52 minutes
minnehaha off leash dog park
73 degrees
Another hike with Delia the dog and FWA. Today, a few bugs, at least one bite on my neck. Better remember the bug spray next time. It felt cool and green in the forest, too hot and bright and exposed by the water. We took the treacherous steps today instead of the trail beside the fence line. Delia always wants to go this way, but we don’t because of the steep steps and the crowds. I think FWA picked it because someone ahead of us had gone the way we like to go.
dog names: Ernie — FWA thought it might have been Bernie. I’m team Ernie. / Phineas — my thought: someone who loves/loved Phineas and Ferb named this dog.
We talked about bugs and how we should bring bug spray next time, which led me to mention the book by Sue Somebody (Hubbell — I had to look it up; I read the book more than 20 years ago!) about moving to the foothills of the Appalachians to tend bees. I recall her writing about the terrible bugs — chiggers, I think — that took her 3 summers to get used to. FWA mentioned how chiggers burrow into your skin and deposit larvae —
Writing this now, I looked at that up to verify and found this:
Contrary to popular belief, chiggers do not burrow into the skin or suck blood. Using large claws located near their mouths, chigger larvae quickly attach to any exposed skin that contacts infested grass or soil in vegetated areas. The larvae then cut the skin with blade-like mouthparts called chelicerae and inject an enzyme into the cut that digests the skin at the bite site. This makes the cells around the bite site harden into a “drinking straw”, which the chigger uses to suck up the liquefied tissue. Chigger larvae will feed for several hours and then drop off the host to find a sheltered place to digest the meal. The bite site stays irritated by the digestive enzymes long after the chigger finishes feeding and detaches.
source
Gross!
Anyway, FWA’s mention of the chiggers burrowing into the skin, inspired me to talk about how we are only 43% us and 57% bacterium and other things. I wrote a poem about it last year, “Sara, an Ecosystem.”1 I asked to FWA: Most (all?) of us understand ourselves to be individuals, separate from the world. How much of this erroneous belief is hard-wired, with our brain tricking us to believe (in) this, and how much is socialization? FWA answered: it’s both. Then he started talking about mitochondria and a video game in which they all rebel against the humans that house them and everyone starts melting and shifting shapes. Very cool.
When we weren’t talking, which was a lot of the time, we were both delighting in Delia’s joy and she ran through the woods, leaping over logs and trying to play with dogs that were much bigger than her.
- Found the poem. I like this one. I think I’ll submit it to some more journals. I’m pretty sure I submitted it to a few places last fall. ↩︎