In south Texas we called them “redbugs.” Our Yankee brethren called them “chiggers.”
In the summertime, if you played outdoors in the grass, you were apt to get these little itchy places. Around your ankles, your waist, on your privates. My mother’s treatment was salt and butter, rubbed on the bites. Where did that come from? Western or Southern remedy?
There are a number of myths about chiggers. Here are two:
Chiggers burrow into your skin. No, they don’t. Sorry, Mom. They just stick their spears into you. Those little red spots are what’s left after you scratch them off.
Spanish Moss is full of chiggers. No, it isn’t. It’s an article of faith in Florida, and denying it can get you threatened with a thrashing, but really, chiggers don’t live in Spanish Moss. Oh, if it’s blown down and draped across a log, you might get chiggers if you sit on it. But it’s the log, not the Spanish Moss.
There are hundreds of different species of chiggers, about forty of them here in Georgia. Most don’t bite people, or don’t cause a rash if they do. Our pest chiggers are actually reptile parasites; they don’t bother their snake hosts a bit.
Pest chiggers are distributed across the US, but people living in the Great Plains (west of the 100th meridian) don’t get bitten. Why not? Is it a different kind of chigger? Looks the same …
(I took my bride, from Amarillo, to south Texas on our Honeymoon. Her first exposure to chiggers. She blamed me …).
Chiggers, and their mysterious ways, got me a degree in Entomology from the University of Kansas. Nevertheless, they make me itch.