Speaker 1: How d everybody, it's may or at least that's the
Speaker 1: date of this Selects episode. I picked this one out
Speaker 1: Chiggers colon the Phantom Menace because boy, Chiggers are terrible
Speaker 1: and they make you itch. And I would say that
Speaker 1: listening to this episode will make you itch. So that's
Speaker 1: my goal on this Saturday, to make everybody itch. I'm
Speaker 1: really sorry, but here we go with Jiggers Hold the
Speaker 1: Phantom Menace. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there,
Speaker 1: so you should know Jerry's head Chiggers. Yeah, me too,
Speaker 1: I have not. I'm really glad I was like Chigger.
Speaker 1: It seems like Tracy is making a pretty big deal
Speaker 1: out of the in this article. Yeah. Tracy Wilson of
Speaker 1: Stuff You Miss in History Class wrote this, who recently
Speaker 1: got married? Congratulations Tracy? Yeah. And she wrote if you've
Speaker 1: ever heard her say the word mouth parts in the show,
Speaker 1: Tracy wrote it, chances heart she wrote it. She wrote
Speaker 1: ticks and mosquitoes. H did you write bees? She did
Speaker 1: a whole insect? Sweet? She spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: knee deep in insects. Yeah, and this, well, this isn't
Speaker 1: even an insect spoiler. Oh, you just removed the fact
Speaker 1: of the podcast. You think I think. So, I don't
Speaker 1: think you did. I'm just teasing. Okay, I'll bet I
Speaker 1: know what you think it is because I think the
Speaker 1: same thing. All right, Well we'll see. Okay, I challenge you.
Speaker 1: I challenge you back. We throw down the gauntlet, which
Speaker 1: is glove. So Tracy did make a big deal out
Speaker 1: of checkers, but apparently it's a big deal, right well,
Speaker 1: sure like if you ever had them, they're no fun.
Speaker 1: No the deeper I got into the article the where
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, yeah, this does sound really kind
Speaker 1: of off. Yeah, and it's uh, this is just one everyone,
Speaker 1: there's another itch inducing episode. And speaking of I got
Speaker 1: my first little bow to poison ivy. Congratulations. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: was clearing out stuff over the weekend and I was
Speaker 1: in poison ivy and I knew it. I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I've never had it before. This sounds very
Speaker 1: familiar and um, but I was still I'm no dummy.
Speaker 1: I know how Murphy's law works. So I said, I
Speaker 1: just said that out loud. Well, you just said that
Speaker 1: out loud, or you just said I said, I'm not
Speaker 1: allergic to I thought you were saying like that. I'm
Speaker 1: no dummy. I said that too. Um, And I said,
Speaker 1: so you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna be careful
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna go take a shower pretty soon afterwards. Um.
Speaker 1: And so it's not bad. But there are probably five
Speaker 1: or six little, tiny little sets of bumps on each
Speaker 1: leg pustules. Yeah, they're not bad though. And I looked
Speaker 1: at him and said, you know what, that's freaking poison
Speaker 1: ivy after all these years, finally got you. Yep, but
Speaker 1: not too bad. Like my dad always said, poison I
Speaker 1: will gets everybody one day. That his big saying. Uh So, anyway,
Speaker 1: speaking of itching, that's my itch story of the day.
Speaker 1: And this will make you itch because it made me
Speaker 1: itch while reading it. I think you're right. So um,
Speaker 1: it's actually it's funny. It didn't make me itch, maybe
Speaker 1: because I've never had it. You're scratching yourself, right, I'm
Speaker 1: pointing to myself in a weird place. I'm pointing my
Speaker 1: finger to my skin and moving it around. But I'm
Speaker 1: not scratching curiously. So, Um, everybody knows that chiggers are
Speaker 1: insects that burrow into your skin and suck your blood. Um,
Speaker 1: And I'm sorry you're being coy, my friend, I am
Speaker 1: because you just lied three times. Burrow and oh, insects
Speaker 1: that burrow in your skin, that suck your blood. That's right,
Speaker 1: those are there's three lies in there. This is like
Speaker 1: a highlights We have to go pick out what's wrong
Speaker 1: with this picture. Chiggers are not insects. They are arachnets.
