Chiggers

[adam]

Can't help it, I love my flip flops but I ca not stand it anymore. I have THE worst case of chigger bites. Horrible, nasty, itchy red bumps and I am a week out after exposure. They will take at least another week to heal.

So itchy.

I bought some boots, Asolo "Fugative" Gore Tex, sweet boots for hiking streams an forest.

I am now looking at gaiters, it is so sad. I've gone many trips without one single bite but then I get them and it is unbearable.

What is your story? You got chiggers in your area?

How do you treat the bites?

[ksbioteacher]

Chiggers are common in KS but their distribution and abundance is spotty both temporally and spatially. Some years we can't mow our yard without putting on repellent. Shoes or boots only work with repellent or sulphur powder. The last couple of years with a decline in resident rabbits our chigger population went down as well. One thing that is an important factor on chigger abundance is night time temps---warm temps = more chiggers. That's why in most years they are a summer phenomenon

[Satoshi]

By "chigger" you mean a kind of mite, right? They are common in Japan, too. Though I haven't been bitten by them yet, I've heard nasty stories about them a lot. The problem seems that their mouth part clinging into your skin, remains even after you take their body off. More importantly, there are species that often carry a bacterium causing a disease (similar to Rocky Mountain spotted fever) that had been deadly before antibiotics was available. Even now, if you contract the disease and are not diagnosed correctly and not treated with antibiotics promptly, the disease can be fatal.
Another nasty animal here is a blood sucking leech, which is localized in the southwestern part of Japan. They begin to appear from summer and are particularly active during and after rain. Though they don’t carry any diseases, your clothes may become bloody by several leaches, because you don’t usually notice when they bite and the blood is not coagulate for a while even after the leach is removed. They have a very effective anticoagulant. They crawl onto your skin from the neck or ankle while you are walking along a mountain trail but as long as you are in a stream there is no worry about them.

[adam]

Whoa whoa whoa, the chigger is a pest indeed. By the time it itches, damage has been done. They attach and then bit with their saliva liquifying the skin so that they can eat it. The host (me) skin reacts to the bite/saliva and at that point it becomes a skin problem with usual infections of the skin problem. I guess you could get some sort of fever or disease but in my case, it's just really itchy. I'm a week out and I have about twenty five bites on each foot/leg and I'm having a hard time not scratching but it is getting better. I got a couple of days where I was a bit weak and cold then sweaty but I am not in a hurry to treat things as I am getting older and everything bugs me.

But the bottom line is thank you.

...and I am getting better.

Next year is my year to visit Japan.


I am looking at staying at Shokawa Village...

[68guns]

My experience with chiggers happened while fishing in Arkansas. They are nasty critters. My feet and ankles had dozens of bites on them. So much so I couldn't sleep that night.

[adam]

10 days and I am healing and finally not itching.

I love my boots, looking for a set of close fitting gaiters.

That was quite a long run of barefoot fishing...

[Zanko]

Yes, please no more broken sandals on long adventures. I actually didn't have one bite on my legs on that trip, so lolo.

[adam]

The moments spent walking deep into the forest with light sandals, hiking the stream barefoot far outweigh the few days of itching insanity. However, it is not smart to be found at risk at my age of not being able to hike back quickly and without danger of being hurt or causing others grief why I am not checking in.

When it comes time, I will remove my boots, they have speed laces.

...and I can plug back in.


Fishing barefoot is awesome.

[Alpinefly]

My Chigger experience is as a little kid on my Grandpa and Grandma's Farm in Southern Kansas. The worst bites, and miserable when it is hot, humid, and in a place that I need not mention that simply becomes pure torture. As to Fly Fishing in Sandals, you are just asking for trouble !!!!!!!!!!! Sometimes, you just have to learn the hard way !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[adam]

For years I've fished in flip flops and I don't see myself stopping anytime soon.


For hiking across the forest and fishing, I have serious hiking boots and bear spray. Not many would pull off all day rugged hikes in flip flops.

Its all good.