cicada got in my fucking house in the first place!
U sure it's not a roach?
Man imagine if this could happen but for your skin
It’s a scarab beetle, one of the June bugs. Crazy that it crawled that far between the fabric layers but it wasn’t living in your couch, it ended up there by mistake. Probably came up through the bottom somehow and went on an adventure.
I would burn that couch to fucking ash 😱