Stuff You Should Know - Selects: Chiggers: The Phantom Menace

Episode Date: June 25, 2022

Chiggers are tiny little mites capable of making your life miserable. Worse than mosquitoes? Maybe. But they aren't insects - mites are actually part of the arachnid family and behave a little like ticks. Learn all about these nearly invisible pests in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Howdy, everybody. It's May 24th, 2016. Or at least that's the date of this Selects episode. I picked this one out. Chiggers colon the phantom menace because boy, chiggers are terrible and they make you itch. And I would say that listening to this episode will make you itch. So that's my

goal on this Saturday to make everybody itch. I'm really sorry. But here we go with chiggers colon the phantom menace. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there. Stuff You Should Know. Jerry's had chiggers. Yeah, me too. I have not. I'm really glad. I was like, chiggers seems like Tracy's making a pretty big deal out of this in this article. Yeah, Tracy Wilson of Stuff You Miss In History class wrote this who recently got married. Congratulations, Tracy. Yeah, and she wrote, if you've ever heard her say the word mouth parts in a show. Tracy wrote it. Chance is hard she wrote it. She wrote ticks and mosquitoes. Bees. Did she write bees?

I think so. She did a whole insect suite. She spent a lot of time knee deep in insects. Yeah, and this, well, this isn't even an insect spoiler. Oh, well, you just remove the fact of the podcast. You think? I think so. I don't think you did. I'm just teasing. Okay. I'll bet I know what you think it is because I think the same thing. All right, well, we'll see. Okay. I challenge you. I challenge you back. We throw down the gauntlet, which is glove. So Tracy did make a big deal out of chiggers, but apparently it's a big deal, right? Well, sure. If you've ever had them, they're no fun. No, the deeper I got into the article, the more I was like, oh yeah, this does sound really kind of awful. Yeah, and this is, just warn everyone, this is another itch inducing

episode. Yeah. And speaking of, I got my first little bout of poison ivy. Congratulations. Thanks. That's great. Yeah, I was clearing out stuff over the weekend, and I was in poison ivy, and I knew it. I was like, you know, I've never had it before. This sounds very familiar. But I was still, I'm no dummy. I know how Murphy's law works. Okay. So I said, I just said that out loud. Wait, you just said that out loud, or you just said? I said, I'm not allergic to Emily. Oh, I thought you were saying like that, I'm no dummy. No, no, I said that too. And I said, so you know what, I'm gonna,

be careful, and then I'm gonna go take a shower pretty soon afterward. Smart. And so it's not bad, but there are probably five or six little, tiny little sets of bumps on each leg. Pustules. Yeah, they're not bad though. And I looked at them, I said, you know what, that's friggin poison ivy. After all these years. Finally got you. Yep, but not too bad. Like my dad always said, poison ivy will get you everybody one day. Is that his big saying? It's one of them. So anyway, speaking of itching, that's my itch story of the day, and this will make you itch,

because it made me itch while reading it. I think you're right. Yeah. So it actually, that's funny, it didn't make me itch, maybe because I've never had it. You're scratching yourself right now. No, I'm pointing to myself. Oh, okay. No weird place. I'm pointing my finger to my skin and moving it around, but I'm not scratching. So everybody knows that chiggers are insects that burrow into your skin and suck your blood. And I'm sorry. You're being coy, my friend, because you just lied three times. Burrow into your skin. Oh, insects that burrow into your skin that suck your blood.

That's right. Those are, there's three lies in there. This is like a highlights. We have to go pick out what's wrong with this picture. Chiggers are not insects. They are arachnids. They are the larvae of the harvest mite. They do not burrow into your skin and suck your blood. No. But then so what are the bumps? Well, you're being coy again, but what they are actually doing is maybe even grosser than sucking your blood. They are liquefying your cells into a slurry that they can drink from a straw made of your body.

It's pretty amazing. Yeah. Is that the facts for you? Yeah. All right, buddy. We'll get there. We had the same one. High five. First one. First what? First time we've ever high fived in an episode. Is that right? Sure. I would have imagined that you could make like a video montage of us like high fiving during episodes. No. Guess not. No.

So you said that these things are the larvae of harvest mites, right? Yeah. And harvest mites are arachnids. They're related to spiders. So they're not insects, but you can understand why people would think that chiggers are or are insects because chiggers have, chiggers is the larvae of the harvest mite have six legs. Yes. So you'd be like, well, it's an insect. Nope. They haven't grown their adult legs yet, apparently. Yeah. I guess they get those two more legs at some point.

