Chiggers

Yesterday, I forgot to use DEET.  Today, I’m paying the price. 

I grew up in Colorado.  Never heard of a chigger until I moved to Kansas and learned the hard way. Once, when covered in bites, I was inspired to write poetically about my experience. My first and only published poem can be found in the August 12^th, 1992 edition of The Manhattan Mercury.  With minor revisions. I bring you An Ode to Chiggers, by Gary Boxer.

Walking on a nature outing,

I knew not about little mites.

I wore shorts, no socks, just sandals.

Became host to small parasites.

Barely seen by the naked eye,

A pinhead’s size and no bigger.

I have a rash and itch like hell!

I curse upon little chiggers.

Red bugs, harvest mites, are names that mean chigger.

Their scientific family’s Trombiculidae*,

Of which there are maybe hundreds of species,

Thriving in Kansas heat and humidity.

A chigger is not an insect.

To spiders and ticks it‘s cousin.

Adults arise from winter’s sleep,

Covered with velvet red fuzz on.

From adults come eggs, then larvae.

Grasses and plants are home bases.

I walk, they jump on for a ride,

And crawl up to private places.

Injecting enzymes in dermis,

Invasive behavior indeed,

And from allergic reaction,

Comes protein ooze on which they feed.

I prefer a mosquito bite.

I react to them just barely.

The places they bite are smallish,

Itchy maybe, intimate rarely.

A local chigger is but a nuisance.

Entomologists just take or leave her.

But beware the Oriental chigger,

They carry Tsutsugamushi fever.

As I write this blog it is meant to be

About thoughts in my head that are hatching.

But it’s hard to write intelligently,

While I’m sitting here itching and scratching.

Revenge on chiggers my mission in life,

I bought Diazinon insecticide.

Attach to the hose, spray the grass amply,

The problem can forthwith be rectified.

I fear my meter and rhyme are uneven.

My poetic talent is nothing to tout.

Try hard as I may to rewrite lines smoothly,

I put bugs in, but I can’t get the bugs out.

Thinking and rhyming on Kansas fauna,

I’ll write about more pests that invade us.

Perhaps a future blog will be about

Noisy but innocuous Cicadas.

The point of this is trivial, I know,

As I try to sum up didactically.

But unlike most blogs that I have written,

Here’s advice to be applied practically.

When walking in Kansas summer it’s best

To wear stockings, long pants and use bug spray.

Wading amid the tall prairie grasses

Chiggers are predators and you’re their prey.

Now as I bring this ode to conclusion,

One last thing about chigger venomy,

Knowing firsthand discomfort it causes,

I don’t wish it on my worst enemy.

*some sources suggest the family Trombididae