"No-see-ums" Texas Style

I have heard tell of "no-see-ums" but until our last trip to Texas I don't recall encountering them personally. But on this last mission trip I think I did! One evening, after supper, we were sitting in the breezeway between the kitchen and the dining hall. I was wearing my Capri pants. (I add that fashion detail so you know that from about my knees down my legs were exposed.) In those brief few minutes some sort of insect ate me alive! At the time I kept brushing little black specks off my legs and thought nothing about it. It was only later that I realized how many times I had been bitten.

Usually I have a slight allergic reaction to insect bites--and insects, especially mosquitoes, love my blood. I know this, because I can be outside with a group and I will be the only one the mosquitoes bite. But on this particular evening in Texas something had a feast on my lower legs and ankles. As usual the bites began to itch. A mosquito bite will itch almost immediately, swell into a rather large (thumb nail sized) whelp, then in an hour or so, go away. Not so with these Texas no-see-ums!

Later that evening when I described my insect encounter to a local who lived on the Bayview campus she said, "Oh, those were probably no-see-ums." The itching of these bites has been many, many, many times worse than any mosquito bite I have ever had. These little bites first make clear raised blistery type bumps. Of course I scratched them, sometimes without even thinking about it and after a time another little blister would appear. The itch was intense and persistent, the area red and angry.

After a day or two the blistery, scabby spots on my legs reminded me of chicken pox. All the while I repeatedly slathered the areas with anti-itch cream. When that didn't quell the itch I washed my legs with hydrogen peroxide. Nothing. For two or three nights after we returned to Missouri the itching woke me in the middle of the night which meant another application of one or the other of the above mentioned remedies. After the second night I bought a bottle of calamine lotion--and that helped not at all! Finally someone suggested an anti-itch stick of Benadryl. That has helped, thank God. The itching has subsided and the angry red areas have calmed down to some extent.

Of course during this itching ordeal I went to the Internet to research no-see-ums and found a very disturbing set of photographs. Did you know that these no-see-ums (a.k.a. sand flies) can carry a parasite and infect people with its bite? These parasites are usually found in the tropics and subtropics (sigh of relief), but some cases have been reported in Texas! Yikes!

Seeing the photographs of the ever-expanding sores which "resemble a volcano" (descriptive words from the articles and obvious in the photos) you can bet I will keep a close watch on the bites on my leg. If any of them fail to heal I will report it immediately to my physician. The kicker is that these parasitic sores can appear months after the initial bite--but, as Scarlet would say, that is tomorrow's problem. Right now I am just thankful the itching has stopped.