Yeah. The adults are red and the little larvae are red, but you're not going to see, that's one of the problems with chiggers is you're not going to see like a mosquito landing on you or a flea even like you think a flea is small. A chigger is like a tiny little dot that you would never notice. No. And you may not even be able to see at all with your eyeballs. All right. But sometimes you can see several of them together basically forming a clump. Yeah. I like the clump together. Yeah. One of them has kid from kid and plays haircut or Amon Shumpert's more contemporaneously.

Oh yeah. That is a total kid and play haircut. Did you know that Amon Shumpert delivered his own child in his apartment? Oh wow. On purpose? He accidentally, the kids just came very quickly and like he, the 9-1-1 dispatcher had to talk him through how to do it, but he delivered his own child, he and his wife or girlfriend right there in their apartment and everything was good. Totally great. Wow. That's great news. He's a basketball player by the way, people. Oh yeah. People are like, who's Amon Shumpert? He plays for the boo. For the calves. Boo.

So if you're an adult harvest mite and you've grown up from a chigger into an adult, you're going to eat, it's actually a beneficial little arachnid to have around because they're going to eat the eggs of other pests like mosquitoes. Right. So you want the adults around. As an adult or as the second step, the nymphs, right? After the larva. Yeah. It's the larva that suck, but they don't suck. Well yeah, but the larva, you know, you got to have them, but you know, hopefully they just stay in the yard. I'll bet these things are holy terrors to see if you are on their scale. Like if that thing's coming after you and your eggs, I'll bet it's just really terrifying.

They are parasitic though. They don't. The larva are. Yeah, they don't eat the blood though, like we pointed out, like the fleas and the ticks and the mosquitoes. No, they eat your skin cells, right? So here's what happens. Lava hatch, apparently an adult female harvest mite will go into the dirt and be like, there's a bunch of eggs. Yep. And Emon Shumpert is there to welcome women to the world. Yeah, for them to hatch, so we can hasten their birth. And then the eggs do hatch and the harvest mite female tends to lay your eggs all in one place. So if you are familiar with chiggers, if you've ever had them in your yard, like one little patch of grass can be totally overrun with chiggers, but then you

just turn a few degrees to your left. There's another patch of grass that is totally devoid of them. Yeah, I get the feeling they don't get around too quickly either, you know? No, they're pretty stupid low level animals, if you ask me. So the eggs are laid in one place, they hatch and the little larvae come out and they're like, blood meal, give me a blood meal that's not actually made of blood. That's basically what they say. Okay. They hatch pretty much anytime during the year except for the hard winters. And like you said, they want that first meal. And the reason they want that first meal is not just because they're ravenous little jerks. They actually cannot progress to that nymph stage, which and then grow up to be adults unless they have a complete first

meal. Yeah, they can have half a first meal. They can have three quarters, seven eighths, and get scratched off the body or brushed off the body. And that's pretty much it. They generally will not go back and finish that meal. So there's no starting over. They're just like, well, that's it. That's the end of Millhouse. I had my one chance. And so it's like a complete lose, lose situation when a chigger bites a person, because once you start itching as a person, you go to scratch the area and there goes the chigger. They don't latch onto your skin. They don't burrow into your skin. So the moment your finger makes contact with them, they're gone. The welt they leave behind is there and persists

for a while, but they didn't finish their meal and they die. But you still get the scratch or the horrible itch. It's lose, lose. It is lose, lose. Stay away from humans. Well, they do because there are a lot of animals that don't mind the chigger on their body. So they can get their full meal deal there and go on to live a great and healthy life without getting scratched off. So they don't want to be on a human. And I mean, you would think like, how long could their meal possibly last? We're talking like buffet level length of time. Four days. Four days to eat a free meal.

And think about it. That's time for us. How long is four days to a harvest mite larva? You could probably do the math. It's like seven, eight days. Figure out chigger years are probably most of their life. So there's a bunch of different kinds of chiggers around the world. And they're actually, I mean, they are pests. They are parasites. But there's only like at least one, as far as this article says, that is really problematic for humans. The lepo-trobidium delience mite. It's common to Asia, and it can carry typhus, a form of typhus, which can kill you if it's untreated.

