Stuff You Should Know - Chiggers: The Phantom Menace

Episode Date: May 23, 2016

Chiggers are tiny little mites capable of making your life miserable. Worse than mosquitoes? Maybe. But they aren't insects - mites are actually part of the arachnid family and behave a little like ticks. Learn all about these nearly invisible pests in today's episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.

Jerry's over there, Stuff You Should Know. Jerry's had chiggers. Yeah, me too. I have not, I'm really glad. I was like, chiggers, seems like Tracy's making a pretty big deal out of this in this article. Yeah, Tracy Wilson of Stuff You Missing History Class wrote this.

Who recently got married, congratulations, Tracy. Yeah, and she wrote, if you've ever heard her say the word mouth parts in a show. Tracy wrote it. Chance's heart, she wrote it. She wrote ticks and mosquitoes. Bees. Did she write bees?

I think so. She did a whole insect suite. She spent a lot of time knee deep in insects. Yeah, and this, well, this isn't even an insect spoiler. Oh, well, you just removed the fact of the podcast. You think? I think so. I don't think you did, I'm just teasing.

Okay. I'll bet I know what you think it is, because I think the same thing. All right, well, we'll see. Okay. I challenge you. I challenge you back. We throw down the gauntlet, which is a glove.

So Tracy did make a big deal out of chiggers, but apparently it's a big deal, right? Well, sure. If you've ever had them, they're no fun. No, the deeper I got into the article, the more I was like, oh yeah, this does sound really kind of awful. Yeah, and this is, just warn everyone,

this is another itch-inducing episode. And speaking of, I got my first little bout of poison ivy. Congratulations, sucks. That's great. Yeah, I was clearing out stuff over the weekend, and I was in poison ivy, and I knew it. I was like, you know, I've never had it before. This sounds very familiar.

And, but I was still, I'm no dummy. I know how Murphy's law works. Okay. So I said, I just said that out loud. Wait, you just said that out loud, or you just said? I said, I'm not allergic to Emily. I thought you were saying like that, I'm no dummy. No, no, I said that too.

And I said, so you know what? I'm gonna be careful, and then I'm gonna go take a shower pretty soon afterward. Smart. And so it's not bad, but there are probably five or six little, tiny little sets of bumps on each leg. Pustules? Yeah, they're not bad though.

And I looked at them, I said, you know what? That's friggin' poison ivy. After all these years. Finally gotcha. Yep, but not too bad. Like my dad always said, poison ivy will get everybody one day. Is that his big saying?

It's one of them. So anyway, speaking of itching, that's my itch story of the day. And this will make you itch, because it made me itch while reading it. I think you're right. So actually, that's funny, it didn't make me itch. Maybe because I've never had it.

You're scratching yourself right now. No, I'm pointing to myself. Oh, okay. No weird place. I'm pointing my finger to my skin and moving it around, but I'm not scratching it seriously. So everybody knows that chiggers are insects that burrow into your skin and suck your blood.

And I'm sorry. You're being coy, my friend. I am. Because you just lied three times. Burrow into your skin. Oh, insects that burrow into your skin that suck your blood, that's right. Those are, there's three lies in there.

This is like a highlights. We have to go pick out what's wrong with this picture. Chiggers are not insects. They are arachnids. They are the larvae of the harvest mite. They do not burrow into your skin and suck your blood. No, but then so what are the bumps? Well, you're being coy again,

but what they are actually doing is maybe even grosser than sucking your blood. They are liquefying your cells into a slurry that they can drink from a straw made of your body. It's pretty amazing. Is that the fact for you? Yeah. All right, buddy.

We'll get there. We had the same one. High five, first one. First what? First time we've ever high-fived in an episode. Is that right? Sure. I would have imagined that you could make

like a video montage of us like high-fiving during episodes. No. Guess not. No. So you said that these things are the larva of harvest mites, right? Yeah. And harvest mites are arachnids.

They're related to spiders. So they're not insects, but you can understand why people would think that chiggers are insects because chiggers have, chiggers of the larva of the harvest mite have six legs. Yes. So you'd be like, well, it's an insect.

