Wasps. Ants. Lice. The Joys of a Biosphere

[elfs]

Monday was The Day Earth Fought Back. Sunday, it started out innocuously enough: a few ants on the kitchen counter, a really, really big wasp flitting about in the living room. The wasp was dispatched with an electrified flyswatter. The ants were just there, as they are every late spring; Omaha and I left out borated honey overnight, and then the next morning I pried up the bar and filled this latest ingress of theirs with a combination of boric acid and diatomaceous powder-- poisonous to their insides, excrutiating to their outsides, and relatively non-toxic to humans. It's an effective dessicant (which is why it's so nasty to ants), and I got some on my hands, so I had to use a moisturizer afterwards. My hands have now experienced Extreme Oatmeal Relief! Damn, that sounds like something Zippy the Pinhead would say.

And then Omaha called me around lunchtime on Monday: Kouryou-chan has lice. We're not sure where she got it, but we both skipped work that day and went into the lice-management frenzy: everyone got the hairwash, and then I spent four hours with 2.00x reading glasses straining my eyes while I picked through Kouryou-chan's, Yamaraashi-chan's, and Omaha's hair. Both Yamaraashi-chan and Omaha looked clear and Kouryou-chan had no lice, but she had nits everywhere. She was amazingly tolerant and patient, and it was wonderful for her to be so given how much hair pulling and admonishment to hold still she put up with.

Everything was boiled, vaccummed, or hot-bleach washed as needed. Mattresses were flipped. Everything that couldn't stand the above, like stuffed animals and woolen blankets, have been put in black trash bags for two weeks; any nits on these items that hatch in ten days will starve to death without a host by then. What a pain in the ass. And tonight, we do the same simian ritual with the glasses and tweezers again.

It occurred to me how often we use words like "lousy" and "nitpick" without every appreciating what they really mean-- until it happens to you.

(How completely bizarre; Friday, at the gym, I heard a re-do of the current song, Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft, in a soft femme-lounge style. This morning I woke up with it as an earworm, and this morning when I sat down at my desk, out of a songlist of 9989 songs, this was the one currently playing.)

Comments

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Good job, getting the lice treated thoroughly and straight away! To put things very mildly, not everyone is so conscientious.

FWIW, it's hardly ever possible to find the beasties themselves if you treat it early. Nits are the usual "harvest". And I assume you've heard the rosemary-oil-protects-against-lice thing, right? I don't know if it works, but using shampoo with rosemary oil has coincided with an end to infection in my household. In fact, that was with my son; my daughter, who was born into a rosemary-oil-enriched household, has had no infections.

[jenk]

Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft, in a soft femme-lounge style.

The Carpenters version from '77, perhaps?

[(Anonymous)]

Naw, the studio work was definitely very modern and recent. Maybe the Babes in Toyland cover.

[trinsf.livejournal.com]

OMG, I hate those things. I never had them as a child, but then when the children moved here from being in Georgia, they came with lice, which took me a couple of weeks to figure out. I completely freaked out and then spent the day doing exactly what you described. Never had them reappear since then.

[alice-in-texas.livejournal.com]

I'll never forget the time when my eldest son got lice. I was in the middle of cleaning my house for some out-of-town business associates that my ex-husband had invited to dinner, and whom we had never met, when the school called to come get him. I quickly grabbed his younger brother and we walked to the school to pick him up. From there we went directly to the nearest pharmacy located near our home where I picked up all the neccessities - Rid shampoo, Rid spray for the furniture, and fine toothed comb for picking out nits (he too just had nits). I had dinner fixed for the most part but had planned on making an impressive dessert. Faced with all of the chores ahead, I dashed into the grocery next door to the pharmacy and bought some pastries. Laden with all of this and a first grader and a toddler, I headed home. In the meantime, I had notified my husband of the situation but he wa s unable to get away to help at the time. First thing I did was shampoo hair - the kids and mine. Thank goodness the boys had short hair. I took all bedding and began an afternoon of washing in hot water. Pillows got put in a hot dryer. I sprayed the couch and chairs and mattresses with the Rid spray.

With what little time that I had left, I began the tedious job of picking out the nits and finishing dinner. My husband arrived home, quickly shampooed his own hair before taking over. He got the beds back together and then began going through the boys hair as I did last minute touches for company. They were the dearest people and most understanding. The wife showed me that the combs are not as good as ones fingernails for pulling off nits, as she demonstrated on my son's hair.

Exhausted later that night, I had no time to feel embarassed about the situation and I knew we had a clean home, etc. I had always associated lice with filth. I talked to the school nurse and discovered that the lice can be spread by sharing headsets at school for one, and also sharing baseball helmets for another. So there were many possibilities that I had no control over.

We went through this one more time after my youngest went to school, but after experiencing it once, you feel like a pro at it after all that you go though. In my mother's time, they just shaved the heads of anyone that got lice. What a horrible stigma that those that had to go through that faced. , considering how long it would take for the hair to grow out again.

[bldrnrpdx.livejournal.com]

When the ex-husband and I moved into the house I have now, we had a bout of scabies. I was off work and he had a wacky schedule so I got to vacuum, spray, bag, and wash everything in the house while unpacking boxes and moving furniture. I'm really glad we didn't have to go through the whole nitpicking routine. As it was, we had... anti-scabies cream (I can't remember what it was called or what was in it) that we had to smear over our entire bodies for a couple of days in a row. That was an entertaining ritual.
Blech. My sympathies.