Chiggers inflict a lot of torment for small creatures

Staff

Published Saturday, November 8, 2008

My neighbor Crandall stops by.

“How are you doing?” I ask.

“The other afternoon I was polishing the schlock on my lawn. I fought the lawn and the lawn won. I noticed my dog dragging something around. I realized it was Worrying Elmer’s daughter’s pet rabbit. Worrying Elmer’s doctor told him that he needed to get more fresh air, so he took up smoking. For years, I have watched his daughter come home from school and take the rabbit out of its cage and play with it. She loved that bunny. I had to think fast. I wrestled the rabbit away from the mangy mutt. The rabbit was quite dirty, so I washed it off with the garden hose, combed it with a brush and blew it dry with the leaf blower. I jumped the fence and put the rabbit back in its cage hoping its death would be written off as ‘natural causes.’ When the school bus dropped the little girl off, she walked by the cage and then screamed.”

“She took it poorly,” I say.

“Worrying Elmer came outside and stood looking at the cage. Being the good neighbor that I am, I rushed to fence and asked if there was anything I could do. Worrying Elmer blurted, ‘My daughter’s rabbit died of old age in its cage. We had a funeral for it and buried it in the backyard. What kind of sick individual would dig up a little girl’s dead rabbit and put it back in its cage?”

The cemetery chronicles

I visit this cemetery regularly. My parents’ graves are here, as are the resting places of my father-in-law (the ex-Marine who loved hummingbirds), a nephew who died much too young and one of my best friends. I bring a small stone from our family farm and place it near my father’s headstone. I hear my mother’s laugh in my mind.

I feel my loss. My sadness is sharpened.

Then the graveyard birds sing sweetly.

Somewhere over the double rainbow

A rainbow forms when light shines through raindrops and is refracted into its primary colors. The colors are Roy G. Biv — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. If the ray of sunlight hits the back inside surface of a drop twice before popping out again, it creates a secondary rainbow above the first rainbow with the colors reversed — the red on the lower band and the violet on top. The lunary rainbow (moonbow), seen much less often, is usually observable soon after dark following a brief summer shower when the moon is nearly full.

Chiggers

Few creatures on earth can cause as much torment for its size as the chigger. A chigger’s bite seems eternal. Tiny six-legged chigger larvae attack in areas where vegetation is rank such as woodlands, berry patches, orchards, along lakes and streams, lawns, golf courses and parks. They are most numerous in early summer when grass, weeds and other vegetation are heaviest. Chiggers are so small that most cannot be seen without a magnifying glass. Chigger mites are about 1/20 inch long, usually bright red with hairy bodies, and travel rapidly. The larval stage has three pairs of legs whereas the nymph and adult stage have four pairs of legs.

After hatching, chigger larvae climb onto vegetation from which they can more readily snag a passing host. After engorgement, larvae drop off the host and transform into eight-legged nymphs. The preferred feeding locations on people are the parts of the body where clothing fits tightly over the skin such as the waistline and under socks or where the flesh is thin, tender or wrinkled such as ankles, armpits, backs of the knees or in front of the elbow. The bites are as irritating as an acute case of poison ivy. Chigger larvae do not burrow into the skin nor suck blood. They pierce the skin and inject a salivary secretion containing powerful, digestive enzymes that break down skin cells that are ingested (tissues become liquefied). This digestive fluid causes surrounding tissues to harden, forming a straw-like feeding tube of hardened flesh from which further, partially-digested skin cells may be sucked out. After a larva is fully fed, it drops from the host, leaving a red welt with a white, hard central area on the skin that itches severely and may later develop into dermatitis. Any welts, swelling, itching or fever will usually develop three to six hours after exposure and may continue for a week or longer. Scratching a bite may break the skin, resulting in secondary infections. There is no way to stop make the bites go away other than amputation.

A journey legends are made from

Please join me on a trip to Ecuador in January. For more information, call 866-820-0088 or go to http://www.naturescapetours.com/_tour_amazoniaandesaltour.html

Nature lessons

The passenger pigeon, extinct since 1914, once constituted as much as 40 percent of North America’s bird population.

Picasso named his daughter Paloma — the Spanish word for dove.

A bar-tailed godwit flew 7,242 miles nonstop during migration.

The average rock pigeon produces 25 pounds of droppings annually.

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology believe a fly’s ability to avoid being swatted is due to a rapid responding brain and a capacity to plan ahead.

Q and A

“Why do some robins spend the winter in Minnesota instead of migrating?” It’s because they have no better place to go. Robins are able to survive our winters as long as they are able to find food. Migration offers many perils.

“What species of birds were most impacted by the West Nile virus?” The populations of seven species had dramatic declines since West Nile emerged in the United States in 1999. It hit the American crow, blue jay, tufted titmouse, American robin, house wren, chickadee and eastern bluebird hard enough to be scientifically significant. The death toll for crows and jays is in the hundreds of thousands. The hardest-hit species has been the American crow. Nationwide, about one-third of crows have been killed by West Nile according to the study at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center.

“Do fake owls discourage birds?” No.

Thanks for stopping by

“Did St. Francis preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats.” — Rebecca West

“What threatens to tear the United States apart is each ideological faction’s unshakeable certainty that those on the other side are knaves, fools, fascists, communists, atheists, lunatics or subversives.” — Hodding Carter III

DO GOOD.

  Al Batt of Hartland is a member of the Albert Lea Audubon Society. E-mail him at SnoEowl@aol.com.

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