Question about chiggers for the Dead Lawn Society

Have chiggers been a problem for any of the dead lawn society?

I haven't noticed a problem myself, but this weekend I noticed an interesting chigger fear among guests at my house. We had a father's day cook out at our house. Lots of kids running around in the back yard. It was interesting to note, at first, that kids preferred to run around in the tall grass part of the lawn rather than the mowed part of the lawn. But one mother scolded her daughter not to run in the tall grass else she would get chiggers. The other parents took note of the first mom's scolding and then all of the children were continually hurdled away from the tall grass and into the mowed grass...

So is this a valid concern? Should children not be allowed to play in tall grass? When did people start fearing tall grass?

In the future, if this situation arises again, what should I say, if anything?

In Texas, the chiggers I've gotten have mostly come from tall brush near creeks. I don't remember getting any in tall grass. However, I don't want to get them again. To prevent getting them, I wear long pants and socks with tennis shoues, with rubber bands around the bottom of the pants, and dust with sulfur powder around the shoes. If the brush is high, I also dust around my waistband and bra elastic. This also helps keep off seed ticks, which do get in tall grass. I've seldom gotten them higher than my waist. To treat the bites, I put clear nail polish over them. Of course, dealing with ticks is a bit more cumbersome.

What you should say is that the kids are better off walking and playing in the tall grass, even if there are a few ticks in there.

There are no dieseses carried by chiggers here in North America, they have not burrowed in, and the best thing to put on a chigger bite is a lotion. (Nail polish is the standard around here too.)The chigger only drinks a little bit of the liquids from a few cells. It makes a tiny pit (by hardening a few cells) and sucks up the miniscule drop of fluid that collects there when it rasps open a couple of cell walls. It then falls off. It is not a maggot and looking for it without a magnifying glass is pointless because it is tiny tiny tiny. Adults panicking because the kids might be chigger bit is a bit much.

So far as the ticks, the ticks carrying Lime's diesese and spotted fever etc. have to feed for a while before transmitting their cargo of viruses. It is almost 2 days for Lyme's, and Spotted Fever can be cured almost at the point of death if the female is found and pulled off. I walk through tall grass, weeds, brush almost every day here. Been doing it for more than15 years and have found hundreds of ticks on me by now. Never been harmed, to my knowledge, by the hundreds of ticks, chiggers and other biting critters of the tall grass. But one little mosquito gave me West Nile, and a close friend lost use of his left arm for 6 months because of "Unexplained Paralysis" often associated with West Nile. The secondary infection from scratching the little volcano of a bite is the most dangerous part of a chigger bite.

So it may actually be better for them to walk in tall grass, because there will be no mosquitos biting the legs, and mosquitos are known to carry many viruses that harm people.

I wanted to say that I walk through there all the time and have never gotten chiggers... but I don't think that would matter...

No problem with chiggers here. I've run into them down south though and they are nasty.

We do have problems with ticks. For a while there I was pulling them off of me a few times a day. This may sound silly but I bought a tight toothed teflon flea comb for myself to go through my hair from the pet shop. I can get all the ticks on my body but always had difficulty getting them out of my hair or checking the hair on the kids. I also have a teflon flea comb for the dogs even though they are on Heart Guard. My dogs are shorter haired than your lab but I still have problems finding them. The ticks sort of blend in.

I wish I would have taken a photograph of the back of a kid who was nailed by a Lyme Disease carrying tick. We're talking a text book bullseye rash. My husband and all the boys had been up camping in Minnesota. I don't fear Lyme Disease any longer but I did tell my husband that they all need to do better tick checks when they are camping. We had ample time to get to a Doctor to be treated. He was on antibiotics for all of 3 or maybe it was 4 weeks and that was that.

We leave cans of Deep Woods Off out. We strategically place them where anyone can get their hands on them and spray themselves. I don't know anyone personally who has contracted West Niles but I've heard too many stories. Bug spray works for us.