Yeah, it's cured with antibiotics pretty easily. But if you're out in the middle of nowhere, it can kill you. But don't worry unless you are in certain parts of Asia, not a problem. Right. Chiggers will just annoy you. Yeah, that's it. They're basically just a total annoyance. And by annoying humans, they die. It's stupid. All right. Well, let's take a little break here, and we will come back and talk about some of the wonders of the chigger.

Boy bands give me in this situation. If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush, boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step.

Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I'm Mangesh Atikler. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you,

it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer,

I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. We've covered, did we cover fleas? Yeah. I want to say yes. They definitely eat a blood meal. We've covered fleas, ticks, mosquitoes.

Yes. Spiders. Skaibis. Did we? Oh, yeah. Man, I just, it's really getting a little too much to try to remember now. Yeah. You know?

I mean, there's like lost episodes just because we forgot them. It's officially, it's officially getting out of hand. I guess we should stop. No, we keep going, my friend. Brain hurts so bad, Chuckie. All right. So what I was talking about was the wonders of the chigger. They have a lot of little things that they have about them that make it, that make them able to perform this surgery on your skin.

Well put. It is kind of like surgery. It is. But again, they aren't latching on. They're just kind of hanging around. And when you get a chigger on your skin, it actually will spend usually hours looking for a good place to go try to get a meal. Yeah.

Because they have these little tiny mouth parts. There's the word that makes the appearance, which lets you know it's a Tracy Wilson joint, right? But they don't pierce skin very easily, at least not human skin. Tough skin that you would find on most places of your body. Chigger can't bite through, which is why you will get chigger bites in places like the back of your knee or like in your armpit. Oh man.

Places where the chigger can get its mouth parts. What are they called? Cellicera? Cellicerae? Callicerae. Callicerae explains it all. That's why you'll get those bites in those areas, because that's where they can get their callicerae into.

That's right. They're light sensitive, which means they're going to hang out in the shade mostly, if it was up to them at least. The sun is going to dry out their body, so that's why they head toward the shade. I mean, it can like kill them basically. Sure. And so also when a host comes near,

there's like your dog casting a shadow. Mm-hmm. The chiggers go, look over there. I think that's pretty clever. There's a shadow. That means something is alive with skin. That means that in some weird way, chiggers are aware of shadows. That's right.

I mean, like some dogs aren't aware of shadows or don't understand them. Think probably most dogs. Have you ever seen that like baby two, three-year-old toddler who sees her shadow for the first time and just starts freaking out, trying to get away from it? Oh, really? It's really cute. So it was a possessed baby?

Kind of. That's sad. It's cute. I saw that movie. That was the exorcist. Right. That's what I'm talking about. They are very temperature sensitive as well.

So when they come into contact with a host, and the host is the thing that it's going to feed on, it's going to detect that, it has like, you know, it's not infrared, but it's going to detect that body heat. Right. And say, all right, there's something I can try and latch onto. So it's like predator in that respect. Yeah.

Yeah. A little bit. Kind of. No dreadlocks. No, those are a nice addition if you ask me. What else? I think it's hilarious. Tracy called it upward mobility.

Yeah. They like to climb to the tops of stuff. And I remember this one from Tix. Yeah. Remember that? The Tix would just like grasp it, things like little tiny lobsters. Yeah. Just stand there and wait for something to pass by.

And as it does, they grab it. Yeah. They don't stand there with their arms outstretched the whole time. No. It's a stress position. There's something called a questing response, which is another hilarious term. They're questing.

Yeah. They get up on their tippy toes. They're standing up with their arms raised up toward the heavens. Yeah. A questing for a meal of human cells. Imagine John Cusack can say anything, but take away the boom box. Right. That's a questing position.

Yeah. The chiggers are there and they're a little overcoat. Mm-hmm. And they're spiky hair and they're bad attitudes. Yep. I just saw John Roderick, a friend of the show, John Roderick, great Seattle musician. He tweeted the other day about silverfish, the little insect.

Sure. He said, why don't we call silverfish what they were clearly meant to be called sink lobsters? It really struck me as funny. Yeah. They don't look fishy at all. Silver, sure. Sink lobster, that's a great one.

Yeah, right. Mm-hmm. And finally, they are touch sensitive. They have these little hair-like sensory organs on their body to help, basically, to help them find everything from host to each other. Yeah. You know? They're like, let's get together and really do some damage on this guy's armpit.