Nope. They just haven't grown their adult legs yet, apparently. Yeah. I guess they get those two more legs at some point. Yeah. They, the adults are red and the little larvae are red, but you're not gonna see,

that's one of the problems with chiggers is you're not gonna see like a mosquito landing on you or a flea even. Like you think a flea is small. A chigger is like a tiny little dot that you would never notice. No. And you may not even be able to see it all

with your eyeballs. All right. Sometimes you can see several of them together basically forming a clump. Yeah. They like to form together. Yeah. One of them has kid from kid and plays haircut

or Amon Shumpert's more contemporaneously. Oh yeah. That is a total kid and play haircut. Did you know that Amon Shumpert delivered his own child in his apartment? Oh wow. On purpose? Accidentally, the kids just came very quickly

in like the 911 dispatcher had to talk him through how to do it, but he delivered his own child. And his wife or girlfriend right there in their apartment. And everything was good? Totally great. Wow.

That's great news. He's a basketball player by the way, people. Oh yeah. People like, who's Amon Shumpert? He plays for the boo. For the calves. Boo. So if you're an adult harvest mite

and you've grown up from a chigger into an adult, you're gonna eat, it's actually a beneficial little arachnid to have around because they're gonna eat the eggs of other pests like mosquitoes. Right. So you want the adults around. As an adult or as the second step, the nymphs, right?

After the larvae? Yeah. It's the larva that suck. They don't suck. Well yeah, but the larvae, you know, you gotta have them but you know, hopefully they just stay in the yard. I'll bet these things are holy terrors to see

if you are on their scale. Like if that thing's coming after you and your eggs, I'll bet it's just really terrifying. They're bad. They are parasitic though. They don't. The larvae are. Yeah, they don't eat the blood though, like we pointed out,

like the fleas and the ticks and the mosquitoes. No, they eat your skin cells, right? So here's what happens. Larva hatch, apparently an adult female harvest mite will go into the dirt and be like, there's a bunch of eggs. Yep, and Iman Shumpert is there to welcome women into the world.

Yeah, for them to hatch so we can hasten their birth. And then the eggs do hatch and the harvest mite female tends to lay your eggs all in one place. So if you are familiar with chiggers, if you've ever had them in your yard, like one little patch of grass can be totally overrun with chiggers, but then you just turn a few degrees to your left, there's another patch of grass

that is totally devoid of them. Yeah, I get the feeling they don't get around too quickly either, you know? No, they're pretty stupid low level animals if you ask me. So the eggs are laid in one place, they hatch and the little larvae come out and they're like, blood meal, give me a blood meal that's not actually made of blood.

That's basically what they say. Okay. They hatch pretty much anytime during the year, except for the hard winters. And like you said, they want that first meal and the reason they want that first meal is not just because they're ravenous little jerks. They actually cannot progress to that nymph stage,

which, and then grow up to be adults unless they have a complete first meal. Yeah, they can have half a first meal. They have three quarters. Seven eighths. And get scratched off the body or brushed off the body and that's pretty much it. They generally will not go back and finish that meal.

So there's no starting over. They're just like, well, that's it, that's the end of Millhouse. I had my one chance. And so it's like a complete lose, lose situation when a chigger bites a person because once you start itching as a person, you go to scratch the area and there goes the chigger.

They don't latch onto your skin. They don't burrow into your skin. So the moment your finger makes contact with them, they're gone. The welt they leave behind is there and persists for a while, but they didn't finish their meal and they die, but you still get the scratch or the horrible itch.

It's lose, lose. It is lose, lose. They need to stay away from humans. Well, they do because there are a lot of animals that don't mind the chigger on their body. So they can get their full meal deal there and go on to live a great and healthy life without getting scratched off.

So they don't want to be on a human. And I mean, you would think like, how long could their meal possibly last? We're talking like buffet level length of time. Yeah. Four days. Four days to eat a food for each meal. I think about it, that's time for us.

Like how long is four days to a harvest mite larva? You could probably do the math. It's like seven, eight days. Figure out chigger years are probably, yeah. It's probably most of their life. Yeah. You know? So there's a bunch of different kinds of chiggers

around the world and they're actually, I mean, they are pests. They are parasites, but there's only like, at least one as far as this article says that is really problematic for humans. The lepo-trobidium delients. Nice. Mite.

It's common to Asian. It can carry typhus, a form of typhus, which can kill you if it's untreated. Yeah. It's cured with antibiotics pretty easily, but if you're out in the middle of nowhere, it can kill you, but don't worry unless you are in certain parts of Asia, not a problem.

Right. Chiggers will just annoy you. Yeah, that's it. They're basically just a total annoyance and by annoying humans, they die. It's stupid. All right. Well, let's take a little break here

and we will come back and talk about some of the wonders of the chigger. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step.

Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.

All right, we've covered, did we cover fleas? Yeah, I want to say yes. They definitely eat a blood meal. We've covered fleas, ticks, mosquitoes, yes, spiders, scabies. Did we? Oh, yeah. Man, I just, it's really getting a little too much to try to remember now. Yeah.

You know, I mean, there's like lost episodes just because we forgot them. It's officially, it's officially getting out of hand. Uh, I guess we should stop. No, we keep going, my friend. Um, brain hurts so bad, Chuck. All right. So what I was talking about was the, the, the wonders of the chigger, they have a lot of little things that they have about them that make it, they make them able to perform

this surgery on your skin. Well put. It is kind of like surgery. It is. Um, but again, they, they aren't latching on, they're just kind of hanging around. And when you get a chigger on your skin, it actually will spend usually hours looking for a good place to go try to get a meal because, um, they have these little tiny mouth parts. There's the word that makes the appearance, which lets you know it's a Tracy Wilson joint,

right? Um, but they don't pierce skin very easily, at least not human skin, uh, tough skin that you would find on most places of your body, uh, chigger can't bite through, but which is why you, you will get chigger bites in places like the back of your knee, like in your armpit. Oh man. Places where the chigger can, can get its mouth parts. What are they called?

Chelicera? Chelicerae? Uh, chelicerae. Chelicerae. Chelicerae. Chelicerae explains it all. Um, that's why you'll get those bites in those areas because that's where they can get their chelicerae into.

That's right. Uh, they're light sensitive, uh, which means they're going to hang out in the shade mostly, if it was up to them at least. Um, it's, uh, the sun is going to dry out their body, so that's why they head toward the shade. I mean, it can like kill them basically. Sure. Uh, and so also when a host, um, comes near, there's like your dog casting a shadow, uh,

the chiggers go, look over there. I think that's pretty clever. There's a shadow. That means something is alive with skin. That means that in some weird way, chiggers are aware of shadows. That's right. I mean, like some dogs aren't aware of shadows or don't understand them. I think probably most dogs.

Have you ever seen that like baby two, three year old toddler, um, who sees her shadow for the first time and just starts freaking out, trying to get away from it? Oh really? Really cute. So it was a possessed baby? Yeah. That's sad. It's cute.

I saw that movie. That was the exorcist. Right. That's what I'm talking about. Uh, they are very temperature sensitive as well. So when they coming to contact with a host, uh, and the host is the thing that it's going to feed on, um, it's going to detect that it has like, you know, it's not infrared, but it's going to detect that body heat, right?

And say, all right, there's something I can try and latch on to. So it's like predator in that respect. Yeah. Like a little bit. Kind of. No dreadlocks. No. Those are, those are a nice addition.

If you ask me. Uh, what else? Um, I think it's hilarious. Tracy called it upward mobility. Yeah. They like to climb to the tops of stuff. And I remember this one from ticks. Yeah.

Remember that the ticks would just like grasp it, things like little tiny lobsters. Yeah. Just stand there and wait for something to pass by and as it does, they grab it. Yeah. Um, they don't stand there with their arms outstretched the whole time. No. They're in a stress position. Um, there's something called a questing response, which is another hilarious term.

They're questing. Yeah. They get up on their tippy toes. They're, they're standing up with their, their arms raised up toward the heavens. Yeah. Imagine for a meal of human cells. Imagine John Kusak can say anything, but take away the boom box. Right.

That's a questing position. Yeah. The chiggers are there and they're a little overcoat and they're spiky hair and they're bad attitudes, um, I just saw, you know, John Roderick, a friend of the show, John Roderick. Yeah. Great Seattle musician. He tweeted the other day about silverfish, you know, the little insect. Sure.

He said, why don't we call silverfish? What they were clearly meant to be called sync lobsters really struck me as funny. Yeah. They don't look fishy at all. Silver. Sure. Sync lobster. That's a great one.

Yeah. All right. They have these little hair like sensory organs on their body, uh, to help basically to help them find everything from host to each other. Yeah. You know, they're like, uh, let's get together and really do some damage on this guy's armpit. Yeah. Or you see that, uh, waistband.

It's a great place to hide underpants band. Yeah. Underpants band. Yeah. Is that what it said in here? No. That's what I said. Okay.

