Brooklyn Living: Beware of Garbage With Something Written on It

When we were walking home from the Bastille Day celebration on Smith Street Sunday, we passed some garbage on the sidewalk. Everyone, including us, was walking blithely around this untidy pile without giving it much thought.

We noticed the mattress had something written on it. So naturally, we had to track back and see what it said.


Whoa baby! THANKS FOR TELLING US. We felt itchy all the way home.

After we got home, we remembered hearing that someone in our building recently had bedbugs. We looked at the mosquito bites we recently acquired while gardening ... We never actually saw any mosquitoes ... (Cue the Jaws music.)

We looked up bedbugs on Wikipedia and the news is grim. It seems that bedbug populations in the United States have increased by 500 percent in the past few years.

Then we found the Bedbug Registry, where people report their bedbug sightings. Here's a map of what's been reported in Brooklyn so far:


What if you itch but don't know if you have bedbugs?

Wikipedia says, "The easiest trapping method is to place double-sided carpet tape in long strips near or around the bed and check the strips after a day or more."

We don't think we have them, but we're going to get some tape tomorrow. For scientific reasons.

UPDATE: Brooklyn Bed Bug Complaints Soar 1,900 Percent!

- Brooklyn's Bed Bug Club: Everybody Welcome

Photo by MK Metz