Speaker 1: They are the larvae of the harvest mite. They do
Speaker 1: not burrow into your skin and suck your blood. But
Speaker 1: they're still what are the bumps? Well, you're being coy again,
Speaker 1: but what they are actually doing is maybe even grosser
Speaker 1: than sucking your blood. They are liquefying your cells into
Speaker 1: a slurry that they can drink from a straw made
Speaker 1: of your body. It's pretty Is that the fact for you? Yeah? Alright,
Speaker 1: but we'll get there. Were the same one first one,
Speaker 1: first of one. The first time we've ever high fives
Speaker 1: in an episode? Is that right? Sure? I I would
Speaker 1: have imagined that you could make like a video montage
Speaker 1: of us like high fiving during episodes. I guess not. No,
Speaker 1: so you said that, Um, these things are the larva
Speaker 1: of harvest mites, right, and harvest harvest mites are arachnids.
Speaker 1: They're related to spiders, so they're not insects. But you
Speaker 1: can understand why people would think that um chiggers are
Speaker 1: or our insects because chiggers have chiggers. The larva of
Speaker 1: the harvest might have six legs, so you'd be like, well,
Speaker 1: it's an insect. No, they haven't grown their adult legs yet. Apparently, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess they get those two more legs at some point. Um,
Speaker 1: they the adults are red and the little um larvae
Speaker 1: are red. But um, you're not gonna see. That's one
Speaker 1: of the problems with chiggers is you're not gonna see
Speaker 1: like a mosquito landing on you or a flea, even
Speaker 1: like you think a flea is small, a chigger is
Speaker 1: like a tiny little dot that you will would never
Speaker 1: notice and you may not even be able to see
Speaker 1: at all with your eyeballs. All right, but sometimes you
Speaker 1: can see several of them together basically forming a clump.
Speaker 1: Yeah party together, yeah with one of them has Kid
Speaker 1: from Kid and plays haircut or Aman Schumpert's more contemporaneously.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that is a total kid and play haircut.
Speaker 1: Did you know that Amman Schumpert delivered his own child
Speaker 1: in his apartment purpose accidentally. The kid just came very
Speaker 1: quickly and like he the nine one one dispatch had
Speaker 1: to talk him through how to do it. But he
Speaker 1: delivered his own child and his wife or girlfriend right
Speaker 1: there and there and everything was good, totally great. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's great news. He's a basketball player, by the way, people,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, people are, who's amunch Shopper. He plays for
Speaker 1: the boom, for the calves Boom. So if you're an
Speaker 1: adult harvest mite and you've grown up from a sugar
Speaker 1: into an adult, you're gonna eat. It's actually a beneficial
Speaker 1: little arachneed to have around because they're gonna eat the
Speaker 1: eggs of other pests like mosquitoes, right, so you want
Speaker 1: the adults around as an adult or um as the
Speaker 1: second step the nymphs right after the larva. It's the
Speaker 1: larva that suck. They don't suck, well, yeah, but the larva.
Speaker 1: You know, you gotta have them, but you know, hopefully
Speaker 1: they just stay in the yard. Although these things are
Speaker 1: holy terrors to see if you are on their scale, Like,
Speaker 1: if that thing's coming after you and your eggs, I'll
Speaker 1: bet it's just really terrifying. They are parasitic though, Um,
Speaker 1: they don't. The larva are. Yeah, they don't eat the
Speaker 1: blood though, like we pointed out, like the fleas and
Speaker 1: the ticks and the mosquitoes. No, they eat your skin cells. Right,
Speaker 1: So here's what happens. Larva hatch um. Apparently an adult
Speaker 1: female harvest might will go into the dirt and be like,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of eggs, champert is there to an
Speaker 1: for them to hatch, so we can hasten their birth um,
Speaker 1: And then the eggs do hatch and the harvest might
Speaker 1: female tends to layer eggs all in one place. So,
Speaker 1: if you are familiar with chiggers, if you've ever had
Speaker 1: them in your yard, like one little patch of grass
Speaker 1: can be totally overrun with chiggers, but then you just
Speaker 1: turn a few degrees to your left, there's another patch
Speaker 1: of grass that is totally devoid of them. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: get the feeling. They don't get around too quickly either.