My BIL had gotten the bullseye rash last summer, was treated promptly and is fine now.

I was kind of amused, but disappointed, in the parents reaction to the kids playing in the tall grass. I know my dogs love the tall grass and the kids were enjoying it too.

You think that's bad? You should see some of the inner city kids who come up this way for educational programming. I recall a girlfriend of mine who adopted a burrow from some humane society in Arizona about 20 years ago. They transported it out here to Illinois. The burrow did fine until the very first snow fall blanketed the ground and then it took a whole bunch of us to coax (pull and push) it out of the barn. By the way, you push shielding yourself with a piece of plywood which was about all we could think of to help her get it out so she could muck the stall. It was pretty funny watching the big burrow tiptoeing around in the snow and holding its legs up as if it was walking on hot coals or a bed of nails. After the first few hours, the burrow was out there kicking up its heels in the cool crisp air running around on freshly fallen snow. Children who have never experienced grass are a lot like that burrow. After the initial sensory bombardment is over, most of them are out running and jumping and rolling in it. We've had to carry a few kids out into grass because they were so afraid of it touching their legs but after they got out there and after they saw the other kids going hog wild, they would ask us to set them down. We give them bug boxes and tell them to go out and collect what they can. The bug boxes are easy enough to make and I can get a photo of some of the ones we've made if you are interested. Matter of fact, I feel so strongly about kids getting out into these types of areas that I just gave a bug box to a friend's daughter this weekend. Maybe you could have a few bug boxes available the next time you have friends with younger kids? All of us are afraid of the unknown. Nothing like providing a little prompter to get them over the hump of getting out into the grasses. You have kids yourself so I doubt anyone would question your sanity handing a kid a bug box and telling them to go see what they can collect in the tall grasses. Parents don't place anyone's children in harms way so maybe sending them out to collect might have helped? I don't know.

I don't have kids. But we have a lot of neices and nephews that spend the occaisional weekend at our house.

But I like the bug box plan - great idea. Please post a picture of a bug box.

I did give all the neices and nephews monarch caterpillars last year to raise. They loved it. This year they are asking their dad to plant milkweed in their yard ;- )

One of my favorite neice stories - when my four year old neice played in the back yard while we hung an owl house in one of the trees. Later that same evening she called me and ask if there was an owl sleeping in the house now.

Hi Joe,

This one is kid made. Depending on the age of the group, we may let them use a staple gun on their own once we show them how to use it or else we stand beside them and guide their hands. The kids do cut their own screen to size. The handle is simply nothing more than old horse leads they cut down to usable lengths. The plexiglass doors we actually precut and predrill for them to attach. The dowels they cut themselves and we let them use a template of carbon paper to mark where they need to drill to insert the center dowel. Other than that, they're on their own (with an adult supervising each cut).

The blue water bowl is nothing more than the top to a 1-liter pop bottle. We collect them throughout the year so that when spring hits, we have enough to give one to every kid.

Forgot to mention you need wood glue to insert the support dowel.

Here's the front view-

I'll gladly send some Southern chiggers up to Illinois. I'll take ticks over chiggers anytime. Down here anytime you're in tall grass or brush in the Spring and early Summer, you're going to have chiggers. They pick the most unfortunate places to burrow.....

Oh no no no! You keep those chiggers. I don't have any and I don't want any. Those are nasty! Far nastier than any tick.

It's that we don't have chiggersn in Illinois... we do have them...

I have gotten chiggers in Wisconsin, not to far from where Equillibrium lives.

I don't think that chiggers are isolated to tall grass. In fact, I know I have gotten chiggers in short mowed lawns...

That is one experience I have not had any where on my property and I don't want to either. Those chiggers are evil.

If I HAD to choose between chiggers and a tick -I think I 'd choose chiggers... not that I would want to choose either, but ticks carry disease and chiggers are just an annoying itchy nuisance.