The Register-Mail, IL
06-11-06
The day when snow met poinsettia in public
Tom Martin
It’s difficult for me to reach for fingernail polish without thinking of my father. No,
my dad is not Marilyn Manson. He’s a 70-something ex-farmer and school
teacher whose hands haven’t known softness since man landed on the moon. In
fact, his hands, broad and coarse, have earned the name "meat paws." And if the
polish were to go on his fingernails, he’d save time and money, because the tip
of one of his fingers was zipped off in a woodworking mishap.
No, the polish was a home remedy for chiggers, those invisible insects that give
a bite that keeps itching.
Once upon a time, my wife, who grew up in the suburbs, didn’t believe in
chiggers. At 1/50th of an inch, they are too small to see with the naked eye. Or
the clothed eye for that matter (eye sweaters won’t help).
But my wife’s childhood doubt of chiggers’ existence was punctured by one
particularly rural experience. Now she’s a believer. And while I was a believer at
an early age, I did carry a misguided understanding of chigger biology. The thing
that always creeped me out about chiggers was that they burrowed beneath the
skin and camped out there. According to the Iowa State University entomology
department, chiggers don’t burrow, they just leave a bite that feels like they’re
still there. But let not the creepiness subside. It’s still pretty bad.
Chiggers are actually mites in the larval (worm) stage. Cousins to ticks and
spiders, adult chiggers deposit their eggs in grassy areas in spring. The eggs
hatch into larvae that wait for doofus mammals, i.e. me, to traipse past. They
spring onto the surface of said doofus mammal and, after taking a tour of
property, attach themselves to a skin pore or hair follicle. (Grossed out yet?
There’s more.) Once attached they inject a digestive fluid containing enzymes
that causes the doofus’ cells to rupture and then the chigger larvae consume the
fluid from the cells. Sounds like flesh-eating worms to me.
Got larvae?
My dad has had them many times. During one summer of my youth, my dad
discovered a patch of wild blackberries on our farmland. Evidently it was a larvae
feeding ground as well because my whole family came away with chiggers after
a rousing round of berry picking. That was just one of many chigger episodes.
Our home remedy for chigger bites was to apply finger nail polish to the bite. We
thought the polish killed the chigger - which bugged me because I didn’t want a
chigger corpse encased in my body - but, as it turns out, the chigger has already
left the scene when itching begins. Polish does help reduce the itching, though.
The thing about the nail polish was that mom never seemed to have clear or
bland colors. That meant applying cherry red, pink rose or poinsettia splotches of
polish to our bodies. That, in itself, doesn’t pose a public hazard unless, of
course, there is some public exposure, which was the case during one of our
family vacations.
Family vacation was the one time of year my father wore shorts, and those
shorts were swimming trunks. He was a farmer and farmers reserved the
wearing of short pants for women, children and city dwellers. Empirical evidence
proves a Caucasian leg sheathed from the sun remains, well, white. May dad’s
legs were the color of snow. That made quite a canvas for the bright red spots of
nail polish that dotted his glowing legs when they made their annual debut at the
motel swimming pool that day. Dad’s never been one to run from attention, so he
bore his legs to unsuspecting motel swimmers with bravado. The rest of us
pretended not to be with him, at least for a minute or two.
That moment from more than 30 years ago filtered back last week as I noticed
some red welts around my ankles. Yes, flesh-eating worms. So I asked my wife
where she kept her nail polish. As it turns out, she had only one color available: a
radiant red. Well, at least my legs are not the color of snow. More like alabaster.
Tom Martin is editor of The Register-Mail. Contact him at tmartin@register-mail
or 343-7181 Ext. 250.