Yeah. Or you see that waistband? It's a great place to hide. Underpants band? Yeah. An underpants band? Yeah. Is that what it said in here?

No, that's what I said. Oh, okay. But that is a great place to hide because, like we said a few times, you'll easily scratch them off, so they want to go somewhere where you may not be thinking about scratching. Yeah, I was surprised though that they go. I could see kind of the outside of the armpit, back of the knee, the waistband, underpants band. They're protected there.

They are, but at the same time, it's warm there and they're temperature sensitive. So you would think since they're seeking shade, they would go to a cooler spot, but there's probably not too many cool spots on the human body that are protected. Yeah, good point. Not really. I just said a bunch of contradictory stuff. So all these things help the chiggers find their host, but as Tracy points out, that's half the battle.

Yeah, and when you find a chigger on you, it's probably sorry that it chose you as its one four-day meal because they don't like humans. They'll climb onto anything, just about any vertebrate animal. Snakes, turtles, four little birds, chipmunks. Yeah, they don't like us because we take hot showers every day. That's right. And a lot of these animals don't have any kind of response to being bitten by a chigger. So the likelihood of the chigger being undisturbed for four days while it's having its meal,

fourth meal, is what we're going to call it, like Taco Bell. Do you remember that? Yeah, they try to invent another meal. So they're not going to get brushed off on these things. Humans almost invariably brush chiggers off because right when we start scratching again, it removes the chigger. So they don't seek us out as prey. It's just total happenstance.

Yeah, and like you said, since they need that thin skin, little kids are more likely to get bitten by a chigger than an leathery old sea captain, let's say. Yeah, and little kids who can't take being teased really are vulnerable to chigger bites. Because they're thin skin. Very nice. You know the ones who wear shorts with knee socks pulled all the way up? Through those kids? Yeah, and their nose are always running because they're crying.

They just stop crying, those kind of kids. So like I said, a hot shower is a great way to kill. It's great for a lot of reasons. It's a great way to kill chiggers. It's a great way to keep your body clean. It's a great way to unwind at the end of a long day working in the yard. Because that's where you're going to get your chigger bites, most likely. Yeah, in the yard.

Yeah. Especially if you are the type who gets like letters from the neighborhood association saying mow your lawn, you might have chiggers. I will never live where there's a neighborhood association. Yeah. No way. No way. Yeah, you know in some places it's not my thing.

In some places a neighborhood covenant supersedes local law. Yeah, unbelievable. Like your mailbox has got to be like this. You can't paint your house that color. Not for me. And you got to pay us a certain amount of money to boss you around every month. Nope. Nope.

That's why I have a stack of car batteries aside my house with like old wood that I haven't used still and it's like Sanford and Sun out there. Right. And then like in paint with a brush it says welcome children on the side of your car. All right. So should we take another break and talk a little bit more about the weird fact of the day? Yes. My favorite boy bands give me in this situation.

If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen.

So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangeh Shatikler. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology.

And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars. If you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good.

There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, buddy. We talked about the mouth parts.

So what they do is they get that chalice or eye and they make a hole in your skin. Normal enough. They inject saliva, which contains digestive enzymes that make a slurry of your skin cells. We talked about other insects that do similar things like this. So it's still pretty like, all right, no big deal. Then it gets weird. It does. And I don't know if it's because they have like specific enzymes or something,

but I didn't see this happening with anything else. Did you? No. No, you. Drop it on them. No. You refuse? I refuse.

All right. So what happens is they have in these secretions, what happens is they break your skin cells down, which makes that slurry, which is good. Makes sense. Slurp it up. But then the surrounding tissue hardens and it actually creates a tube, a little hard straw in your skin. In the wound.

Yeah, called a stylus stone. Right. What do they do with that? They drink out of it. They use it as a straw to slurp up your wrecked cells. Yeah. And the longer they're in there, the longer the straw is. The stylus stone.

The stylus stone. Yeah, I saw a paper from 2004 and in the abstract it said something like, it seems that stylus stones form as a reaction to chiggers. So I don't know if they thought like maybe this was part of a chigger or something like that, but I guess it's a recent finding. Oh, really? That stylus stones form and that's how chiggers actually eat, because they don't have any probiscous or anything like that.

No. They're pretty much really weak. Proboscous? One of those. They're just not great insects or arachnids at all. Yeah. They're not. They can't bite very easily.