Speaker 1: You know, they know they're pretty stupid low level animals
Speaker 1: if you ask me. So, the eggs are laid in
Speaker 1: one place, they hatch and the little larva come out
Speaker 1: and they're like, blood meal, Give me a blood meal
Speaker 1: that's not actually made of blood. That's basically what they say. Okay, Uh.
Speaker 1: They hatch pretty much anytime during the year except for
Speaker 1: the hard winters, and um, like you said, they want
Speaker 1: that first meal. And the reason they want that first
Speaker 1: meal is not just because they're ravenous little jerks. Um.
Speaker 1: They actually cannot progress to that nimph stage, which and
Speaker 1: then grow up to be adults unless they have a
Speaker 1: complete first meal. They can have, they can have half
Speaker 1: a first meal, they have three quarters and get and
Speaker 1: get scratched off the body or brushed off the body,
Speaker 1: and that's pretty much it. They generally will not go
Speaker 1: back and finish that meal, so there's no starting over.
Speaker 1: They're just like, well that's it. That's the end of millhouse,
Speaker 1: my one chance and um. So it's like a complete
Speaker 1: lose lose situation when a chigger bites a person, because
Speaker 1: once you start itching as a person, you go to
Speaker 1: scratch the area and there goes the chigger. They don't
Speaker 1: latch onto your skin, they don't burrow into your skin,
Speaker 1: so the moment your your finger makes contact with them,
Speaker 1: they're gone. Um the well they leave behind is there
Speaker 1: and persists for a while, but they didn't finish their
Speaker 1: their meal and they die. But you still get the
Speaker 1: scratch or the horrible itch. It's lose loose. They need
Speaker 1: to stay away from humans. Well they do because there
Speaker 1: are a lot of animals that don't mind the chigger
Speaker 1: on their body, so they can get their full meal
Speaker 1: deal there and go on to live a great and
Speaker 1: healthy life without getting scratched off. So, um, they don't.
Speaker 1: They don't want to be on a human And I
Speaker 1: mean you would think like how long does could their
Speaker 1: meal possibly last? We're talking like buffet level length of time? Uh,
Speaker 1: four days, four days to four days, I think about it.
Speaker 1: That's time for us. Like how long is four days
Speaker 1: to a harvest? Might larva? You could probably do the math.
Speaker 1: It's like seven eight days. Figure out chigger years or
Speaker 1: probably it's probably most of their life. Yeah, you know. So, Um,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of different kinds of chiggers around the world. Um,
Speaker 1: and they're actually I mean they are pests, they are parasites.
Speaker 1: But um, there's only like at least one as far
Speaker 1: as this article says that is really problematic for humans.
Speaker 1: The lepo Trobidium deliens nice might. It's common to Asian
Speaker 1: and it can carry typhus, a form of typhus which
Speaker 1: can kill you if it's untreated. Yeah, it's cured with
Speaker 1: antibotics pretty easily. But um, if you're out in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere, it can kill you. But don't worry
Speaker 1: unless you um or in certain parts of Asia. Not
Speaker 1: a problem, right, chigger, We'll just annoy you. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: They're basically just a total annoyance. And by annoying humans,
Speaker 1: they die. It's stupid. All right, Well, let's take a
Speaker 1: little break here and we will come back and talk
Speaker 1: about some of the wonders of the jigger. All right,
Speaker 1: we've covered Do we cover fleas? Yeah? I want to
Speaker 1: say yes, they definitely need a blood meal. We've covered fleas, ticks, mosquitoes, spiders, scabies.
Speaker 1: Did we Oh? Yeah? Man, I just it's really getting
Speaker 1: a little too much to try and remember now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean there's like lost episodes just because
Speaker 1: we forgot them. It's officially especially getting out of hand.
Speaker 1: I guess we should stop. No, we keep going, my friend,
Speaker 1: um brain heart, so bad chuck. Alright, So what I
Speaker 1: was talking about was the wonders of the chigger. They
Speaker 1: have a lot of little things that they have about
Speaker 1: them that make it um and make them able to
Speaker 1: perform this uh surgery on your skin. Well put, it
Speaker 1: is kind of like surgery. It is um. But again
Speaker 1: they aren't latching on. They're just kind of hanging around.