Uh, but that is a great place to hide because like we said a few times, you'll easily scratch them off. So they want to go somewhere where you may not be thinking about scratching. Yeah. I was surprised though that they go, I could see kind of the outside of the armpit, back of the knee, the waistband, underpants band, um, they're protected there. They are, but at the same time is warm there and their temperature sensitive. So you would think since they're seeking shade, they would go to a cooler spot, but

there's probably not too many cool spots on the human body that are protected. Yeah. Good point. Yeah. Not really. I just said a bunch of contradictory stuff. So all these things help the chiggers find their hosts. Uh, but as Tracy points out, that's, that's half the battle.

Yeah. And when you find a chigger on you, it's probably sorry that it, it chose you as it's one four day meal because they don't like humans. They'll, they'll climb onto anything, just about any vertebrate animal, snakes, turtles. Yeah. Birds. Poor little birds, chipmunks. Yeah.

They don't like us cause we take hot showers every day. That's right. And a lot of these animals don't have any kind of response to being bitten by a chigger. So the likelihood of the chigger being undisturbed for four days while it's having its meal, fourth meal is what we're going to call it. Yeah. Like Taco Bell. Do you remember that?

They tried to invent another meal that they're, so they're not going to get brushed off on these things. Humans almost invariably brush chiggers off because right when we start scratching again, it removes the chigger. So they're, they're, they don't seek us out as prey. It's just, it's just total happenstance. Yeah. And like you said, since they need that thin skin, little kids are more likely to get bitten

by a chigger than an old leathery old sea captain, let's say. Yeah. And little kids who can't take being teased really are vulnerable to chigger bites. Because they're thin skin. Very nice. You know the ones who wear like shorts with knee socks pulled all the way up? You're those kids? Yeah.

And their nose are always running because they're crying. Yeah. Or they just stopped crying. Those kind of kids. So like I said, a hot shower is a, is a great way to kill. It's great for a lot of reasons. Great way to kill chiggers. It's great way to keep your body clean and it's great way to unwind at the end of a

long day working in the yard. That's right. Because that's where you're going to get your chigger bites most likely. Yeah. In the yard. Yeah. Especially if you are the type who gets like letters from the neighborhood association saying, Mo, you're lawn, you might have chiggers.

I will never live where there's a neighborhood association. Yeah. No way, no way. Yeah. No. You know, in some places. But not in my thing. In some places, a neighborhood covenant supersedes local law.

Yeah. Unbelievable. It is. Like your mailbox has got to be like this. You can't paint your house that color. Not for me. And you got to pay us a certain amount of money to boss you around every month. Nope.

Yep. That's why I have a stack of car batteries aside my house with like old wood that I haven't used still. And it's like Sanford and Sun out there. And then like in paint with a brush, it says, welcome children on the side of your car. All right. So should we take another break and talk a little bit more about the weird fact of the day?

Let's do this. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co stars, friends and non stop references to

the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friends beeper because you'll want to be there when the

nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road.

Okay, I see what you're doing. You ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear, and you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man.

And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, buddy. We talked about the mouth parts. So what they do is they get that cheliciri and they make a hole in your skin normal enough. They inject saliva, which contains digestive enzymes that make a slurry of your skin cells.

We talked about other insects that do similar things like this. So it's still pretty like, all right, no big deal. Then it gets weird. It does. And I don't know if it's because they have like specific enzymes or something, but I didn't see this happening with anything else. Did you? No.

No, you drop it on them. No. You refuse. I refuse. All right. So what happens is they have in these secretions, what happens is they break your, they break your skin cells down, which makes that slurry, which is good. Makes sense.

Makes sense. Slurp it up. Yeah. But then the surrounding tissue hardens and it actually creates a tube, a little hard straw in your skin. In the wound. Yeah. Called a stylus stone.

Right. What do they do with that? They drink out of it. They use it as a straw. Like a crazy straw. To slurp up your wrecked cells. Yeah. And the longer they're in there, the longer the straw is.

The stylus stone? The stylus stone. Yeah, I saw a paper from 2004 and in the abstract it said something like it seems that stylus stones form as a reaction to chiggers. So I don't know if they thought like maybe this was part of a chigger or something like that, but I guess it's a recent finding. Oh, really? That stylus stones form and that's how chiggers actually eat because they don't have any probiscous

or anything like that. No. They're pretty much really weak proboscis. One of those, they're just not great insects or arachnids at all. Yeah. They're not. They can't bite very easily. They can't suck anything out.

They're just, they're useless. Yeah. But your body just happens to help them out. Well they have that magic juice. I guess so. It's pretty cool. You know? Yeah.

