Nasty Little Buggers

Okay, I'm hoping that this post will draw 47 comments, because I'm desperate!

Some subversive critters of the most vicious variety are eating me alive in bed at night. Itchy, itchy bites, and over the last 4 or 5 days, I probably have a dozen or two bites on me. I have found two or three tiny little unidentified buggers, and when I mash them, they explode with blood. And I do mean TINY... as in about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.

My first thought was bedbugs... crap! But, I have inspected the seams of the mattress & boxsprings, and between the two, and I can find absolutely ZERO evidence of that. From what I can gather, bedbugs are pretty easily visible to the eye, about the size of a non-engorged tick.

Now I'm leaning toward chiggers. But, can chiggers live indoors? We have indoor/outdoor dogs, one of whom sleeps with us at night... could she have picked them up in the grass, transferred them to our bed, where they are having all-night drunken raves in our bed? And what can we do to get rid of them?

I'm really starting to swerve psychotically toward delusional parasitosis at this point. AAAAAAAAARRRRRGH!

Note: My stats tell me that this post is one of my most viewed. If you have come here through Google and are having an unsolvable insect mystery, you can find an update on our situation in this post. Good luck!

Comments

[vera]

I don't know if chiggers can live indoors...but my mom got bit by them a few years ago when we went to pick blueberries...it ended up looking like one big, bad rash all across her back...are they rashlike in appearance?

[Lori V.]

Some are, some are very localized red bites. They start out looking like mosquito bites. Most of the rash-y looking ones, I think are just my sensitive skin reacting to light scratching. (?)

[blue like the sky]

you probably wouldn't be able to see chiggers, despite your impeccable perception! Anna's school nurse said that a local pediatrician had told her about a tiny black bug, kind of beetle-ish, that bit aggressively. When I was looking for a good chigger link the other day, I discovered that there are many kinds of biting mites. There's website called, I think,
'what's that bug;" you can send in pics of your critter and a bug specialist will identify it.

[Vanessa]

Lori, I'll bet it's fleas!! I had the exact same problem a few years ago when I was living in a basement and my cat, who doesn't wear a flea collar or anything, starting playing around in the garden more. When I inspected the depths of her fur, sure enough, I found a whole colony of the little buggers. Got a flea comb and some ointment and a few days later, problem solved.

[Lori V.]

Nope, Vanessa... not fleas... been there, done that... blogged about it. It was horrible and paranoia-inducing. (As an aside, the cats and dogs are all treated with horrible monthly chemicals to prevent them.) I grew up with fleas & ticks & know all their tricks... but I don't live in the country anymore, and I shouldn't have these bugs, damn it! :-)

[blue like the sky]

My money's still on a mite of some sort. But look on the bright side...they're not fire ants! You're welcome to stroll through my backyard if you want that delightful experience.

[Nickelking]

No clue as to what they are, but in my experience with biters of most sorts increasing your intake of vinegar, garlic or some two word powder (first word starts with a B) that I can't remember at the moment helps to lessen the attacks.

You can add any of those to the dogs water as well, so long as you do it gradually so s/he won't stop drinking.

[RedMolly]

I have no actual helpful advice, but wanted to let you know I Feel Your Pain (tm). I'm something of a mosquito magnet--we were sitting outside with Jim's family last night and as soon as the sun went down I got six mosquito bites in less than three minutes. Ended up going home to take a baking soda bath.

Good luck figuring out what's eating you!

[Marnie]

Hi Lori,

Had to comment because we went through something similar last year, briefly. For us it was probably bedbugs, but we never did actually find any either. They can be hard to find. It seemed to be only in our bedroom, so we were lucky in a sense. Our solution was to wash every fabric in the bedroom in hot water, dry on hot, and treat the bedroom as a "contaminated" zone until it was resolved (that is, clean clothes were not brought back into the room and clothes that had been in the room were left there to be collected to washed - we hardly went into the bedroom at this time, just to sleep). Any fabric we couldn't wash we had to dispose of. We also vaccuumed every inch and crack religiously almost every day, using a new vaccuum bag every time and putting the old one in a plastic bag right away (i know, not that environmentally friendly but.....). Another thing that helped was to rub an all-natural insect repellant (ours had citronella and neem oil in it - worked wonders) on the outside edge of the fitted sheet, on the edge perpendicular to the floor, creating a kind of "protected zone" so we could sleep at night, 'cause man did those bites itch! Sorry about the length of the comment, but I remember the desperation, and we couldn't bear the thought of using insecticides because we were co-sleeping with our baby! ....we won, though :-) It took about a month, but we did! Good luck!

