[9422WMR]

My wife can walk through mid height grass in shirts and sandals and they don’t touch her. I walk through wearing boots and jeans and long sleeve shirt and they leave welts on my waist line and under arms.
Thing is with chiggers, they are too small to see, but leave red painful bite marks where they have injected you. And it itches, very painful itches.

[Zhang Fei]

[My wife can walk through mid height grass in shirts and sandals and they don’t touch her. I walk through wearing boots and jeans and long sleeve shirt and they leave welts on my waist line and under arms.
Thing is with chiggers, they are too small to see, but leave red painful bite marks where they have injected you. And it itches, very painful itches.]

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As someone who has had more than one run-in with them, I am completely simpatico with your situation. I walk through with jeans and boots - they get me. My wife goes through with a knee-high skirt - no problem. Hence the comment about napalm.

[ChildOfThe60s]

We are having a record chigger season in KY.

Twice in the last month I have been doing some basic grass or shrub work by my house and have never been chigger bit there before and I got chewed up. For me it takes 2 weeks for them to stop itching. NOTHING relieves the itching. I have tried everything. Last time I had at least 15 bites up into my thighs and groin. My grass is always kept cut.

From now on I’m covering myself in OFF/Deet from the waist down before I trim a bush. If that doesn’t work I’m paying someone to do it from now on.

[Zhang Fei]

[My wife can walk through mid height grass in shirts and sandals and they don’t touch her. I walk through wearing boots and jeans and long sleeve shirt and they leave welts on my waist line and under arms.
Thing is with chiggers, they are too small to see, but leave red painful bite marks where they have injected you. And it itches, very painful itches.]

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I don’t know if this will work for you, but one home remedy I’ve used is to rub (moistened) salt on the bites for a few seconds each then washed it off. The itching doesn’t completely go away, but the intensity and duration seems to subside by what seems to be an order of magnitude. My theory is that the salt draws off whatever chigger saliva is causing the allergic reaction that causes the itching, i.e. there’s a kind of osmotic action at work here. I rub the salt in hard enough to see some color, but not hard enough to draw blood.

[Farmerbob]

[... itches, very painful itches.]

Try a dab of Vics vapor rub. Clears it up in a few min. Works with embedded ticks too.

[higgmeister]

Thing is with chiggers, they are too small to see, but leave red painful bite marks where they have injected you. And it itches, very painful itches.

Excuse me, but you got it all wrong.   Chiggers actually use their hind legs to borrow into your skin.   That's why they are always at tight binding points of your clothing   That's why they never touch your wife, because she doesn't wear tight clothing so chiggers don't have anything to press against.   That's why painting the the red bump with fingernail polish stops the pain and itch.   The nail polish suffocates them.

I grew up in Georgia and Alabama so I know all about these pests.