Speaker 1: And when you get a chigger on your skin, it
Speaker 1: actually will spend usually hours looking for a good place
Speaker 1: to go try to get a meal because, um, they
Speaker 1: have these little tiny mouth parts. There's the word that
Speaker 1: makes the appearance which lets you know it's a Tracy
Speaker 1: Wilson joint. Right. Um, but they don't pure skin very easily,
Speaker 1: at least not human skin. Uh, tough skin that you
Speaker 1: would find most on most places of your body. Chigger
Speaker 1: can't bite through. But which is why you will get
Speaker 1: chigger bites in play. Is like the back of your knee,
Speaker 1: like in your armpit, places where the chigger can can
Speaker 1: get its mouth parts. What are they called celisera celiserai
Speaker 1: clisserai clissari clisser I explains it all, Um, that's why
Speaker 1: you'll get those bites in those areas because that's where
Speaker 1: they can get their clisser I into. That's right. They're
Speaker 1: light sensitive, which means they're gonna hang out in the
Speaker 1: shade mostly if it was up to them at least
Speaker 1: um it's uh, the sun is gonna dry out their body,
Speaker 1: so that's why they head towards the shade. I mean
Speaker 1: you can like kill them basically. Uh. And so also
Speaker 1: when a host um comes near, there's like your dog
Speaker 1: casting a shadow, the chiggers go, we'll over there. I
Speaker 1: think that's pretty clever. There's a shadow. Let's that means
Speaker 1: something is alive with skin. That means that, in some
Speaker 1: weird way, chiggers are aware of shadows. That's right. I mean,
Speaker 1: like some dogs aren't aware of shadows or don't understand them.
Speaker 1: I think probably most dogs. Have you ever seen that?
Speaker 1: Like baby two three year old toddler um who sees
Speaker 1: her shadow for the first time. He just starts f
Speaker 1: freaking out trying to get away from it. It's really
Speaker 1: really cute. So it was a possessed baby kind of.
Speaker 1: That's sad, it's cute. I saw that movie that was
Speaker 1: The Exorcist. That's what I'm talking about. Uh. They are
Speaker 1: very temperature sensitive. As well. So when they coming to
Speaker 1: contact with a host, and the host is the thing
Speaker 1: that it's gonna feed on. Um, it's gonna detect that
Speaker 1: has like you know, it's not infra red, but it's
Speaker 1: gonna detect that body heat, right and say, all right,
Speaker 1: there's something I can try and latch onto. So it's
Speaker 1: like predator in that respect. Yeah, a little bit kind
Speaker 1: of No dreadlocks, No, those are those are a nice edition.
Speaker 1: If you ask me what else, Um, I think it's hilarious.
Speaker 1: Tracy called it upward mobility. They like to climb to
Speaker 1: the tops of stuff. And I remember this one from Ticks.
Speaker 1: Remember that the ticks were just like grasp things, like
Speaker 1: little tiny lobsters, just stand there and wait for something
Speaker 1: to pass by, and as it does, they grab it. Um.
Speaker 1: They don't stand there with their arms outstretched the whole time.
Speaker 1: Now that's a stress position. Um. There's something called the
Speaker 1: questing response, which is another hilarious term. They're questing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they get up on their tippy toes. They're they're standing
Speaker 1: up with their their arms raised up towards the heavens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: imagine for a meal of human cell imagine John Cusack
Speaker 1: can say anything but take away the boombox, right, that's
Speaker 1: a questing position. Yeah, the chickers are there in their
Speaker 1: little overcoat and their spiky hair and their bad attitudes. Um,
Speaker 1: I just saw you know John Roderick, a friend of
Speaker 1: the show, John Roderick, Yeah, great Seattle musician. He tweeted
Speaker 1: the other day about silverfish, you know, the little insects.
