Chiggers - How do you keep your pets safe? (Ozark: live, moving to)

[c3bunny]

Where do you get these guinees? I'm thinking it would be a great investment. I hadn't thought of the whole mouse situation but I bet there could be issues with that as well as chiggers and ticks.

[Bird_Watcher]

Originally Posted by MoMark

By the time you notice the itch and see the welt, the chigger is off smoking a cigarette and having a cognac aperitif with his legs up on the stool relaxing.

...Some of the things that have been said in this thread crack me up!! "smoking a cigarette and having a cognac"....lol

I think it's safe to say that no one likes bugs!...lol

This past summer I was snacked on by a chigger....it left a welt and itched like crazy...I still have a small scar on my hand from it.

Maybe someone knows what kind of bugs seem to gravitate towards sticking to cars in the heat? This past summer while living in Missouri I noticed several very ugly looking bugs just sitting on my car hood or door...they had almost no color(opaque) to them and looked like baby crabs probably smaller than the size of an eraser head on a pencil???...that's the only thing I could think of to describe the way they looked?

[garth]

Were they ticks? Although that's kinda' a funny place to find them, they are small, rather flat and have short crabby legs. That would be my guess, but maybe someone else has a better answer.

[Bird_Watcher]

Yeah, these were flat looking things...besides on my car I would also find them attached to my trash bags outside.
I figured whatever they are were drawn to the direct heat from the sun and that's why they were camped out on my car?

[midwest456]

that sounds like ticks to me too...the smaller ones are pretty much just black without the spots you see on the larger ones. i've seen them on the car roof in summer sometimes when it is parked under tree branches where they lurk, even though I thought they would only drop at the scent of a mammal.

here's a link to a picture of a deer tick (ugh)

http://www.ent.iastate.edu/images/ti...i-scap-mwd.gif

[garth]

Here's your photo from the link:

[c3bunny]

That's nasty looking. Maybe they are attracted to the heat of the car. I'm glad that I have a white truck. Hopefully I will be able to see them if they decide to go for a ride.

[mrschilicook]

I hate to break it to you, but California has scorpions tpo...along with rattlesnakes, sidewinders, black widows, brown recluse, ticks, chiggers, etc. We lived in the Bay Area most of our adult lives, and didn't see anything except the snakes, spiders, and ticks. But if you take a look at a book on Calif. pests...you'll be surprised what you "could" find depending on where your at in CA.

[c3bunny]

Chiggers in California? Wow, that's interesting. I would have never thought that they would be there. I thought they were only in the mid-west to the deep south area.

[NOLA2SGF]

I haven't lived in Missouri since I was a kid and lived in St. Louis, but I remember what I learned at that age about chiggers and ticks out in the country.

My mother and father would scold me for playing in wild, undeveloped areas with long grass, and call me back to the house saying that I would get chiggers if I played there. I did anyway, whenever I could get out there "under the radar", and got chiggers a few times. They itch way more than anyone can imagine. I don't recall anything that needed to be done after I got them (but maybe I have forgotten).

I also got a tick now and then (though I never got ticks or chiggers in mowed city areas, not even once, and I played outside every day). As I recall, ticks have to be removed. If you just pull them off, the parts embedded in your skin stay there and that is not desirable. It seems to me that my father would invert a small bottle of rubbing alcohol on the tick, hold the bottle there and drown it in alcohol. Then when it was dead, he could actually remove the whole tick with tweezers. But check elsewhere to find out the best way to remove them.

I can tell you this - - the sheer joy of playing in these wild areas is something I will never forget, and was worth getting a few ticks and chiggers! I pity the child who was restricted to a yard to play. Having your parents do a whole body check for ticks and chiggers is part of the routine for a kid, at the end of a day out in the country. I remember I would be telling my mother about everything I did, excitedly, while she checked me over. "And Mom, I climbed a tree way up higher than anyone, and there's a little stream and we waded, and I saw a FROG, and there's a big bush that is almost like a playhouse and I could go inside it, and look at the pretty rock I found!!".... Ah, those were the days. This was back in the 1950's when kids didn't have to be so closely supervised as I suppose they do now.

Now dogs cannot talk and tell us if they are suffering, so I'd talk to the dog's vet in Springfield and ask about humane ways to keep the dog from getting ticks and chiggers and what to do if they get them. I don't know anything about outside dogs. When I was a kid, my dog was a toy poodle with perfume and a fancy clip, and she stayed in the house or was taken for walks along the sidewalks using a rhinestone leash and collar. Spoiled little sweetie. She never got ticks, chiggers, or fleas.

Mosquitos were a much worse problem than chiggers or ticks. Be sure to use a repellent especially if you are in wild, unmowed areas. If you don't have repellent, rubbing orange peel on your skin actually does work (though you smell like orange peel).