Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

I hate feeling unmitigated hatred toward anything. A species, a person. I like to find one thing [that i don't hate completely about that thing].

Chiggers
don't actually burrow into people
they are the larval stage of [field mite]

in the adult form they eat mosquito larva

the coevolutionary fascinating part
they have no jaws, no proboscis for sucking
they scrape and let out a little
skin cells are liquid, their meal is right there, they can't get it into their bodies
except that your immune system tries to isolate it by building a wall around the liquified flesh
which turns into a microscopic drinking straw which the chigger uses to suck up your flesh.

The myth down South is that they burrow into your skin, and a bad case looks a little like scabies, which do operate by burrowing into your skin.

Apparently during the civil war, the yankee soldiers were dying from scratching so much they got infected.

The folk remedy is that you smother them, so they can't breath. Clear nail polish, kerosene, bleach. The itching only happens when oxygen hits the area– so this actually does eliminate the itch. Baby oil will work just fine.

You can build up a tolerance to them.