You Can’t Scratch Where It Itches
The good thing about having an unusually dry year is the mosquito population is down considerably from a normal year. The bad thing is ticks and chiggers are doing unusually well. The results are the same. We end up itching. The habits of the parasitic chiggers and ticks are the very similar. They sit in wait on vegetation until some unsuspecting warm blooded animal
passes by. When a likely victim, whether a deer, raccoon, or person, brushes against the grass or tree branch where they are waiting, the little bugs are well on their way to finding a nice meal. The chiggers that annoy us are generally the larval stage of a very small mite. The larvae are small enough to be
a speck of pepper (regular grind). They are much more difficult to spot, especially on a fair skinned person with a number of freckles. It is not a good thing to have a wife without her glasses removing small dark spots with a pair of tweezers. Some of those small dark spots belong there and are well attached.
can get away with it. Sunday morning, we decided to go target shooting. Before I left, my wife reminded me to put on some bug repellant or I might regret it. Sure, sure, not a problem. When I got to the target range, Damon and Zane were already shooting. Rather than go all the way to cabin for the insect repel-
lant, I drove directly to the shooting range. It is shaded in the trees and no insects were flying about. I soon forgot about my wife’s admonitions. We
(Outdoors cont’d on pg 4)
virtually invisible to the naked eye. The only way we know if they are in the area is the resulting itch after the fact. Ticks on the other hand are large enough to be seen. Wood ticks are easily spotted, crawling along looking for a good place to stop and feed. Deer ticks are about the size of
If a person is bitten by chiggers, there is little to do but treat the resulting itch. Chiggers prefer to bite people in tight confined places. Just inside the tops of socks and around the waistband seem to be especially favored. Ticks are not as choosey. They will attach and feed any place they think they
Pella
(Outdoors cont’d from pg 2)
spent a couple hours punching little holes in pieces of paper while enjoying a nice summer morning in the timber. I thought no more about my not using bug repellant as suggested by my wife until several hours after I got home. Damon called and
suggested I check myself for deer ticks. He had found a couple on himself, in spite of using repellant. I found several, all attached and feeding by that time. My wife assisted in finding several more. She was well on her way to removing all the freckles on my body when I sug-
gested she get her glasses. By Monday morning, I found out the extent of the attack of the bugs. The itching starts about twenty-four hours after being bitten. Chigger bites surrounded my legs at sock and where my underwear touched my skin. Tick bites are scattered randomly about my body. My legs itch. My back itches. I itch in places that one can
not politely scratch in public.
When going out to enjoy a few hours in the woods, I would recommend spending the extra time to get and apply insect repellant. Otherwise, you might spend three or four days trying to ignore a chigger bite or a month or two squirming about with a tick bite. Just because it itches does not mean you can scratch it.
