In which I discover chiggers

I generally like living in the South, but I am not a big fan of the bugs. Flying cockroaches are gross, but the parasitic ones are the the nastiest. Ticks, for instance, are some of the grossest things imaginable. There are some ticks in the Northern U.S., so I at least was aware of them. But the latest little nasties I have encountered are chiggers.

Friday night I thought I had a ton of mosquito bites. They were all on my thighs and behind my knees, which I thought was weird. I had been outside the night before, but I thought it was unlikely that a mosquito would fly up my pant legs and bite me all over, and that I wouldn't start itching until the next evening. I was right -- it is very unlikely to have mosquitoes do that -- but that's precisely the modus operandi of chiggers. The larvae hide out on the tips of tall grasses and rub off on your legs when you walk past. Unlike mosquitoes, fleas, or ticks, chigger larvae don't suck blood. They actually eat your skin by injecting digestive juices and sucking it out. That's still gross, as far as I'm concerned.

When my bites wouldn't stop itching we did some web research and realized that they looked like chigger bites and the symptoms were spot-on. I was confused as to how I got chiggers on me until I realized that when I was outside the night before I sat on the driveway with my daughter. And in retrospect I remember that the lawn had been cut the previous day and there were grass clippings on the driveway. Putting two and two together, I think I figured out how I got chiggered.

The bites are still a little itchy, but it's finally fading. They are a lot itchier than mosquito bites. I was afraid we might have fleas in the house at first, so I was actually somewhat relieved that it was a one-time outside encounter. But these things definitely take some of the fun out of having a nice back yard.

Photo credit: Sterlic.