In the Ozarks, Spring is a wonderful time. Leaves on trees turn again to green. Myriad flowers bloom in glorious colors. Blooms on vines and bushes give way to fruit - wild blackberries, wild strawberries, wild blueberries, grapes. Grasses begin to grow.
As early Spring turns to late Spring and then to early summer, all kinds of critters come out to play.
Among those are chiggers and ticks. Chiggers and ticks. Ticks and chiggers.
Chiggers - microscopic bugs, too small for the human eye to see unaided. You are out in the woods enjoying nature, hiking in the woods, enraptured by the sights, the colors, the fresh smells of flowers in bloom.
You return home from your nature hike, having enjoyed it so very much.
The next day, you experience a horrible itching on your ankles, your legs, behind your knees, and around your waist. Red welts rise in those places. Time to get out the summer medicines.
Chiggers, nasty creatures that they are, don't really bite. After you picked up the unseen hitchhikers, they crawl around your body, looking for a place to settle down for a feast. They begin to feed if they reach a barrier, such as the top of your socks, the waistband of your clothes or your armpit.
They attach themselves to your skin, inject saliva with digestive enzymes that helps to break down your skin cells, which the chigger drinks. These enzymes cause the itchy rash.
That is why it is good to use a repellent, like DEET, although that does not work 100%. That is why is is good to shower or bathe, thoroughly, scrubbing twice, after you have been out in nature.
Ticks - not so microscopic arachnid, yes, related to the spider. Unlike chiggers, which run to you, ticks wait for you to come to them, often at the top of tall grass or weeds. You can actually see them if you look closely when walking in the woods, as they wave their arms, as if to say, "Come to me!"
Around here, we have the lone-star tick, a hard tick. The females are distinguishable by the white dot or "star" on its back. The males can also have dots or white streaks on the edge of their bodies.
Either before or after bathing to rid yourself of chiggers after a day in nature, you need to check for ticks - everywhere, even the nooks and crannies on your body. The only way to remove them is with tweezers. Any other method can leave their mouth still on your body and can lead to infection. In addition, ticks, from the beginning of their life cycle to the end, feed on various creatures and humans. They can carry diseases from the animals to you, injecting them into your bloodstream.
What do you do with the ticks after removing them? We keep a "tick jar" in the kitchen. It is filled with rubbing alcohol, and we simply drop them in the jar where they die a horrible death after a brief struggle!
In addtion, when we come in from outdoors, we place our shoes in plastic kitchen trash bags and stick them in the freezer overnight. This kill the chiggers that may still be on the shoes.
It is so easy to bring the ticks and chiggers into the house with you. Which is why we have another plastic kitchen trash bag to drop out clothing into. Later the clothing will be washed in very hot water.
Still, by the time late fall and early winter roll around, the rashes and bites have healed, the annoying itching is gone, and all we remember, until next summer, are the joys of experiencing the beauty of nature.
We woke up to 43 degrees at 6am and the high temperature briefly hit 86 degrees this afternoon. A difference of 43 degrees (as if you could not do the math yourself - but it sounds so weird just to say it).
