Lice? Chiggers? Mites? HELP!?
Question:I have been feeling the creepy-crawlies lately. I was sitting on my couch the other day and after awhile I got the feeling that I was being bitten by little bugs. I didn't see any bugs, so I just assumed it was fleas, and gave my cat his flea meds on his back. I also vacuumed the living room and the couch and other furniture thoroughly. For a few days everything was great...until tonight. I was sitting watching LOST when I got the biting feeling again. I went into another room and turned the light on and there were these tiny bugs crawling on my right arm. There were 4 or 5 of them. They were a greyish brown color and much smaller than fleas and they didn't jump like fleas do. They were just crawling around. I was able to pull them off and pinch them to kill them. I don't know if they're lice because I've never seen lice before. I looked all through my hair and on my scalp and didn't see any bugs. Now I'm really freaking out...what are these? What can I do to get rid of them??
Answers:
have you had birds nesting in the roof
if so may be bird lice
lice are usually best brought under control with insect dust and synthetic sprays such deltamethrin.
try to find the source of the infestation
they could be book lice
the best method of treating book lice is to place papers and books in black plastic and sit in the sun for the day
these are a few possibility's but it could be many things
if all else fails call a pest controller
lol
Go to any Grocery Store or even Walmart and buy some Insect Bombs and set them off in your house. Be sure and put pets outside for at least 4 hours after you spray. You can also buy you some skin so soft and use it on your body daily. It repels all kind of Bugs and its also great to use SOS to clean Glass Shower doors. These things will do the trick..
go to walmart or any store, and buy some of that flea powder. They sell some that is like a carpet freshener but it kills fleas , you just sprinkle it all over your carpet + furniture, let it sit for 5 minutes and vaccuum it up. it works great. andyou already got the the flea meds so thats good. you might want to try spraying anti flea outside in your yard too since thats probably where your cats are getting it.
Good Luck. those two things arnt so expensive like 3 bucks.
I couldn't tell you. You should google "lice", or "chiggers", or "mites" and click "images" to see if you can find a match. Until you know for sure, you should spray the area you were sitting in with liquid Lysol (the concentrated kind you mix with water to clean with). Good luck!
I am going through my first bout with head lice (via my 4 year old daughter) and just spent today researching this very subject. I just entered 'head lice' in my search bar and started at the top. What I learned is that head lice only like the head and will die if not on a head but one of the sites did mention that there is such a thing as body lice. Some show pics of lice in various stages, they start off looking like a tiny grain of rice (called nits), the next stage is young lice and look like a speck of pepper or sand depending on your hair colour, but much harder to remove from your scalp than pepper or sand - and finally, the adult stage is still very small and apparently, unless they have just fed (bitten the host) they are almost transparent. You have my sympathies on the creepy crawly feeling - I'm with ya on that one (and I am louse free). It doesn't sound like you have lice though, maybe tics? At any rate, type 'fleas' or 'lice' or 'home infestation' and you should eventually find your way to a pic of what you saw on your arm - either a public health website or an extermination company's website will show all the wonderful infestations we are only a couple of bugs away from as well as how to stop the infestation (whether it's in your home, animals or body) both chemically and naturapathically. Best of luck from one 'nit picker' to another lol.
P.S. if you've dealt with fleas, trust me, lice are a breeze so pray that it is lice.
Let's start from the top: They are not fleas, you say. I know they are not chiggers; you can't see them without a magnifying glass and they are red in color.
They aren't ticks because ticks are bigger than that... unless they are seed ticks ...but they usually hatch out later in the year; however you can sometimes feel ticks, even tiny seed ticks, crawling on you. You can't kill a tick by pinching it, though. Also, ticks only bite once and you cant feel the bite; that's when they attach themselves to you. GROSS isn't it?
So that only leaves lice and I (thankfully) have no experience with them. Good luck. No matter what, I'd bomb the place about 10 days apart just to be sure you kill them all.
could be lice. could be thrips.
Take all the sofa cushions outside. If you can wash the coverings in the washer, do so on hot. It takes at least 120 degrees to kill them. Anything you can put in the dryer, do, on the hottest setting. If your items wont fit in the dryer put them in a black garbage bag and set in the sun for a couple of days.
Spray the couch with insect killer. Personally, I'd use flea spray for cats, it kills lice as well as fleas, and it will be safe to use around your kitty.
Then you have to do it all over again it two weeks. That is how long it takes the eggs to hatch, and you want to kill the new recruits before they get old enough to lay more eggs.
Flea dip for pet has the same ingredients as the expensive lice killers. If you are very worried, you can add some flea dip to you washer machine, or use it to clean the things you can't fit in the washer machine.
This definitely sounds like some type of mite, probably in your carpet. I SERIOUSLY doubt it's lice, since you found them on your arm. Lice are VERY attached to your hair. If you were infested enough for them to be falling out onto your arm, you'd definitely know about it. And "body lice" otherwise known as crabs. Are just as "attached" to your pubic areas and don't really hang around on your arms. I would probably try a flea type powder and sprinkle it on the carpet thoroughly, then vacuum VERY VERY well daily for a week or 10 days. A visit to a local pest chemical store wouldn't hurt.
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