Went camping this weekend. Beautiful weather. Enjoyed being with the kids. Overall, a very nice weekend. I purposely avoided walking through tall grass. We kept to paved roads or mowed trails. But damn, I’m sitting here 2 days later at 4:30 am unable to sleep cause my legs are covered with chiggers. I hate chiggers. I hate the damn itch that won’t go away. I hate the big red mounds that they leave. I wish there was some easy way to kill them off but nope, you just have to wait till they decide it’s time to go or the old body just kills them off. Did I mention how much I hate chiggers?
I agree with you on how awful those nasty little things are! I once weeded and overgrown flower bed and a day later my legs looked like they had contracted some flesh eating skin disease. I know of no sure fire way to prevent them, but when we used to go fishing with my grandparents my grandpa made us rub powdered sulfur around our ankles, waistbands, and other tight places in our clothing. Seemd to help some.
Clear nail polish on each of the bumps. Works like a charm for the itch. And then there was the time I only had red nail polish… It looked like I had caught my legs in a piece of farm equipment.
For those who have never had the pleasure, let me try to describe it. Take a bad, itchy mosquito bite times 100 that lasts about a week. Here’s a link with all the gritty details:
http://insects.tamu.edu/extension/bulletins/L-1223.html
Did I mention how much I hate the little fuckers?
When I lived in Texas (chigger heaven) we used to use a product called Chiggerid. Seemed to help.
Google lists something called Chigger Digger.
I’ll second the clear nail polish suggestion, it works like a charm. Kansas might not be as bad as Texas, but I ran into my fair share of them at the various Boy Scout camps.
Plus, it’s sorta fun to peel off. 
On behalf of all those urbanites who think looking at Central Park from the window of a bus constitutes “communing with nature,” I must ask: What, praytell, is a “chigger?”
KalliopeCU, chiggers are tiny red insects that burrow into your skin and raise itchy, itchy red welts. They come from Satan.
Baldwin, actually the little bastards are so horrible, Satan banned em from hell.
Oh, man. This thread has reminded me of the time I was about 10 years old, and helped my best friend and his father clear some land.
I got chiggers on my scrotum. And that wasn’t the worst part – my mom insisted that the best way to treat them was daub alcohol on them. I tried to treat one, and refused to do any more; the burning sensation was akin to having my testicles set on fire. So my mom held me down while my dad did the rest.
I’ve never forgiven them.
Damn Sauron, that hurt just reading about it. I haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep in 3 days. I put cortisone cream on before bed but it wears off about 3 am and I have to get up and put on some more.
Double damn chiggers!
There is a clear, cool lake that I long to snorkel in. It is so clean that you feel as if you’re in the ocean, but lake snorkeling is more magical. Being in that other world under water is so serene and looking at life through the green filtered sunlight is a fantastic experience. But the place is off limits; it is guarded by those ass-biting chiggers. I hate them also.
Wanna hear something weird? I’ve never had a chigger.
Never. Not once. I even live in TEXAS, fercrissakes.
Mosquitos bite me. Ticks love me. Chiggers never bite. I’ve seen them crawling on my legs- but I’ve never once been bitten… and I spend a lot of time in the outdoors.
I wonder if I could bottle my blood or something? 
<Homer>Mmmm… bottled blood.</Homer>
Here’ some TMI, don’t say I didn’t warn ya.
I never knew what a chigger was. When I was younger I had a horror comic book which featured a needlessly gruesome story.
'twas about a fella who had a tape-worm type thingy inside him. It forced him to, ahem, consort with ladies, and during the act came out of the end of his old chap and killed the lady in question. He called this thing ‘Chigger’.
I was fairly sure that that’s not what ‘Chigger’ meant, and had forgotten about the story until I read this thread. Ick.
Anywho… isn’t ‘tick’ another name for what you’re talking about, and can’t you burn 'em out with a lit cigarette? When I was in the States I was told this was a really dumb way to get rid of them, but it was supposed to work. And I DEFINITELY wouldn’t even consider it if there was one on my nads. Again, ick.
Nope, ticks are bigger, and a different critter altogether. Chiggers are teeny tiny, almost invisible to the naked eye. It’s amazing how much misery they can cause.
For a chigger infestation, take a nice hot bath with about half a cup of bleach to kill most of them. Apply the old fingernail polish on all bites, just in case the bleach didn’t get them all. Before going to bed, take a couple of Benadryl or generic equivalent.
After the bleach bath, you can take oatmeal baths to help soothe the itch.
DO NOT apply fingernail polish to broken skin, you WILL regret it.
Damn, I’ve started to itch just READING this thread.
No, though they are distantly related. Info on chiggers ( including feeding habits and the efficacy of nail polish ):
http://www.ent.iastate.edu/ipm/iiin/chigger.html
We’ve had a few threads and a staff report on this. As here:
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mtickoff.html
Chiggers are fascinating little marvels of evolution. But the best thing, the very best thing about them, is that they don’t occur where I live :D.
- Tamerlane
Eegaakks bleach bath? Try Epson salt, more soothing.
From what I’ve heard the pain and itch is from oxidation of the wound. The fingernail polish prevents the oxidation, thus itchies go bye-bye. True? Don’t know, but it works.
I was just telling a co-worker how this year hasn’t been bad for chiggers. The next day I had atleast twenty chigger, satan’s pet, holes in me.
A neighbor of ours, one of those people who favor a take-no-prisoners approach to life, related how he doused his entire 3 acres of land with some kind of lasting insecticide (now illegal–no doubt out of EPA concerns) that killed off all the little bastards. Some 20 years later, and not once has he seen anyone bitten by chiggers on his land. Next time I run into him I’ll ask him what it was called.
The bleach bath is to kill the little bloodsuckers, preferably before they’ve sucked any blood. The oatmeal bath is for soothing one’s tender perforated hide.