Speaker 1: He said, why don't we call silverfish what they were
Speaker 1: clearly meant to be called? Sink lobsters. It really struck
Speaker 1: me as funny. They don't look fishy at all. Still,
Speaker 1: ver sure, sink clapster. That's a great one. Right. And finally,
Speaker 1: they are touch sensitive. They have these little hair like
Speaker 1: sensory organs on their body to help basically to help
Speaker 1: them find everything from hosts to each other. There. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know they're like, let's get together and really do
Speaker 1: some damage on this guy's arn't pit. Yeah, or you
Speaker 1: see that waist band. It's a great place to hide
Speaker 1: Underpant's band. Yeah, Underpant's band. Yeah what is said in here? No,
Speaker 1: that's what I said. Uh, but that is a great
Speaker 1: place to hide because, like we said a few times,
Speaker 1: you'll easily scratch them off. So they want to go
Speaker 1: somewhere where you may not be thinking about scratching. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was surprised that they go. I could see kind
Speaker 1: of the outside of the armpit, back of the knee,
Speaker 1: the waist band, underpant's band. Um, they're protected there, they are,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, it's warm there and their
Speaker 1: temperature sensitive. So you sure who think since they're seeking shade,
Speaker 1: they would go to a cooler spot. But there's probably
Speaker 1: not too many cool spots on the human body that
Speaker 1: are protected. Not really, I just said a bunch of
Speaker 1: contradictory stuff. So all these things help the chiggers find
Speaker 1: their host. But as Tracy points out, that's that's half
Speaker 1: the battle. Yeah, and when you find a chigger on you,
Speaker 1: it's probably sorry that it chose you as it's one
Speaker 1: four day meal. Because they don't like humans, they'll they'll
Speaker 1: climb onto anything just about any vertebrate animal, snakes, turtles, birds,
Speaker 1: for little birds, chipmunks. They don't like us because we
Speaker 1: take hot showers every day, that's right, And a lot
Speaker 1: of these animals don't have any kind of response to
Speaker 1: being bitten by a chigger, So the likelihood of the
Speaker 1: chigger being undisturbed for four days while it's having its meal.
Speaker 1: Fourth meal is what we're gonna call it, Like taco bell.
Speaker 1: Do you remember that they try to invent another meal. Um,
Speaker 1: they're they're so they're not gonna get brushed off on
Speaker 1: these things. Humans almost invariably brush chiggers off because right
Speaker 1: when we start scratching again, it removes the chigger. Um,
Speaker 1: So they're there. They don't seek us out as prey.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just total happenstance. Yeah. And like you said,
Speaker 1: since they need that thin skin, um, little kids are
Speaker 1: more likely to get bitten by a chigger than an old,
Speaker 1: leathery old sea captain. Let's say. Yeah, and little kids
Speaker 1: who can't take being teased really are vulnerable to chigger
Speaker 1: buttons because they're thin skin, very nice. You know, the
Speaker 1: ones who were like shorts with knee socks pull all
Speaker 1: the way up here. Those kids, Yeah, and their all
Speaker 1: their nose are always running because they're crying. They just
Speaker 1: stopped crying, those kind of kids. Uh. So, like I said,
Speaker 1: a hot shower, uh is a is a great way
Speaker 1: to kill. It's it's great for a lot of reasons.
Speaker 1: A great way to kill chiggers. It's a great way
Speaker 1: to keep your body clean. It's a great way to
Speaker 1: unwind at the end of a long day working in
Speaker 1: the yard, because that's where you're gonna get your chicker
Speaker 1: bites most likely. Yeah, and the yard, Yeah, especially if
Speaker 1: you are the type of gets like letters from the
Speaker 1: neighborhood association saying mow your lawn you might have chickers.
Speaker 1: I will never live where there is a neighborhood association.
Speaker 1: No way, no way. Now, you know, in some place,
Speaker 1: because it's not my thing. In some places, a neighborhood
Speaker 1: covenant supersedes local law. Yeah, unbelievable. Like your mailbox has
Speaker 1: got to be like this. You can't paint your house
Speaker 1: that color, not not for me, and you gotta pay
Speaker 1: us a certain amount of money to boss you around
Speaker 1: every month. Nope, yep, that's why I have a stack
Speaker 1: of car batteries aside my house with like old wood
Speaker 1: that I haven't used still in it's like Sandford and
Speaker 1: sun out there, and then like and paint with a brush.
Speaker 1: It says, welcome children on beside your Alright, So, uh,
Speaker 1: should we take another break and talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about the weird fact of the day. Yes, all right, buddy,
Speaker 1: we talked about the mouth parts. So what they do
Speaker 1: is they get that calissar i and they make a
Speaker 1: hole in your skin normal enough, They inject saliva, which
Speaker 1: contains digestive enzymes that make a slurry of your skin cells.
Speaker 1: We talked about other insects that do similar things like this,
Speaker 1: so it's still pretty like, all right, no big deal.
