"Ada
& Mary Ruth were over this afternoon to see Philip & Carol. Philip was pretty cross to-day; he has
chiggers all over him."
--
Letter from my grandmother, Bloomington, Kans., to my father, Salina, Kans.,
July 15, 1942. Philip and Carol, ages 4 and 2½ were my grandparents’ nephew and niece,
staying with them while their parents were separated. Ada Lenz lived on a neighboring farm; and
Mary Ruth McNeil was the wife of the Methodist preacher in Bloomington. Chiggers are the larval stage of trombiculid
mites. Their bites are familiar to anyone who's walked through tall grass in
the part of the country where I grew up.
(Sources: “Chiggers” at PubMed Health;
“Trombiculidae” at Wikipedia.)
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