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311 complaint of the day: Can't anybody in Boston Public Works tell the difference between dead flying ants and bedbugs?

A disgusted Jamaica Plain resident filed a 311 complaint this afternoon after city workers refused to pick up an old chair out at the curb, because, according to the orange note they left behind, it was covered in bedbugs when, the kvetcher complains, it was actually covered in dead ants from yesterday's extreme aerial ant orgy across much of the area:

It does not have bedbugs. These are flies/ants that have wings. Bed bugs in you google them do not look like this. The chair was out in rain for two days and had a plastic pool on top of it that was filled with bugs and dumped on the chair. I couldn’t add a 3rd image of bed bugs but they don’t look like these bugs at all plus we do not have bedbugs prior to the chair being outside for last 72 hours in storm.

Complaint includes photos of the uninflated plastic pool over the chair, the Public Works checkoff list with "we don't pick up bed bug sofa" carefully laid across scores of dead ants on the chair itself and a closeup of several of the dead ants (compare to this photo of a bedbug).

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Comments

Check out https://www.reddit.com/r/Bedbugs/ for all your bedbug identification and schadenfreude needs.

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Voting closed 14

… with bedbugs anyway? They are annoying but harmless. They don’t spread disease. Doesn’t everything just go to the landfill anyway?

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Voting closed 23

Why wouldn't they pick up something with bedbugs...where the fuck do they think it should go? Back in the house?

Like if something is infested with bedbugs, it's just supposed to permanently sit on the curb?

BPW needs to take some corrective action with that staff/contractor.

I'd like to know what that notice claims. It seems to have a list of reasons they won't collect your trash, but what I can't make out is the reason that is checked.

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Voting closed 21

The picker uppers made up their own category.
Bugger them!

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Voting closed 9

This is a stupid reason, but maybe they're worried that if people can leave infested mattresses at curbside, someone else will pick it up and the bugs will spread. Plausible, but as you say, what the hell else are people supposed to do to dispose of an infested mattress?

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Voting closed 13