Happy chigger and tick season everybody.

Not so much in the chigger or tick belt here. Ticks even more rare than chiggers. This year is the first year in forever we’ve gotten a bite or two from chiggers, only after hours clearing the lot of downfall and brush. Seems like central, more inland areas of Texas gets more of both. Want to get covered in ticks, head for New England. A little walk in the woods in Massachusetts or Rhode Island this time of year means picking off several. Don’t remember any chiggers up there, but I’ll take a dozen chigger bites over one embedded tick. Nothing much to fear from a chigger bite.

The ticks are plentiful here this year, dh has pulled 6 from himself. Me only 3and thankfully not bitten in. I am terrified of the little parasites. We have also killed several baby copperhead snakes. I can deal with those better than the ticks. My daughter lives a half hour away and is afflicted with both as well.
Hubby isn't outside nearly as much as I am, glad the ticks prefer him over me!

Maybe I should have said happy tick and chigger season.
They weren't in my yard for the first few years now I cant go outside without getting chiggers.
The ticks in the forests of southeast Oklahoma were a nightmare not to be discussed in polite company.
You couldn't sit in the house without the things crawling on you.
Seem my blue jeans turn brown from the tick attacks in the forest.

Didn't mean to change topic from chiggers to ticks Worth. Haven't noticed chiggers this year so far, knocking on wood!

jillian wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 5:23 pm Didn't mean to change topic from chiggers to ticks Worth. Haven't noticed chiggers this year so far, knocking on wood!

No worries now it is chiggers and ticks.

I got my first chigger bites 2 years ago at our cabin which is in the woods of western PA. OMG we have never had any type of bite that itches like a chigger bite.

I absolutely hate ticks too but those chigger bites about drove me crazy with their itching. I don't know how those of you who live in areas where these pests are common can stand it.

Hot soapy water and scrub brush helps tremendously.
I am an expert on chiggers with a self proclaimed degree.
They dig in suck fluids and are gone before the itching ever starts.
What they leave behind is what causes the itching from our own bodies reaction to it.
They are actually a bird mite that accidentally gets on us.
They dont bother birds like they do us.
Our human mites dont itch and we never know they were there.

My Dad liked to go wild blackberry picking. Seems like chiggers LOVE berry patches. The first thing he'd do when he got home was fill the tub with warm water and a big handful of epsom salts and baking soda and soak for about 1/2 hour. His clothes were left on the porch (don't look Ethel!) and Mom would soak them in hot bleach water before washing them.

We don't get chiggers here, as far as I know. We get tics in the wilderness areas (but you might just get one to three at the most if you're camping). Dogs in the countryside get ticks; I suppose people in the countryside might, too, but I've never gotten any ticks while visiting people here, as far as I recall.

I knew people who got chiggers in Kentucky and maybe Indiana, but I never got them. What I did get, though, were what people in southern Indiana called turkey ticks (which are not ticks—they're mites, similar to chiggers, but different; they'll dig inside your skin and bite, and come out, crawl around you and bite you somewhere else, and make a home out of you; they seem to be able to infest a person for at least a few months, unless they were getting reinfected over and over; they especially like to bite calves and legs; you can remove them when they're crawling around; they're pretty small, but big enough to be visible with close inspection).

Turkey tick bites felt like mosquito bites, but a bit more itchy. I got mine just by walking/standing on a very short lawn, with grass shorter than my shoes. I think I had about thirty to fifty of them, which I managed to remove, gradually, within a month or so, probably.

There were a fair number of actual ticks there, too, but nothing like what worth mentioned. I'd find them on me a few times a year, probably. I saw twenty or so crawling up my pants one time. Some tics would drop from trees onto people (including me).

I dont know why so many farm folks where I grew up didn't buy insect repellent.
Including my parents.
I couldn't afford it as a kid I didn't have any money.
BlackBerry picking season was a nightmare.
To this day I mostly hate the summer.
Constantly hot and itching.

I figure I’ve been bit or stung in the tens of thousands of times by now by various insects and arachnids. 21,000 days on this rock x 10 bites/stings a day on average = 210,000. That estimate might be low, but I’m accounting for days mostly inside. A few chigger bites, I’m mostly immune to them anyway, in the summer are the least of my worries. My wife is horrified by chiggers, but not as much as bed bugs. Any talk of bed bugs in the vicinity is an instant panic attack for her. Her son had a near miss on bed bugs while in the USN. He and I kept it a secret for a couple of years knowing full well he wouldn’t be let in the house for fear of bringing some with him.

I deplore both ticks and chiggers. I have had Lyme's disease from the ticks and later in the same year was covered from neck to toe in chigger bites. The chigger bites are extremely itchy and annoying. I had the Lyme's for 2 darn years because it is not so easy to diagnose. THAT is one disabling disease.