How Bedbugs Are Changing The Way Kids Scrounge

Yesterday was moving day in Boston, and the city’s many college students were forced to confront the pest that is eating America: bedbugs. The New York Times shows that while some of our young scholars are blase about the bloodsuckers, there are signs that others, at least, have their priorities straight.

Officials for the Inspectional Services Department spent much of the day canvassing neighborhoods and slapping bright orange stickers on items left on sidewalks. “Caution this may contain bedbugs,” the stickers warn, “do not remove!” An image of a bedbug appears on the sticker to drive the point home.

The warning was not always heeded in one neighborhood teeming with students and recent graduates on tight budgets, hard at work claiming discarded furniture from the sidewalks.

Clay Adaurczyk, 23, let his roommate claim an end table, a chord organ and a bong, but he said he drew the line at a used pillow.