Speaker 1: Then it gets weird. It does. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's because they have specific enzymes or something, but
Speaker 1: I didn't see this happening with anything else, did you know?
Speaker 1: But no, you drop it on him, you refuse, all right.
Speaker 1: So what happens is they have in these secretions. What
Speaker 1: happens is they break your They break your skin cells down,
Speaker 1: which makes that slurry, which is good, slurp it up.
Speaker 1: But then the surrounding tissue hardens and it actually creates
Speaker 1: a tube, a little hard straw in your skin in
Speaker 1: the wound. Yeah, called a style of stme. What do
Speaker 1: they do with that? They drink out of it. They
Speaker 1: use a straw to slurp up your wrecked cells. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the longer they're in there, the longer the straw
Speaker 1: is the style of dome the style of dome. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw a paper from two thousand four and in
Speaker 1: the abstract that said it's something like it seems that
Speaker 1: style iss domes form as a reaction to chiggers. So
Speaker 1: I don't know if they thought like maybe this was
Speaker 1: part of a chigger or something like that, but I
Speaker 1: guess it's a recent finding that that stylist domes form
Speaker 1: and that's how chiggers actually eat because they don't have
Speaker 1: any probiscus or anything like that. They're pretty much really
Speaker 1: weak proboscis one of those. Um, they're just not great
Speaker 1: insects or arachnets at all. Yeah, they're not. They can't
Speaker 1: bite very easily, they can't suck anything out. They um,
Speaker 1: they're just they're useless. But your body just happens to
Speaker 1: help them out. Well, they have that that magic juice,
Speaker 1: I guess, so that's pretty cool, you know. Yeah, uh
Speaker 1: so with that magic juice, that's gonna be one of
Speaker 1: the two reasons you're gonna be itching a lot. Some
Speaker 1: people react quite adversely to that juice. Other people it's
Speaker 1: not that bad, um, but it's still going to itch
Speaker 1: no matter what. And it's not just the juice. You're
Speaker 1: reacting to. I think that's probably what first gets your attention.
Speaker 1: But the thing that causes the persistent itch is that
Speaker 1: stylist dome your body's own reaction, which seems to be
Speaker 1: forming basically a hollow tube of temporary scar tissue in
Speaker 1: this wound area, and then that actually causes some sort
Speaker 1: of itch reaction as your skin heels, and that can
Speaker 1: take a very long time to heal. This is the
Speaker 1: point where I was like, oh, having chiggers actually does
Speaker 1: suck terribly. Yeah. I think if you had a chigger
Speaker 1: that was able to complete its full four day meal,
Speaker 1: your toast means you haven't showered for four days. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's when your style of stomb is going to be
Speaker 1: at its peak of hardness and length, right, and it's
Speaker 1: gonna have the worst reaction, right, So what can you do? Uh?
Speaker 1: There are home remedies you've heard, maybe like painting over
Speaker 1: chigger bites with a clear nail polish, right, or any
Speaker 1: kind of nail polish. Really, I think, well, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: if you got flair, some sparkly gold, I'll get to
Speaker 1: put some dots on my armpit, and then why not,
Speaker 1: I'll put them around my eye as well. So what's
Speaker 1: the deal there. You're just choking it out. Um. A
Speaker 1: lot of people would say, yes, you're covering up this
Speaker 1: the chigger that's burrowed into your skin and it is
Speaker 1: now suffocating to death. It's like choke on, choke on
Speaker 1: your meal. But that's wrong because again, chiggers don't burrow
Speaker 1: into your skin, right, and Tracy points out very acutely,
Speaker 1: by the time you even notice it, it's very likely
Speaker 1: the chigger is not there any longer. Right, So if
Speaker 1: you're painting something over your skin, um, really, what you're
Speaker 1: doing is protecting the wound area from um, the air
Speaker 1: contact with the air, which can aggravate it. So it
Speaker 1: does help. But Tracy says, just use anti itch cream.
