Last night I didn’t understand why my waist was itching so much. I took a look at it and was shocked to see red bumps circling my body right at my waist band. AAHH! Chiggers! Where in the heck did I get chigger bites?
I told Lauren about it, and she said she was covered with chigger bites too. But Lloyd wasn’t. Now we could start putting the clues together. It was just the day before that we were at the lake. Lauren and I had gone to the sandy beach on the lake to watch the kids play in the sand and wade in the water. The kids didn’t get chiggers because they had bug spray on. Lauren and I did. And bad.
The scene of the attack:
The ravages of chigger bites:
I am itchy. Stupid chiggers, what’s their deal anyway?
AHHHHHHH!! The chiggers ate off all the toes on your left foot too?!? This is gonna make it hard to wear your new flip flops.
I’ve never had chigger bites before……so I looked it up and double AHHHHHH! Have you read what is really going on there? They’re not bites.
I am SO sorry for both of you! At first I thought perhaps someone had come down with the shingles (and not the kind off your roof) because of the location of the itchiness. Then I checked medicine.net and learned that, if the chiggers are forbidden entry to the skin because of the wearing of a belt, they find their way to the waist anyway (?) and wreak havoc eating the tissue they have killed with their enzyme-laden punctures. Lovely. At least the two most likely areas of infestation seem to have missed you…check the web site for further details, and be grateful. Never fear: in another two weeks you’ll be all healed. Or full of scars. One or the other. But at least the itching will have subsided. Yea.
And now for the good news: according to same web URL, no long-term ramifications of chigger bites other than possible bacterial infection if too much scratching has taken place. In other words, no West Nile virus, heartworm or malarial transmission through these tick-imposters. Additionally, simple applications of Calamine lotion or ingestion of Benadryl are alleged to combat the symptoms of nasty itchiness – have you already tried any of these? (I swear by Calahyst myself – a topical application of Benadryl and calamine lotion combined…plus it’s clear/colorless so you don’t get pink polka dots all over when treating the areas in question.)
[Tune in tomorrow for another session with Your Bug Doctor……. 🙂 ]
A chigger usually goes unnoticed for one to three hours after it starts feeding. During this period the chigger quietly injects its digestive saliva. After a few hours your skin reacts by hardening the cells on all sides of the saliva path, eventually forming a hard, tube-like structure called a stylostome.
The chigger sits with its mouthparts attached to the stylostome, and like a person drinking a milk shake through a straw, it sucks up your liquefied tissue.
Hehe….My what numerous, nice straws you have— to better slurp you up with!
(Wait, that’s how I drink my breakfast every morning)