They can't suck anything out. They're useless, but your body just happens to help them out. Well, they have that magic juice. I guess so. It's pretty cool. You know? Yeah. So with that magic juice, that's going to be one of the two reasons you're going to

be itching a lot. Some people react quite adversely to that juice. Other people, it's not that bad, but it's still going to itch no matter what. And it's not just the juice you're reacting to. I think that's probably what first gets your attention, but the thing that causes the persistent itch is that stylus stone, your body's own reaction, which seems to be forming basically a hollow tube of temporary scar tissue in this wound area.

Crazy. And then that actually causes some sort of itch reaction as your skin heals. And that can take a very long time to heal. This is the point where I was like, oh, having chiggers actually does suck terribly. Yeah. I think if you had a chigger that was able to complete its full four day meal. Your toast. I mean, do you have a shower for four days?

Yeah. That's when your stylus stone is going to be at its peak of hardness and length. Right. And it's going to have the worst reaction. Right. So what can you do? There are home remedies you've heard. Maybe like painting over chigger bites with a clear nail polish.

Right. Or any kind of nail polish, really, I think. Yeah. Sure. If you've got flair, you need some sparkly gold. Right. I'm going to put some dots on my armpit and then why not? I'll put some around my eye as well.

So what's the deal there? Are you just choking it out? A lot of people would say, yes, you're covering up the chigger that's burrowed into your skin and it is now suffocating to death. It's like choke on your meal. But that's wrong because, again, chiggers don't burrow into your skin. Right. And Tracy points out very acutely by the time you even notice it,

it's very likely the chigger is not there any longer. Right. So if you're painting something over your skin, really what you're doing is protecting the wound area from the air, contact with the air, which can aggravate it. So it does help, but Tracy says, just use anti-itch cream. It's way better. Yeah, like cortisone or something.

Is that what it is? Yeah. Yeah. Don't try, I don't know why she felt the need to put this in here, but we might as well say it. Don't try to remove the stylus dome. I can see people doing that. Trying to dig it out. Yeah, no, you don't need to.

No, I can definitely see people doing that. I think that was worth it. She also says, don't use turpentine. Yeah, I've never heard that. Yeah, people do all sorts of dumb stuff. Yeah, I mean, I guess if you could soak in a tub of gasoline and that would probably kill. Light it on fire and there goes your chigger problems. Yeah, most of these home remedies though, you should just shy away from, I think.

Yes, only use remedies approved by modern western medicine. Modern western medicine. The only treatment you need. The name chigger, they believe, you ever heard of sand fleas? Like in Florida or anywhere along because. Yeah, they're like tiny crabs. Yeah, those are chigo fleas, C-H-I-G-O-E. And another name for that is the jigger flea and they think that chigger came from

just sort of mashing those two names together, even though it's not the same thing. No, it's not. Those actually do burrow into your skin and they lay eggs there and then the eggs like to feast on you. Yeah. So not good, but I guess there's just nothing but confusion surrounding chiggers. Yeah. Nothing. So Chuck, if you want to protect yourself against chigger invasions in your armpits and

your underpants bands, what do you do? Well, if you work in your yard and your garden a lot, you wear long sleeves and wear pants. You know, cover up as much body as you can physically. You can wear deet if you want or any other kind of insect repellent. This says you can also use sulfur. Yeah, I've never heard of that. I haven't either. I wonder if you'd like to just burn incense near you or something?

I don't know. It would smell like. Bathe in egg water? Yeah, oh God. Bathe in like a, you know what, I will never ever try because I hate pickled things anyway, but pickled eggs. That's crazy. They're not bad.

They're usually a little too sweet. I see those things floating in a jar and it's like, I feel like I'm in a hospital. Like where you found the head? Yeah. The, I think it's the Chinese, probably Japanese and Korean too. There's a type of pickle legs where they soak them in a brine and it's the saltiest thing you will ever eat and they're mucky and brown. Those are not good.

The other ones are fine. They're just not, they don't taste that great. I think I don't want food soaked in liquid. Pickled stuff is really good for you. I mean, I hate pickled things, but just. I love pickled everything. Period, like soaking something in a solution I just don't want. I don't even like marinades.

I'm a dry rub guy. Are you really? Oh yeah. You know I didn't know that about you. Yeah, yeah. So you know like sauces of any kind or is it the pre soaking, like pre cooking soaking that well, pre-marinating I don't like. Okay.