Speaker 1: It's way better. Yeah, like cortisone or something. So what
Speaker 1: it is? Yeah, yeah, Um, don't try to I don't
Speaker 1: know why she felt the need to put this in here,
Speaker 1: but we might as well say it. Don't try to
Speaker 1: remove the style of dome. I can see people doing that,
Speaker 1: trying to dig it out. Yeah, no, you don't need
Speaker 1: to know. I can definitely see people doing that. I
Speaker 1: think that was worth it. Um. She also says, don't
Speaker 1: use turpentine you, I've never heard that. Yeah, people do
Speaker 1: all sorts of dumb stuff. Yeah, I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: if you could soak in a tub of gasoline and
Speaker 1: that would probably kill it. Lighted on fire problems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: most of these home remedies odd you should just shy
Speaker 1: away from. I think, yes, only use remedies approved by
Speaker 1: modern Western medicine. Modern Western medicine. It's the only treatment
Speaker 1: you need. Um, the name chigger, they believe you ever
Speaker 1: heard of sand fleas huh, like in Florida or anywhere? Yeah,
Speaker 1: these those are chico fleas c h I G O
Speaker 1: e um. And another name for that is the jigger flee.
Speaker 1: And they think that chigger came from just sort of
Speaker 1: mashing those two names together, even though it's not the
Speaker 1: same thing. No, it's not. Those actually do burrow into
Speaker 1: your skin and they lay eggs there, and then the
Speaker 1: eggs like to feast on you. So not good. But
Speaker 1: I guess there's just nothing but confusion surrounding chiggers. Yeah, nothing,
Speaker 1: so chuck. If you want to protect yourself against sugar
Speaker 1: invasions in your armpits and your underpants bands, what do
Speaker 1: you do well? If you're working? If you work in
Speaker 1: your yard and your garden a lot. Um you wear
Speaker 1: long sleeves, wear pants to you know, cover up as
Speaker 1: much body as you can physically. Um, you can wear
Speaker 1: deet if you want, or any other kind of insect repellent.
Speaker 1: This says you can also use sulfur. I've never heard
Speaker 1: of that. I haven't either. I wonder if you, like,
Speaker 1: you just burned incense near you or something. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It would smell like bathing egg water. Yeah, oh god,
Speaker 1: your bathe in like you know what? Just I will
Speaker 1: never ever try because I hate pickled things anyway. But
Speaker 1: pickled eggs they're they're not bad. They're usually a little
Speaker 1: too sweet. Uh. There's see those things floating in a
Speaker 1: jar and it's like I feel like I'm in a hospital,
Speaker 1: the like where you found the head. Yeah, the the
Speaker 1: I think it's the Chinese, probably Japanese and Korean too.
Speaker 1: There's a type of pickled legs where they soak them
Speaker 1: in a brine like and it's the saltiest thing you
Speaker 1: will ever eat, and they're mucky and brown. Those are
Speaker 1: those are not good. The other ones are fine. They're
Speaker 1: just not they don't taste that great. I think I
Speaker 1: don't want food soaked in liquid. I think pickled stuff
Speaker 1: is really good for you. I mean, I hate pickled things,
Speaker 1: but just love pickled every period. Like soaking something in
Speaker 1: a solution, I just don't want. I don't even like marinades.
Speaker 1: I'm a dry rub guy. Are you really? Yeah? You
Speaker 1: know I didn't know that about you. Yeah? Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: like sauces of any kind or is it the pre soaking,
Speaker 1: like pre cooking, soaking that well, pre marinating, I don't like.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're if you have a quality French
Speaker 1: saucier at your disposal, I'll take a little, alright, but
Speaker 1: put it on the side in a plastic cup. But
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't like. There was this place near
Speaker 1: Emily Shop that was it's now closed. I kind of
Speaker 1: feel bad for saying this, but I think I know why.
Speaker 1: Because they used too much sauce. Dude. They had this
Speaker 1: delicious crispy, crispy fried chicken that they dumped this gravy
Speaker 1: sauce on top. They never just put it on the side, No,
Speaker 1: and by the time it got to the table, it
Speaker 1: wasn't crispy fried chicken anymore. I just don't get it, huh.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'll I'll eat a sauce if it's yeah,
Speaker 1: what you're describing as smothered chicken, that's totally different. But
Speaker 1: it was fried. Huh, fried and smother can't do that.
