Gardenbite: Dispelling Myths and Telling the Itchy Truth About Chiggers | #GoodGrowing

Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with the University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Mac Omb, Illinois. We have got a garden bite for you this week. Well, I've gone and done it. It it's kind of my annual thing that I do every single year and that is I go outside without protecting myself from the miserable, miserly, just dark gone little chiggers.

Yes, so the other day I was crawling around getting rid of some tree of heaven in the backyard, and a few days later, I had the telltale signs of chigger bites all over my midsection. Well, because this podcast is going to be coming out, oh, I think dropping right on the July 4, I'm sure many of us are going to be outside enjoying the day with with family, friends, barbecuing, enjoying maybe the loud booms and bangs of fireworks. And if by chance you are crawling around on the ground as as I was, maybe escaping or diving away out of the the range of a Roman candle or a bottle rocket, well, you might find yourself also in the habitat of the dreaded chiggers. So what we're gonna do today for this Garden Bite, I am going to cover an article that we wrote back in 2019 when I then also once again fell into a just an awful pit of these darn dastardly little arachnids. So it was the same same kind of mistake, and I I want to to dive into some of the misconceptions behind chiggers.

Enjoy. How can something so small cause so much agony? This thought along with several other expletives ran through my mind as I clicked from web page to web page searching for a cure to my constant itching. What was the source of my anguish? Chiggers.

My entire body, mostly the private parts, were covered in tiny little trigger bites. Through the blinding itching hysteria of the next couple days, I found lots of so called curatives on the Internet, and I realized there's a lot of false information out there about chiggers. So in an attempt to ease another poor soul's pain and itching in this moment, or at least to keep you from doing something really foolish to relieve that that itching, let's dispel some of these myths. First, chiggers are insects that feed on mammals, and that is false. Because first, chiggers, they're not insects.

Instead, they are classified as a tromboculate mite. It's a relative of spiders and ticks. And according to our retired, now retired extension entomologist Phil Nixon, nymph and adult chiggers, they're actually predators. They go after insect eggs, they will eat other mites and insects, and they also eat decaying organic matter. It is in fact their youngest stage that feeds on any hapless passerby.

These guys are very difficult to see with the naked eye. They're about one fiftieth of an inch across. I guess if we had to make this relative anything, it's like the size of a pinpoint, but I would say probably even a little bit smaller than that. Immature chiggers feed on a variety of animals, not just mammals, and this includes birds, reptiles, and, of course, mammals like humans. Next myth.

If you wear long pants tucked into your socks, you will not get chiggers. Now I am sad to say this is false for the most part. Now while wearing protective clothing is a hindrance, and it might reduce maybe some of the biting that you might get or some of the jiggers that can make it up into an area to bite you, jiggers are quite inclined to climb around on the host so they can find a suitable feeding site. Because they're so small, you really can't see what they're that they're climbing on you or they're on you. And the thinner the skin, the easier it is for the invader to insert its piercing mouth part, which is why you typically get bites around your ankles or behind the knees, in the groin or armpit area, and around belt lines.

However, in my own experience over the years, I have found that chiggers tend to stop at a spot where clothing is restrictive, such as, you know, socks or belt lines. And even once when I ventured out into the Tallgrass Prairie in Kansas, I came home with the emblazoned outline of the vest I was wearing and sugar bites all over my chest and back. Now it is time for our third, and I think this is maybe one of the biggest myths out there. Sugars burrow into your skin, so you need to suffocate them using something like nail polish, bleach, alcohol, turpentine, or fire. Oh, the list goes on and on.

This is false. I I would say this is this is the top misguided thought out there on sugars. They are not burrowing into your skin. So you can at least remove that unpleasantry from your mind if you are suffering from bites right now as you listen to this. Therefore, if they're not burrowed into your skin, there's no reason to suffocate them.

And there's certainly no reason to be pouring bleach on your skin or heaven forbid holding a flame to the bite. What really happens when you get bit by a jigger is that it uses its piercing mouthpart and it injects digestive fluids into the top layer of your skin. Now these juices, react with your skin cells and it forms like a straw like welt. And that trigger uses this straw like welt to suck up your liquified skin cells. Kind of the interesting thing is that when exposed to air, the fluid oozing out of the bite will solidify into a hard cap.

