In Praise of Chiggers
And the others
feasting unseen
upon you,
offering their
blessings
of digestive juices
and anticoagulants,
allergic reactions and
reddened mounds
made pleasurable
by your fingernails
scraping the skin
around them, over
and raw, again,
again, it feels
so good!
O at the Edges 
That’s the craziest sentiment I’ve seen you express to date. Yet, ’tis damn fine poetry.
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Well, I try to find the good in the bad. 🙃
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I enjoyed your poem, I hate chiggers
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Chiggers are an unfortunate reality at our country hovel. All I can do is scratch. Ha!
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Love poems like this that speak plainly about the things people don’t like to deal with or talk about. I’d love to IM you a poem I have that is loosely related. What are your coordinates fine sir?
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Thank you, C.P. robertokaji at yahoo dot com
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I don’t know, Robert…. I’ve had chigger bites.
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It could be that I’m resigned to my fate – I can’t avoid them, and when you get 30-40 bites, scratching is quite pleasurable. In a sick kind of way. 🙂
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I get that. Except for me chigger bites are a “get out a knife a scrape off the first layer of skin” kind of bite for me. But that aside, great poem!
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I just scratch ’em raw!
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Your verse is personally topical. I picked up three of those little critters under the elastic of my socks, yesterday. Luckily, I found the tube of Lanacaine in the medicine cabinet.
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They are insidious. By the time you notice them, it’s too late.
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Pingback: Something We are all Victims of. Thanks to O at the Edges. | cigarman501
OMG, and I thought I’d write about anything!
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Well, there ARE a few things I won’t write about. 🙂
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It seems to be where in the country one lives to be on familiar terms with chiggers. Growing up in Illinois and having occasions where I ended up covered with them, I know what torture they can be. Then I moved to Indiana and have met many people who have never heard of them in their life!– Mind you, we live in rural Indiana, out in the country, so these are country folk, not city people. I do have to say, that I can understand their ignorance, since, for the nearly 20 years I have lived here in IN, I have never received another chigger bit– so they must be regional? Like your poem by the way! : )
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I think they thrive in warm, humid conditions, but there are probably other environmental factors at play.
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Oh geez the scratching 😫
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That’s the best part of the misery. 😃
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I’m itching to say, this is scratchingly good. Try spraying Listerine around and on chairs, everything, yep it work’s.
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Sulfur works, but then you smell like rotten eggs, track in sulfur dust, which is annoying. And stinky.
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I am fervently itching and pawing at my sofa. But I don’t regret it. Thank you!
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Ha. It is one of those things about living where we do, K. 😁
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What memories you have brought back. Oh the pain of having them dug out as a 4yr old!
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O, chiggers!
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eeeeeeeerr
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Sometimes I feel like a walking dinner buffet.
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Such praise indeed!! Ai!! 🙂
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They’re not much fun…
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So I gather…:(
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“Are you sure you want to move here? Ticks and chiggers are everywhere.”
I did.
And, they are.
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We don’t have many ticks on our property, but that’s likely due to the prevalence of fire ants. Ha!
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I do yard work in Florida, and have faced the scourge of chiggers, mosquitos, ticks and deer flies. You’ve given me another way to look at their torment as in, we’re just exchanging body tissues in an ecological transaction….Still going to kill them when possible.
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I’d feel better about it if we were offered the opportunity to turn down those transactions. 🙂
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Your poem made me so glad I no longer live in Florida!
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There’s nothing like being the center of attraction…to insects wanting to feed.
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I would switch out chiggers and put in mosquitos. They have been a bane for me since childhood, feeding off the sanguine brew that is my blood and leaving me bumped up and itchy. My Poor daughter goes through the same; and even despite all that; I found this hilarious and identified with that sweet relief that my family calls, “The bad scratch.”
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That “bad scratch” is not much reward for the suffering, but sometimes it’s all we have. 🙂
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I know. Cuz then it hurts like hell and scars! 😦
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🤔
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Thanks very much.
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Only last week I had the chigger conversation with guests from out of town. The one where they’re from a place without chiggers and have never heard of them, and you’re trying to convince them that the little, impossible-to-see critters are real — not simply a joke you’re playing.
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Perhaps a demonstration might convince them. Ha!
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