So with that magic juice, that's going to be one of the two reasons you're going to be itching a lot. Some people react quite adversely to that juice. Other people, it's not that bad, but it's still going to itch no matter what. And it's not just the juice you're reacting to. I think that's probably what first gets your attention, but the thing that causes the persistent itch is that stylus stone, your body's own reaction, which seems to be forming basically a hollow tube of temporary scar tissue in this wound area.

It's crazy. And that actually causes some sort of itch reaction as your skin heals, and that can take a very long time to heal. This is the point where I was like, oh, having chiggers actually does suck terribly. Yeah. I think if you had a chigger that was able to complete its full four day meal. Your toast. It means you haven't showered for four days.

That's when your stylus stone is going to be at its peak of hardness and length. Right. It's going to have the worst reaction. Right. So, what can you do? There are home remedies you've heard, maybe like painting over chigger bites with a clear nail polish. Right.

Or any kind of nail polish, really, I think. Yeah. Sure. If you've got flare, you need some sparkly gold. I'm going to put some dots on my armpit, and then why not? I'll put them around my eye as well. So what's the deal there? Are you just choking it out?

A lot of people would say, yes, you're covering up the chigger that's burrowed into your skin, and it is now suffocating to death. It's like choke on your meal. But that's wrong because, again, chiggers don't burrow into your skin. Right. And Tracy points out very acutely by the time you even notice it, it's very likely the chigger is not there any longer. Right.

So if you're painting something over your skin, really what you're doing is protecting the wound area from the air, contact with the air, which can aggravate it. So it does help. But Tracy says, just use anti-itch cream. It's way better. Yeah. Like cortisone or something. What it is?

Yeah. Yeah. Don't try it. I don't know why she felt the need to put this in here, but we might as well say it. Don't try to remove the stylus dome. I can see people doing that. Trying to dig it out. Yeah.

Yeah. No, you don't need to. No, I can definitely see people doing that. Yeah. I think that was worth it. She also says, don't use turpentine. Yeah. I've never heard that.

Yeah. People do all sorts of dumb stuff. Yeah. I mean, I guess if you could soak in a tub of gasoline and that would probably kill. Light it on fire. There goes your chigger problems. Yeah. Most of these home remedies though, you should just shy away from, I think.

Yes. Only use remedies approved by modern Western medicine. Modern Western medicine. That's the only treatment you need. The name chigger, they believe, you ever heard of sand fleas? Uh-huh. Like in Florida or anywhere along because. Yeah, they're like tiny crabs.

Yeah. Those are chigo fleas, C-H-I-G-O-E. Another name for that is the jigger flea and they think that chigger came from just sort of mashing those two names together even though it's not the same thing. No, it's not. Those actually do burrow into your skin and they lay eggs there and then the eggs like to feast on you. They're not good, but I guess there's just nothing but confusion surrounding chiggers.

Yeah. Nothing. So Chuck, if you want to protect yourself against chigger invasions in your armpits and your underpants bands, what do you do? Well if you work in your yard and your garden a lot, you wear long sleeves, wear pants, to cover up as much body as you can physically. You can wear deet if you want or any other kind of insect repellent. This says you can also use sulfur.

I've never heard of that. I haven't either. I wonder if you'd like to just burn incense near you or something? I don't know. It would smell like. Bathe in egg water? Yeah. Oh God.

Bathe in like a, you know, I will never, ever try because I hate pickled things anyway, but pickled eggs. That's crazy. They're not bad. They're usually a little too sweet. I just see those things floating in a jar and it's like, I feel like I'm in a hospital. Like where you found the head? Yeah.

I think it's the Chinese, probably Japanese and Korean too. There's a type of pickle eggs where they soak them in a brine and it's the saltiest thing you will ever eat and they're mucky and brown. Those are not good. The other ones are fine. They're just not, they don't taste that great. I think I don't want food soaked in liquid. I think pickled stuff is really good for you.

I mean, I hate pickled things, but just love pickled everything. Period. Like soaking something in a solution I just don't want. I don't even like marinades. I'm a dry rub guy. Are you really? Oh yeah. You know I didn't know that about you.

Yeah, yeah. So you don't like sauces of any kind? Or is it the pre soaking, like pre cooking soaking that you? Well, pre-marinating I don't like. Okay. Yeah. I mean, if you're, if you have a quality French Saucier at your disposal, I'll take a little.

