Couch Monsters

The neighbors across the street have couches and armchairs on their front porch. These aren't wimpy, spindly couches and armchairs, either. Although I have never stepped onto their porch and sat on their couches (because that would be creepy), they look pretty cushy.

Couches on the porch aren't really a problem if the porch is screened in and/or well-covered. But this porch isn't screened in or well-covered. It is a rickety-looking little porch with a rickety-looking roof.

If my general knowledge of the world is correct, I know that cushy things and the outdoors do not go well together.

When it rains, cushy things get soggy. When it stays humid for days after raining, the way it often does here in east Tennessee, mold grows on cushy things, because they never completely dry.

Let's zoom in on that red couch, shall we?

I bet my neighbors have mold monsters like this one living on their couches and armchairs.

And come to think of it, I've never actually seen anyone sitting on the couches or in the armchairs...
Maybe it's because they tried, and the mold monsters bit them!
Or because the couches are still damp from the rain and humidity.
Or because the couches smell weird.

When cushy things stay damp for a while, they smell terrible. My neighbors' couches and armchairs most likely smelled terrible from the beginning.

When they originally bought the couches and armchairs, I bet my neighbors said, "Hey, let's air them out on the porch first." Or they said, "Crap. They don't fit through the front door. I guess we'll leave them on the porch." Either way, it probably rained that night, making the furniture smell even more terrible. And then my neighbors just gave up and threw a party. (They throw lots of parties. The other night, I saw a guy there running around in boxers drinking beer next to a guy wearing a five piece suit. It was weird. I also think I saw a bathtub in their living room.)

But I don't think the mold monsters are the ones who make damp, cushy things smell nasty. I think the fart monsters do.

Instead of clinging to the outside of the couches like mold monsters, fart monsters live inside the couches.

"But that looks like a rat," you say. It's a fart monster. Fart monsters are much, much larger than rats.

I'm pretty sure that rats used to live in my neighbors' couches until the fart monsters took over.

Here is the size of a fart monster in comparison to a rat:

Here is the size of a fart monster in comparison to my face:

The reason why fart monsters make couches smell bad during humid weather stems from cheese.

Fart monsters feel okay about dry, crumbly cheese, but they like moist cheese better. When they can, they stockpile their cheese and wait for a rainstorm. The humidity that follows swells the cheese to the level of deliciousness that fart monsters desire. Then they feast on the cheese.
We all know how atrocious cheese farts smell.

So, the two main monsters that I think live in my neighbors' couches and armchairs are mold monsters and fart monsters.
Mold monsters grow when the couches are damp. They bite people. Fart monsters make the damp couches smell rotten with their cheese feasts.

I could bore you all day with all the kinds of monsters I think live in my neighbors' poor, poor furniture, but for now, I will only mention a few more.

There are dust monsters, who come around during periods of dryness. They make the fluffy innards of the cushions crumble into little dusty bits that leak out the sides.

There are thread-picking monsters, who act as accomplices to dust monsters. They make whole patches of upholstery mysteriously vanish, so that even more fluffy-couch-crumbles can escape.

Finally, there are metal-eating monsters. They have acidic saliva that can corrode metal. They like to eat the couch springs.

Eventually the couch springs break and pop out of the couch through the cushions. If you are able to withstand the mold bites, cheese-fart-stench, and fluffy dusty innards flying up your nose, and you idiotically decide to remain on the couch, a metal-eating monster will stab you in the butt with a spring.

Moral of the story: Don't keep cushy furniture outside the way my neighbors do.
I give their cushy furniture about six more months before it looks like this: