Summer time is here, and you can say hello to pleasant time outdoors and hikes in the wilderness. Unfortunately, you can also say hello to chigger bites if you’re not careful. Chiggers are always looking for the next meal, and you just might hit the spot.
What Are They?
Chiggers are the larvae of mites that wait on plants for unsuspecting animals or humans to brush up against those plants. When these nasty little six legged predators get the opportunity, they will crawl on their host, find a place to feed, latch on and start feeding. With a human, that’s usually the back of the knees, the armpits, under the band of underwear or a variety of other places. Once they find a good place, they will attach themselves on tightly and begin to feed.
To feed, a chigger will pierce the skin and then inject saliva to digest the tissue and make the wound larger. They then inject compounds into the wound that causes a person’s own immune system to harden the tissue around the wound. This hardened area becomes something like a straw that goes deeper and deeper into the skin. The chigger then injects more saliva, sucks up more liquefied tissue and the straw gets even bigger. As you can probably imagine this is not a pleasant experience. It causes intense itching and a small reddish colored welt on the skin. Then, if a person picks up more than one chigger this can become extremely painful and can cause even more itching which will cause the person to scratch. And that scratching can lead to a secondary infection and make the situation even worse.
The best way you can avoid chigger bites when hiking is to wear long pants and tuck your pants into your socks. This will protect your legs. To protect your neck and chest you should wear long sleeves and button your collar. To keep chiggers away from where you live you should regularly mow your lawn and reduce tall vegetation. Chiggers just love weeds, briars and tall grasses, so depriving them from these places should help keep them away.