Critter Post: Red Critter @ Croton Springs....

[RedBuffalo]

Can you imagine seeing this little guy in the desert.  It definitely catches your eye.  We photographed this on our last day in the park summer 06' and I brought my digital camera in to the Ranger at the Persimon Gap station to help us identify it.  They had seen it before, but couldn't find it in any of their books.  An old timer called it a "Red Velvet Flea" or maybe it was a "Red Velvel Spider."  Anyway, it's a red velvet critter for sure hanging out around Croton Springs.

Anyone else seen one of these?



Here's another guy that came out by the thousands after a heavy rain across Big Bend during that same time period (Aug. 06').  Seriously, these things were everywhere - hundreds trying to cross the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive.

[okiehiker]

On about August 1, 2006.  We had LOTS of rain on that trip too.  Off North Rim above Deer Creek.  Interesting lil critters!

[BigBendHiker]

Neat picture of that red one.  We saw one last summer (I think it was near Croton Spring).  They really stand out because they are such a bright color.  Thanks for posting.


BBH

[bdann]

"Velvet Mites"
http://bugguide.net/node/view/2419/bgimage

[BigBendHiker]

Thanks...yep, that's them all right.


BBH

[RedBuffalo]

BDANN nailed it - mites not flea or spider.  I thought that was a Genus Trombidium when I first saw it (lol).

[MarkB]

I also photographed one of the mite's cousins in July of 2005 after a heavy rain in the Bend; photo here:
http://groups.msn.com/BigBendPhotos/bigbend72805.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=426

[TexasGirl]

If you could make a Trombidion visible in a photograph, that'd be a hell of a camera you're carrying around.  On the other hand, an infestation of them is easily visible.  I had a bout of tromibiasis after my visit to ERock in early November.  ARGHHHHH

[SHANEA]

...I had a bout of tromibiasis...ARGHH HHH

 :?:  :?:  :?:  Couldn't find anything on that :?:  :?:  :?:

[RichardM]

...I had a bout of tromibiasis...ARGHH HHH

 :?:  :?:  :?:  Couldn't find anything on that :?:  :?:  :?:

Think Chiggers.

[TexasGirl]

Thanks to Calvin Trillin, I learned that Trombidion is French for whatever a chigger (the larval stage of a mite) grows up to be (after it sucks out the nourishment of your liquefied cells).  Trillin wrote an hilarious piece about getting a chigger bite in Paris, and how part of the reason he goes to places like Paris is because he doesn't believe chiggers to be a risk there.  "Trombidiasis" is "an infestation of chiggers".

[RichardM]

Thanks to Calvin Trillin, I learned that Trombidion is French for whatever a chigger (the larval stage of a mite) grows up to be (after it sucks out the nourishment of your liquefied cells).  Trillin wrote an hilarious piece about getting a chigger bite in Paris, and how part of the reason he goes to places like Paris is because he doesn't believe chiggers to be a risk there.  "Trombidiasis" is "an infestation of chiggers".

<sigh> Ok, just how much stuff am I gonna have to look up for this thread? :roll:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Trillin

Guess I need to read more books....other than my daughter's books, that is.

[TexasGirl]

Consider it an education, Richard--a very esoteric education.

[TexasGirl]

(Transcribed from Too Soon to Tell by Calvin Trillin, Farrar Strauss Giroux, New York, 1995.)  

“International Chigger Alert”

July 29, 1991

I went to Paris, France, and got bitten by a chigger.  Was I upset?  Yes, I think you could say I was a little upset.

I have spoken before about what my wife insists on calling my morbid fear of chiggers.  I have spoken before about how the itch of a chigger bite is equal to approximately seven milamoses (a milamos is a unit of measurement I devised to stand for the itch power of a thousand mosquito bites).  I have revealed that the itch of a chigger bite lasts just short of eternity and that the only thing that can stop it—sometimes—is amputation.

I have explained that my wife can’t appreciate any of this because she’s from the East and chiggers exist only in the Midwest and the South—during the summer, particularly in Kansas City, Missouri, in the tall grass next to my cousin Kenny’s house.

If chiggers exist only in the Midwest and the South, you say, how did I get a chigger bite in Paris, France?  That’s the whole point.  That’s why I think you could say I was a little upset.  I had thought I was safe.  Am I really saying that I went to Paris to escape chiggers?  Almost.

What I mean is that for someone who grew up on the Midwest, part of the pleasure of foreign travel is knowing that you’re in a place where there aren’t any chiggers.  When someone from, say, Sedalia, Missouri, is on the top of the Eiffel Tower, looking out over the whole City of Light, what runs through his mind is, “Even if they were around here, they couldn’t get this high.”

You think that’s weird?  You think the traveler from Sedalia should be thinking about the beauty of Paris or the place of Paris in the history of Western civilization?  Then you’ve never been bitten by a chigger.

Also, part of everyone’s sense of security is the comforting notion that certain kinds of disasters only happen somewhere else.  When the anchorman reports that some fabulously expensive houses perched in the Hollywood Hills have been carried off by a mudslide, people on the Great Plains breathe a sigh of relief that someone living on an absolutely flat surface is free from the threat of sliding mud.  

Once, during some hard times in Midwestern agriculture, I asked a wheat farmer in Nebraska if he saw any bright spots, and he said, “I figure we’re pretty safe here from tidal waves.”  By the same token, a Hollywood producer who grew up in Hutchinson, Kansas, may wake up every morning haunted by his problems—his deal may never be made, his wife may leave with the pool boy—and cheer himself up enough to get out of bed with the thought that the day will surely pass without a tornado.  We depend on these thing staying where they belong.

“It can’t be a chigger,” my wife said.  “Chiggers are only in the Midwest and the South.  You told me that’s why you moved to New York.”

“Maybe it came over in somebody’s cuff,” I said.  “The man sitting next to me on the plane looked suspiciously like someone I used to know from Conway, Arkansas.  Or maybe they really do have chiggers in Paris, France, and the government has suppressed the information because otherwise the tourist industry would collapse.  I wish I could understand French better.  If the radio stations carry tornado warnings, we all have a lot more to worry about than I thought.”

Then a friend of ours who lives in France informed me that what I had has an aoûtat bite—common in France, particularly in the month of August.  He even showed us the definition in a French dictionary:  the larva of something the French call a trombidion, which does sound itchy.

“Does that make you feel better?” my wife asked.  

“It would,” I said, “except for this itch.”

A week or so after we got home, I happened to be up very early one morning—I was up very early because of the itching—and I got curious about the word “trombidion.”  I couldn’t find a French-English dictionary, but, just on a hunch, I looked it up in an English dictionary.  I found the word “trombidiasis.”  It was defined as an infestation with chiggers.

So they do have chiggers in Paris, France.  Probably tornados, too.  I felt a lot of the premises I’ve operated on crumbling away.  Were there also chiggers in New York, simply covered over temporarily with concrete?  Should I move back to Kansas City?  Or would I be at risk there from tidal waves?

[Undertaker]

Chiggers in Paris, maybe in Paris Texas. :shock: