0tterbot wrote:

almost unbelievably, i HAVE had this problem!

in our case, it was bird mites. there had been birds nesting in the roof -
after they all left home, the homeless mites began to drift down through the
ceiling. we thought we would go insane, because we didn't know what it was.
i put white paper out & eventually we were able to spot them landing on the
paper on the table (they are near-microscopic). then, we thought we would go
insane because of the disgustingness of it all.

some pest dude came around & pesticided them all to death & that was the end
of it.
kylie



Oh yum! What a delicious tale!

I've got one too!

A few weeks after we moved here, we met a young couple from a few houses
up. They had moved in just days before we had and their baby was born a
few days after that. They brought their daughter home and she promptly
got sick: she had a raised, ugly rash all over her little body. The
doctor looked and said 'Bites of some sort', but they weren't able to
establish exactly what was biting the baby. Very soon, the parents came
down with the rash as well.

Long story short: there was a rather large colony of Indian Mynahs
nesting in their roof. It was lice. They moved.

Oh and another good one!

Once, my sister wrangled a tiny pony from inner-city Newcastle. It had
been tethered to a park fence and left without water and feed. When my
sister found it, the poor little thing was a skeleton and eating sand!
It was very easy for her to simply cut the tether rope and lift the pony
into her Mitsubishi L300 (I *so* admire my sister for doing this!) She
left a note on the fence for the owner and brought the pony home.

We spent the whole afternoon with our kids feeding, washing and fussing
over Buddy, who wasn't an inch over eleven hands. He greedily gobbled up
the hay we gave him and went to lie down in Mum's backyard (which had
long *green* grass - why didn't we twig???). Then we went to have lunch.

During lunch, everyone began to itch and scratch hysterically. *All* of
us, even my elderly Mum, had *lice* from the poor little pony! We had to
wash ourselves (and the pony, of course) in dog-wash to get them off and
it wasn't pleasant at all!

By now, the pony had contracted an awful case of colic, probably from
eating too much green grass on top of his sand diet. My sister and I
walked him around the streets for eighteen hours before he finally
passed the sand. The poor little creature was in agony and I've never
seen another horse as sick as he was. The story has a happy ending,
because the owner rang, irate, from *Sydney*! He'd bought the pony for
his kids, who lived with their Mum in N'cle and who had tired of him
after a few weeks. He threatened to sue my sister, who calmly replied,
'Do, please, go ahead! You and I have an appointment with the RSPCA. I
took photos!' The nice man then offered to sell the pony to my sister,
who peered into her purse and said 'I've got eleven dollars twenty. Will
that do?' She sent him a money order, he sent a receipt and Buddy became
ours!

Buddy was about eighteen months old (ie a *baby*!) and kids had been
riding and abusing him for most of his short life. We were unable to
break him to saddle (owing to having no-one small enough to ride him
safely), so we broke him to harness when he was nearly three. He never
grew past twelve hands, and so he became a champion mini-trotter and
went to live with a lovely couple whose grandchildren were great
mini-trots drivers.

--
Trish {|:-} Newcastle, NSW, Australia