This is kind of a way you can use to distinguish that you have been bitten by a chigger as opposed to maybe getting into poison ivy or mosquitoes or some other thing that might make you itch and give you a rash. Next myth, chiggers can transmit disease. False. Fortunately, none of our North American chiggers have ever been reported to spread any type of disease. Now that's not the case in other parts of the world, but we are lucky, especially in my sake, for my case where I have had multiple encounters with these little pests, that they do not transmit disease.

The other myth is that chiggers will bite you several times and this is false. A chigger can only bite you once. After that, it will remain attached unless the host might scratch them off or washes them off with warm soapy water. Again, our retired entomologist Phil Nixon points out that the trigger is going to drop off of you if you do nothing, it's going to drop off of you within a day, maybe two days. And it very often, the itching doesn't start until, you know, twenty four to forty eight hours after that.

So usually by the time we notice the itching, they're long gone. They don't stay on us for very long. And additionally, if you do maybe, say, scratch them off unknowingly or you wash them off is that once they once you do that, they die. So at least you get a little bit of revenge. And it's also, you know, a good piece of advice if you've been in areas that you know that have been infested by triggers in the past or might seem like it, which would be something like a grassy scrubby kind of area.

Go inside, take a shower, wash off your skin. That can at least eliminate or relieve some future bites and scratches that you might have. Okay. So if you are a poor soul suffering from a terrible case of trigger bites like like I have been, and you're just listening to this to try to find some relief and you're screaming, okay. I know what's true.

I know what's false. But what do I do about these bites? How do I get rid of them? Well, answer is you don't. You simply have to let this irritation run its course.

And I know your heart probably just sunk, but let me continue because there's there's no cure all medicine for trigger bites. Really, again, the best strategy is once you've been in areas where you suspect to harbor these nasty guys is that you or you start seeing the bites, Basically, wash any clothes that you were wearing during exposure, take a warm shower, any bedding, things like that, take that and and and launder it. This will remove any chiggers that may have made it onto your clothing or you, might have dropped off of you. And once the itching begins, there are various products available to relieve your discomfort at drugstores or talk to your physician who might be able to prescribe something or or give you something a little bit better medical advice than what I could ever give. So take solace that usually the itching is going to subside within a week.

I mean, for me, was usually four, maybe five days long, and then everything kind of felt started to feel better. During this time though, while you're itching, try to scratch as little as possible. I know this is very difficult to do. And also, make sure that you're keeping your hands and your skin with the the sites of where you've been bitten. Keep that clean so that you can avoid any secondary infections.

I would suggest take as many showers as you want during this time period, as, you know, running water can help to alleviate some of that itching and making sure that you're keeping those areas clean. Now, what can you do to protect yourself? Because I will say this has happened to me many times and I suspect it will continue to happen to me in the future because never leaving my house is an absurd option. So what I do is I usually have like a can of insect repellent containing something like DEET in my bag. I still do the the technique of tucking my pants in my socks and then treating, my lower half of my body in some type of product that contains DEET.

So that's really my my primary strategy for that. If you have any tall grassy areas in your yard, you know, some of the things you can do is you can mow these down to make them a bit more neat and manicured. However, I usually encounter these guys in areas of prairie or timber or woodland where they're not supposed to be manicured. They're supposed to be a little bit more wild and natural. So that's why I usually turn to a can of insect repellent containing DEET, because my dislike of chiggers is overwritten by my need to be outside.

So perhaps I am my own worst enemy. Well, was some interesting information about chiggers and what to do about them if you get bitten and dispelling a lot of those myths about what's going on when you start scratching around this time of year. Well, the Good Growing podcast is a production of University of Illinois Extension edited this week by me, Chris Enroth. Hey, listeners. Hope you have a happy fourth of July.

We will leave a link to the article that I just read in the link down below along with other links of where if you are a sufferer of trigger bites, places where you might find a little bit of relief or at least something to distract you to read while you try to avoid itching. Well, listeners, thank you for doing what you do best and that is listening or if you're watching us on YouTube, watching. And as always, keep on growing.