Oh my. Another long absence. My faded tan hands appear flaccid and incompetent upon the keyboard. It's probably the rain. Water retention and all that.
The summer. Seems to be ending, though there are some last blasts once in a while. This includes the terrifying attacks we endured (still endure? only time will tell), the past two weeks. It started with Al itching up a storm and the dog infested with what we thought were an inordinate number of eensy-weensy tick babies.
"Have you ever seen so many ticks?"
"No, I haven't. Are you sure they're ticks?"
"What else could they be?"
The debate wore on. The itchy spots on Alex increased, and then I started to itch. Always in unmentionable places. Only to be shown to intimates -- basically, ourselves. And Chauncey. Who was banished from the bedroom. One night, 1am to be precise, Al knelt on the bed, staring down at his stomach --
"They're crawling all over me!"
I stared in disbelief as a posse of reddish-brown, six-legged extremely tiny bugs raced around Al's midriff.
"Take a shower, please, take a shower!!!"
I stripped the bed, threw all of the blankets, pillows, and sundries into the laundry. New sheets, blankets, pjs. We both showered. Splashed with witch hazel to ease the itching. Onto Sr. Google who corroborated my suspicion of CHIGGERS!
A friend and her husband had had an outbreak, so I always had the suspicion in the back of my mind. We were disgusted, but thankful that they weren't ticks.
Chauncey is still banished from the bedroom. I think that chiggers can survive outdoors until the ground temperature dips below 60 degrees fahrenheit. He will have to wait. The chigger population on Chauncey has dipped, but we still find the odd one or two on his forepaws. Poor guy. He's taken to sleeping under the coffee table. He looks a little guilty and stares longingly at our bedroom door most days. But he seems to have accepted his fate.
How's that for a longed-for blog post?! Gripping!