It's a Jungle Out There

One of the many reasons I moved to rural North Georgia was to get closer to nature and the natural order of things; you know, commune with the birds and the bees, feel the soil between my toes, walk in fields of tall grass and sleep under the trees in the forest. Like so many of my generation I was brought up to believe that nature was benign and gentile and that we are one with nature and nature is our friend.

Two years later my view has changed. Nature is not benign; it is out to get you. It does not want you there. It wants you to move back to wherever you came from and leave it alone. The woods, fields, flora and fauna that seem so pleasant and tranquil are not friendly at all. Much of the time it seems like everything in nature wants to bite you or sting you, make you scratch and itch, injure you, destroy your garden, infest your house and generally make life in the country inconvenient and uncomfortable. It truly is a jungle out there.

What sparked this revelation is my recent encounter with chiggers. Let me set the scene: Imagine standing in a field of tall grass gently waving in the soft warm breeze of an early summer afternoon. In your mind you picture the unfettered freedom of the boundless prairie. You are the noble savage who has crossed the land bridge from Asia to conquer a new continent. You stand tall and proud in a new and untouched land.

While you’re having this Walter Mitty moment, nature is taking the opportunity to sic hordes of chiggers on you to convince you never again to stray from your scenic overlook and actually experience nature first hand.

If you don’t know, chiggers are insects, spiders actually. You can’t see them since the adults measure less than 1/60th of an inch, and the larvae, who are the ones that bite you, are less than 1/150th of an inch in size. You don’t feel their bite because your body does not react until two or three hours later.

Chiggers inflict a mean, vicious, nasty and irritating bite, and their method of attack is like something out of a science fiction horror story. Don’t take my word for it. Here’s what several internet sources have to say:

Only the larvae bite humans. They tend to choose warm, moist areas of the body. Chiggers have claws that help them grab onto skin. The chigger then attaches its mouth to the skin and injects saliva. The saliva contains an enzyme that breaks skin cells down to liquid form.

Or this:

Chiggers insert their feeding structures into the skin and inject enzymes that cause destruction of host tissue. Hardening of the surrounding skin results in the formation of a feeding tube called a stylostome. Chigger larvae then feed upon the destroyed tissue. …

(I don’t know about you, but the warm, moist areas of my body are the parts that I’m particularly fond of. And there’s also something that particularly repulsive about the idea of larvae feeding on you.)

The most problematic symptom of chigger bites is the intense itching and desire to scratch. Often, the bites appear in clusters and can form a rash. …

Most bites occur around the ankles, the crotch and groin areas, behind the knees, and in the armpits. Barriers to migration on the skin such as belts may be one reason that chigger bites also commonly occur at the waist or at other areas where their migration is prevented by compression from clothing.

But here’s my all-time favorite:

Chigger bites on the penis can cause severe itching, swelling, and painful urination.

That statement alone is enough to convince ninety percent of the male population to never leave suburbia.

In my case, I suffered at least 15 chigger bites. Thankfully, they stayed away from Willie and the Twins. The bites itched maddeningly. If I scratched them, they only itched worse. Anti-itch lotions and sprays were only marginally effective and then only for a short while. Even large doses of alcohol applied orally did not help. After a few drinks I forgot that I was not supposed to scratch where it itched and that just made matters worse.

The bites finally went away after a week or so. I have learned my lesson. I do not go into the high grass of my fields without liberally soaking my socks, waist, wrists, upper arms and neckline in bug spray. It’s a pain in the ass but it avoids an itch in the ass (or elsewhere).

The experience got me to thinking about nature, and that’s when I had the revelation that nature would rather be left alone. Think about it. On any given day in the summer in North Georgia you might encounter any of the following if you wander into the woods and fields: mosquitoes, wasps, hornets, yellow jackets, chiggers, ticks, red ants, biting gnats, black widows, brown recluses, poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, brambles, briars, thorns, scorpions, rattlesnakes, and copperheads. The odds are that you will encounter at least one of these.

Now this doesn’t mean that I want to leave my country home or that I no longer appreciate the natural environment that surrounds me. But it does mean that I have a different and more realistic perspective on the relationship between man and nature. It really is a jungle out there. Darwin had it right. Every plant, animal and insect in the natural world spends each day clawing and fighting for survival so I better be prepared to accept nature on its terms.

Well, the sun is dawning, and I have hay to rake. That means I’m going into the fields. Honey, where’s the bug spray? Did Fed Ex deliver my new Haz-Mat suit yet?