Average Jane vs. Nature

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With everything else going on this week, there was one annoying constant: itching insect bites from last weekend’s party and party prep.

The chiggers got my ankles and one knee. It’s kind of hot in my office, so the bites itch pretty much all day long, but I tune them out as much as I can.

The chigger bites are nothing compared to the piece de resistance, a spider bite on my upper right arm. It itches, too, and also sports an alarming 1.5-inch diameter round, red blotch. Believe me, I looked up spider bites online to make sure it wasn’t going to dissolve my flesh. After a week, this is as bad as it gets.

When I was growing up, nature was much closer and nastier. We couldn’t play outside until our parents checked the peony bushes for rattlesnakes and copperheads. Thanks to the snakes, we weren’t allowed to go into the barn by ourselves. All summer long there were ticks everywhere and the dogs would be covered with them. We had plants in our back yard that produced little "stickers" that would stick painfully in your bare feet. There were nettles in the woods and thistles out by the barn.

Now that I live in the ‘burbs, I’ve gotten spoiled. We have less than a half acre of yard, yet I complain about every case of poison oak and chigger bite I get when I’m out there. I start to think it might be fun to move into the city and live in a loft. Then if I need a nature fix, I can just go to a park!

I won’t do that, though. I’d probably never go back to a more rural existence, but I’m pretty happy with our big expanse of yard. I just need to learn to apply repellant from now on.

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4 responses to “Average Jane vs. Nature”

June 23, 2006

AWE

Funny that you posted this, I just sprayed my yard yesterday for fleas, ticks, and ants. The ticks this year have been bad and I worry about Lime disease. Everytime I walk my dog I get a tick on me, she is covered by Canine Advantix so they don’t get on her.

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June 24, 2006

East Coast Girl

Ah, yes, the joys of yard work. I know the itch of ivy all too well. However, I have a useful tip for you that I ran into by accident. It turns out that the ingredients in “Water Babies” sunscreen (pink bottle) are very effective in relieving itching and burning caused by rash and poison ivy. The effects last for a long time, and can be reapplied as much as needed. I have never tried it on chigger bites, but it saved my better half a lot of pain and itching after a bad case of poison ivy, and made sitting at a desk all day actually tolerable — he even managed to get a little work done to earn his paycheck! Hope this helps you, it is worth making a special trip to the store to get a bottle.

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June 25, 2006

lynne

Hi I came this way via Rozanne’s blog.
I live in a city and never think to put on repellent unless I am leaving the urban core. But like you I should because bugs love me, especially mosquitoes. I get a bite and then scratch it raw. I hate bitting itchy bugs.
Hope the spider bite has settled down. I hate those too!

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June 25, 2006

Sissy

We were supposed to stay out of the barn? Used to go in there barefoot! And I lived to tell about it!

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