Believe it or not, the internet can be really helpful.
Take Kelli Tarin, for example. She had a possible pest problem and asked for help on Facebook. She got thousands of comments from people offering advice or just wanting to follow her story.
In the end, she figured out the problem and had a big laugh along the way.
In August 2023, Tarin posted in the Homemaking Tips Facebook group asking for help. She and her family had just moved into a rental in west Texas and found something odd. She was reaching out to her landlord and pest control companies for answers.
Tarin shared a photo of what looked like “coffee grounds” and asked, “Does anyone know what this could be? I’ve found two piles of these in my daughter’s room. I clean it almost every day. This happened really quickly.”
Facebook/Kelli Tarin
Her post got a lot of attention, and many people tried to help her figure out the problem.
One person suggested, “Put up a camera to see how it’s getting there.”
Another said, “I’m not sure, but if they’re tiny flying ants, they might be termites. I had them in my old house and would vacuum them up, but they kept coming back.”
Someone else simply suggested, “It might be rat poop.”
As people kept suggesting different things, Tarin updated her post, saying she was not letting her daughter sleep in her bedroom for now.
“We called two pest control companies yesterday, and both said they had never seen anything like this before,” she wrote. “They said if it were termites, the droppings would be different. What we found is crunchy and almost seed-like. It’s very strange.”
Tarin considered possible pests like bats, roaches, and mice but explained why they didn’t fit. While she thought mice were a possibility, she knew the brown piles weren’t mouse droppings.
Even though pest control and her landlord checked the property, it wasn’t until she read a comment on her Facebook post that she started to think differently.
Someone mentioned that their kid’s lavender bear had burst open and the stuffing was similar to what Tarin found. Sure enough, when she checked, she found a lavender bear in the pile.
Tarin threw the bear away, thinking it was infested. But then she got curious and took another look. The stuffed animal had a hole in it, and when she poured out the contents, she found beads inside.
She laughed for 30 minutes, feeling a huge sense of relief.