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Old 07-02-2007, 04:38 PM
echinosum echinosum is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Feb 2006
Location: Chalfont St Giles
Posts: 1,340
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TheScullster View Post
Hi all

As the subject, I have numerous bites to ankles and lower legs.
Start off itchy and irritating, but when you scratch the itch it turns into
a larger red lump thats more itchy and sore and bleeds!
Haven't spent much time in the garden so the blighters may not actually
originate from there.
Don't have pets and haven't consorted with any likely suspects recently.
If they are flea bites, then there is a risk that the fleas have moved into your socks, and from there to other items of clothing or even your bed-linen. They are especially fond of woolly/knitted type fabrcs. Ideally you want to wash the items and then hang them out in warm bright sunshine, but in the absence of that tumble-drying may do the trick.

I twice caught cat-fleas while travelling in Chile. The first time I put on clean clothes, washed everything else and/or hung it out in the sun, and that did for them. The second time they must have got well into my sleeping-bag as that didn't work and I started getting bites on other parts of my body. I ended up spraying everything with flea-killer, then washing everything again, and that finally got rid of them.

We have had a few insect bites at home a couple of weeks ago, (not flea-bites) and I was seeing clouds of insects out in the garden. There is something nasty in my garden that is bites me in early spring. Hopefully the recent weather will have corrected that.