[anthony]

I am having this problem as will i have fogged,sprayed nothing seems to be working it appears they have gotten in to the carpet
im constatly itching at night when trying to sleep i need a solution

[Rome]

People have been posting all sorts of somewhat helpful advice but you've been eaten by chiggers. My bites are a week old now and they are just now feeling better. I thought I had bedbugs, mites etc. at first because I first noticed them in the morning or at bedtime but they often take 3-6 hours to cause problem since the original bite doesn't hurt. Your know its chiggers if they really really itch. Geez! They also cause much bigger welts than a mosquito bite and after scratching them to death your skin is mutilated. Google it for all the info. Your dog certainly could have brought them in but not necessarily. I looked all over my mattress and didn't find any mites/chiggers.

Rome

[Anita]

I have been having the same problem. I have seen anything. I have torn my room apart at least4 times, raided everything i could think of, I think I used 3 cans of Raid in the past several weeks. The house got fumigated last week and I got bite shortly after. So I though maybe it was ticks or fleas and so I sprayed for that and even gave my cat a flea collar. I got bite once more.. but it might have been an old bite.

I suspect that I have chiggars at my window. My window is in the basement underground. And probably a perfect moist dark place for them to breed. I'm sure how to get rid of them. But I have been covering myself with DEET and spraying raid out the window.

But I always feel like bugs are crawling all over me. I think it wont start till I know that the problem is solved. Good luck with your fight. Let us know if you find out what it was.

[lori]

As I type this message with one hand, I scratch furiously at my ankles and legs with the other. Having just returned from a "vacation" that can only be compared to Dante's 10th circle of hell, I can offer a further suggestion: please consider getting checked for Lyme and or Rickettsiaceae since it is possible you had come in contact with a large number of "seed ticks" or nymphs either hiking or brought in by the animals. We were hiking in MO and were warned about chiggers and these seed ticks but only sprayed ourselves with general repellents. When I peeled off my socks and saw all these brown speckles on my feet, I ASSUMED they were chiggers because they were so small. It wasn't until several days later that I began pulling small poppyseed sized ones off my boyfriend that I realized they were ticks. they were attached to the base of hair follicles on him but as I don't have as much hair on me, I did not suspect nymph ticks. We went to the doctor with furious itching and hundreds of bites ( because we didn't know to strip all our clothing and launder it all immediately while on the road). Bottom line we are being treated preventatively for any of the diseases they may have transmitted. We are told by the DNR from Missouri that the biting/itching continues for 7 to 10 days. Needless to say, we threw out our luggage and have been doing laundry continuously. They are very dangerous but highly treatable.

[Stephanie]

I too have chigger bites, I would say that your dogs have definately carried them into your bed and thus they end up all over you too. Animals are actually thier prefered host. However it is possible that you may have gotten into them yourself. I read an artical that is very thorough and it says that the chiggers don't borough into your skin, which is what I thought happened, but rather they atatch themselve onto your skin by their mouth. I have tried the nailpoilsh trick, soaking in rubbing alcohol etc. but I read that by the time you are itching, they chigger is usually gone. The best thing to do is bathe in hot soapy water. And also I would recomend not letting your dog sleep in your bed until it is about 40 degree weather outside, in which chiggers can not live. Just wash your sheets in warm soapy water, and mist your bed with any brand of bug spay. (They are repeled by this.)and remember not to let your dog on the bed until cooler weather. Good Luck!

[steve]

not chiggers... chiggers feed on skin cells not blood cells so if you say that when you squeeze the bug it explodes with blood then it has to be something else, also chiggers never leave the original host for a new one, its a one shot deal, they drop off in a couple hours to a day and become a plant eating animal