Speaker 1: Those two things are never supposed to come together. Um,
Speaker 1: if you want to see if you have chiggers on
Speaker 1: your property, um, Tracy says, you can take a piece
Speaker 1: of black paper, black construction paper, maybe from your child, right,
Speaker 1: give me that, stupid kid, and go out and lay
Speaker 1: it on the ground, uh, near where you think there
Speaker 1: might be chiggers, and you might see little tiny, tiny
Speaker 1: red things. She doesn't just say that. She says to
Speaker 1: take a piece of paper and defy physics by standing
Speaker 1: it up on its edge. Is that what she says?
Speaker 1: And then the chiggers will follow their natural urges and
Speaker 1: climb to the top of the paper. Like what world
Speaker 1: does Tracy living? Well? And I mean you're you know,
Speaker 1: you're in the grass. You can stand a piece of
Speaker 1: paper up in the grass. Maybe, yeah, not if you
Speaker 1: take care of your grass. This isn't like that Twilight
Speaker 1: Zone episode where Darren from the Which like flips the
Speaker 1: coin and it lands on its side. Oh man, you
Speaker 1: know what happened in Pe in college. One time my
Speaker 1: pe teacher basketball teacher threw a pen, remember the paper
Speaker 1: mate pens that had the the cap with the just
Speaker 1: sort of flat top. Yes, he just flipped it up
Speaker 1: in the air, meant to catch it, didn't. It hit
Speaker 1: the ground, bounce and landed completely straight up and down
Speaker 1: on its cap. That's exactly like that Twilight Zone episode.
Speaker 1: He could hear everyone's thoughts after that point. Now, well
Speaker 1: I dropped that class immediately. That's smart. Come out of here,
Speaker 1: very smart. Where you like which ran out the door
Speaker 1: and you're doing Satan's work? Oh man, all right, well
Speaker 1: that's chiggers. Oh we didn't say if you really want
Speaker 1: to control chiggers in your yard, just take care of
Speaker 1: your yard. They will go away. They won't want to
Speaker 1: hang out there. Yeah, there won't be long stalks of
Speaker 1: grass for them to climb up to. In quest from
Speaker 1: that's right. Uh. If you want to know more about chiggers, horrible,
Speaker 1: horrible little things, you can type that word into the
Speaker 1: search bar how stuff works dot com. And since I
Speaker 1: said search bar, it's time for a listener. Hey guys,
Speaker 1: I'm a new fan. I must admit I'm getting addicted.
Speaker 1: Recently listened to the Anesthesia podcast, and I heard the
Speaker 1: listener mail the Harvard student and needed five numbing injections
Speaker 1: to the nasal cavity to breaking her nose. She thinks
Speaker 1: she can win up it here. It's not bad. I know.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Uh. In one in college, one of my
Speaker 1: molars became infected. I need a root canal. The day
Speaker 1: of the procedure that Dennis gave me shots in the gum,
Speaker 1: which Chuck said was the worst thing ever in life.
Speaker 1: After a few numbing shots, he got to work drilling
Speaker 1: uh into the infected tooth. Unfortunately he didn't give me enough.
Speaker 1: Once he got down to the root, I felt it
Speaker 1: and it felt awful, so I said to the dentist, Hey,
Speaker 1: I learned the dentist. He then pulled out what must
Speaker 1: have been the largest needle in existence and gave me
Speaker 1: a shot directly into the infected root of my school.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I think that has the nose beat O. Uh.
Speaker 1: This made me. She said that she takes pain well,
Speaker 1: she said, but this made me sob uncontrollably. It was
Speaker 1: ten years ago, and I can still vividly recall the
Speaker 1: flash of blinding pain when the needle made contact. To
Speaker 1: make matters worse. That evening, my gum swelled dislodged the
Speaker 1: temporary crown. I had to go back the next day
Speaker 1: to have it refitted. So that's my injection story. Like
Speaker 1: I said, I'm not sure if it's worse than the
Speaker 1: five in the nose. I'd say both were pretty terrible.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed the read Julie yeaste from Honno
Speaker 1: Lulu Oaii. It's a lot for that, Julie. Man, I'm
Speaker 1: making air quotes when I say thanks. That's like scarring,
Speaker 1: you know, but she'll remember that for the rest of
Speaker 1: her life. Well, way to go. Uh. If you want
Speaker 1: to try to gross this out, it's gonna be tough
Speaker 1: to top that one. But let's keep it going, shall we.
Speaker 1: You can send us an email send it off to
Speaker 1: stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
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