All right. But put it on the side in a plastic cup. But I don't, I don't, like there was this place near Emily's shop that was, it's now closed. I kind of feel bad for saying this, but I think I know why. Because they used too much sauce? Dude, they had this delicious crispy, crispy fried chicken that they dumped this gravy sauce on top.

They never just put it on the side. No. And by the time it got to the table, it wasn't crispy fried chicken anymore. Now that's terrible. I just don't get it. But yeah, I'll, I'll eat a sauce if it's, yeah, what you're describing is smothered chicken. That's totally different. Oh, but it was fried fried and smothered.

Can't do that. Those two things are never supposed to come together. If you want to see if you have chiggers on your property, Tracy says you can take a piece of black paper, black construction paper, maybe from your child. Right, give me that, you stupid kid. And go out and lay it on the ground near where you think there might be chiggers and you might see little tiny, tiny red things. She doesn't just say that.

She says to take a piece of paper and defy physics by standing it up on its edge. Is that what she says? And then the chiggers will follow their natural urges and climb to the top of the paper. Like what world does Tracy live in? Well, I mean, you're, you're in the grass. You can stand a piece of paper up in the grass. Maybe. Yeah.

Not if you take care of your grass. This isn't like that Twilight Zone episode where Darren from Bewitched like flips the coin and it lands on its side. Oh man, you know what happened in PE in college one time? My PE teacher, a basketball teacher, threw a pin, a, remember the paper mate pins that had the, the cap with the just sort of flat top? Yes. He just flipped it up in the air and meant to catch it didn't it, hit the ground, bounce

and landed completely straight up and down on its cap. That's exactly like that Twilight Zone episode. He could hear everyone's thoughts after that point now. Well, I dropped that class immediately. That's smart. I was like, I'm out of here. Very smart. You should, were you like, which?

Yeah. And ran out the door. You could do in Satan's work. Oh man. All right. Well, that's chiggers. Oh, we didn't say if you really want to control chiggers in your yard, just take care of your yard.

They will go away. They won't want to hang out there. Yeah. They'll be long stalks of grass for them to climb up to in quest from. That's right. If you want to know more about chiggers, horrible, horrible little things, you can type that word into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com and since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.

Hey, before I read the listener mail actually, I started a fitness club for stuff you should know listeners because I have my weight struggles and so I needed some help and it's always better to do this with other people. So I started, I looked into some different apps and my fitness pal was what I went with. So if you want to join my fitness pal or if you're already on it, just go to search groups and syskfitnessclub is one of the groups and we've already got like 350 people there. And we're just going to band together, man. It's really neat and there's group discussions and we're going to have group goals and it's

just going to be a very cool, supportive community for people that feel like they need to make some positive health changes in their life. So anyway, syskfitnessclub at my fitness pal and now here's my listener mail. Hey guys, I'm a new fan. I must admit I'm getting addicted. Recently listened to the anesthesia podcast and I heard the listener mail, the Harvard student needed five numbing injections to the nasal cavity to breaking her nose. That was terrible.

She thinks she can one up it here. It's not bad. Oh man. I know. I'm sorry. In college, one of my molars became infected. Oh no. I need a root canal.

The day of the procedure, the dentist gave me shots in the gum which Chuck said was the worst thing ever in life. After a few numbing shots, he got to work drilling into the infected tooth. Unfortunately, he didn't give me enough. Once he got down to the root, I felt it and it felt awful, so I said to the dentist, hey, I alerted the dentist. He then pulled out what must have been the largest needle in existence and gave me a shot directly into the infected root of my tooth.

Oh man. I think that has the nose beat. This made me, she said that she takes pain well. She said that this made me sob uncontrollably, it was 10 years ago and I can still vividly recall the flash of blinding pain when the needle made contact. To make matters worse, that evening my gums swelled, dislodged the temporary crown and I had to go back the next day to have it refitted. So that's my injection story.

Like I said, I'm not sure if it's worse than the five in the nose, but I'd say both were pretty terrible. I hope you enjoyed the read. Julie Yeast from Honolulu, Hawaii. That's a lot for that Julie. Man. I'm making air quotes when I say thanks. That's like scarring, you know.

Right, yeah. So remember that for the rest of her life. Well, way to go. If you want to try to gross this out, it's going to be tough to top that one, but let's keep it going, shall we? You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast, you can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can hang out with us on Instagram at S-Y-S-K podcast.

You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com and as always join us at our home on the stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it.

And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life.

Tell everybody ya everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.