I mean if you have a quality French saucier at your disposal, I'll take a little. But put it on the side in a plastic cup. But I don't, I don't, like there was this place near Emily's shop that was, it's now closed. I kind of feel bad for saying this, but I think I know why. Because they used too much sauce? Dude, they had this delicious crispy, crispy fried chicken that they dumped this gravy sauce on top. They never just put it on the side? No, and by the time it got to the table, it wasn't crispy fried chicken anymore.

Oh, that's terrible. I just don't get it. But yeah, I'll eat a sauce if it's. Yeah, well you're describing a smothered chicken. That's totally different. But it was fried. Fried and smothered. Can't do that.

Those two things are never supposed to come together. If you want to see if you have chiggers on your property, Tracy says you can take a piece of black paper, black construction paper maybe, from your child. Right, give me that you stupid kid. And go out and lay it on the ground near where you think there might be chiggers, and you might see little tiny, tiny red things. She doesn't just say that.

She says to take a piece of paper and defy physics by standing it up on its edge. Is that what she says? And then the chiggers will follow their natural urges and climb to the top of the paper. Like what world does Tracy live in? Well, I mean you're in the grass, you can stand a piece of paper up in the grass. Maybe, yeah. Not if you take care of your grass. This isn't like that Twilight Zone episode where Darren from Bewitched like flips the coin

and it lands on its side. Oh man, you know what happened in PE in college one time? My PE teacher, a basketball teacher, threw a pin, remember the paper mate pins that had the cap with the just sort of flat top? Yes. He just flipped it up in the air and meant to catch it, didn't it? Hit the ground, bounce, and landed completely straight up and down on its cap. That's exactly like that Twilight Zone episode.

He could hear everyone's thoughts after that point now. Well, I dropped that class immediately. That's smart. I was like, I'm out of here. Very smart. Were you like witch and ran out the door? You're doing Satan's work. Oh man.

All right, well that's chiggers. Oh, we didn't say if you really want to control chiggers in your yard, just take care of your yard. They will go away. They won't want to hang out there. Yeah. There won't be long stalks of grass for them to climb up to and quest from. That's right.

If you want to know more about chiggers, horrible, horrible little things, you can type that word into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for a listener mail. Hey guys, I'm a new fan. I must admit, I'm getting addicted. I recently listened to the Anesthesia Podcast and I heard the listener mail the Harvard student and needed five numbing injections to the nasal cavity to breaking her nose. That was terrible.

She thinks she can one up it here. That's not bad. Oh man. I know. I'm sorry. In one, in college, one of my molars became infected. Oh no. I needed a root canal.

The day of the procedure, the dentist gave me shots in the gum, which Chuck said was the worst thing ever in life. After a few numbing shots, he got to work drilling into the infected tooth. Unfortunately, he didn't give me enough. Once he got down to the root, I felt it and it felt awful. So I said to the dentist, hey, I alerted the dentist. He then pulled out what must have been the largest needle in existence and gave me a shot directly into the infected root of my tooth.

Oh man. I think that has the nose beat. This made me, she said that she takes pain well. She said, but this made me sob uncontrollably. It was 10 years ago and I can still vividly recall the flash of blinding pain when the needle made contact. To make matters worse, that evening my gum swelled, dislodged the temporary crown, and I had to go back the next day to have it refitted. So that's my injection story.

Like I said, I'm not sure if it's worse than the five in the nose, but I'd say both were pretty terrible. Hope you enjoyed the read. Julie Yeast from Honolulu, Hawaii. Thanks a lot for that, Julie. Man. I'm making air quotes when I say thanks. That's like scarring, you know.

Right, yeah. I still remember that for the rest of her life. Well, way to go. If you want to try to gross us out, it's going to be tough to top that one, but let's keep it going, shall we? You can send us an email. Send it off to stuffpodcast.ihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio.

For more podcasts on my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Badie about my new podcast and make sure to listen, so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe.

You can find in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me, and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes, because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app,

Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, I'm Kaley Shore. On my podcast Too Much to Say, I share my thoughts on everything from music to martinis, social media to social anxiety, regrets, to risky texts, and so much more. I have been known to read my literal diary entries on my show, and sometimes I do interviews with my crazy group of friends. So if you guys want to tune in, you can hear new episodes of Too Much to Say

every Wednesday on the National Podcast Network, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to them.