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Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

Yesterday morning, as it wasn't raining for about five minutes, I went out to tidy up some of the weeds that were growing along my garden wall, on the outside where my car is parked. I did the stretch all along our cottages, so I was out there for a good half an hour, pulling up dandelions and couch grass and all the things that had got well established whilst it was too wet to go out and garden.

While I was weeding I felt a pain on my forearm as though I'd been bitten. There were a fair few ants about, so I guessed that one had got me. I woke up with that bit of my arm red and swollen and itching. Fair enough, I thought. Then I had an itch on my leg. Then on my chest. Then two on my other leg and several in my hair - it appears that the one bite I felt was the tip of the iceberg.

I'm just a bit puzzled by how I felt the one bite but none of the others? They all present the same, red, itchy and swollen so I'm presuming they were all ant bites (and there was no sign of any other nasties out there whilst I was gardening, no horse flies or other bitey beasts, and the wind and showers were keeping the midges and gnats at bay).
 
catseye said:
Yesterday morning, as it wasn't raining for about five minutes, I went out to tidy up some of the weeds that were growing along my garden wall, on the outside where my car is parked. I did the stretch all along our cottages, so I was out there for a good half an hour, pulling up dandelions and couch grass and all the things that had got well established whilst it was too wet to go out and garden.

While I was weeding I felt a pain on my forearm as though I'd been bitten. There were a fair few ants about, so I guessed that one had got me. I woke up with that bit of my arm red and swollen and itching. Fair enough, I thought. Then I had an itch on my leg. Then on my chest. Then two on my other leg and several in my hair - it appears that the one bite I felt was the tip of the iceberg.

I'm just a bit puzzled by how I felt the one bite but none of the others? They all present the same, red, itchy and swollen so I'm presuming they were all ant bites (and there was no sign of any other nasties out there whilst I was gardening, no horse flies or other bitey beasts, and the wind and showers were keeping the midges and gnats at bay).
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Bitey little bastards. :mad:
 
escargot said:
Bitey little bastards. :mad:
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Ant venom is actually injected like a wasp sting. :/
fire%2Bant%2Bstinging.jpg

As for not noticing immediately, maybe the venom location was just not hitting a nerve until it had a while to make a blister?
 
catseye said:
I'm just a bit puzzled by how I felt the one bite but none of the others?
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Yeah, the one you felt was probably a sensitive spot and it really hit the nerve.
The others are probably just showing the allergic reaction from the bite/sting.
Get some Anthisan cream on them.
 
RaM said:
Even in the uk some spider bites can turn nasty.
:omr:
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Yep, I had a really nasty one on my elbow a few years ago, the whole arm swelled up, and I couldn't move or bend it, and the lightest touch was agony - sleeping was very difficult for a few nights, and I needed a visit to my local minor injuries unit and a course of antibiotics to stop infection getting into the joint. Before that I believed someone on telly who said that spider bites in the UK weren't powerful enough to penetrate the skin. Now I know better.
 
RaM said:
Even in the uk some spider bites can turn nasty.
:omr:
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LEt's face it... the deadliest to Humans spiders... aren't the huge ones.

Goliath Bird-eater? they're big enough to properly chew on you! Venom? enh.... whatever. Brown Tarantulas? you can buy them in pet stores. heck, no one has any way to know if a pet tarantula is "tame" or not. Seriously, it takes a few days of taking care of it for the spider to get used to having Humans feed it.

I've heard stories of people keeping a spider in a cage for months... then one day realizing the cage is open... and the spider is just hanging out since it feels safe and secure in the cage. Sure it wandered off, but decided to come back.
 
marhawkman said:
Ant venom is actually injected like a wasp sting. :/
fire%2Bant%2Bstinging.jpg

As for not noticing immediately, maybe the venom location was just not hitting a nerve until it had a while to make a blister?
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All ants bite but only some sting

Stinging ants species​

​

  • Red ants - this species bites and stings at the same time. Fire ants are so aggressive that they tend to sting multiple times once they hook themselves onto you with their mandibles.
  • Bulldog ants - 93 species of ants commonly known as bull ants or bulldog ants alongside other names. Those ants have a painful sting, and some people are allergic to their venom. There have been three deaths registered since 1936.
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hunck said:
All ants bite but only some sting

Stinging ants species​

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I was in the Amazon rainforest on an expedition for fungi when I had the most godawful pain in my chest. My first thought was that this was the worst possible place to have a heart attack. Investigation showed that an ant had gotten inside my t shirt and bitten or stung me. It was incredibly painful.
 
SimonBurchell said:
spider bites in the UK weren't powerful enough to penetrate the skin
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IIRC this is likely to be getting two similar things confused here.
The UK spiders which have the most toxic (deadly) venom are indeed incapable of breaking human skin. They are teeny-tiny wee lickle things with fangs that are nanometre sized and only of any use for killing equally small things.
But we have many species of spider in the UK who can deliver a fairly nasty bite, albeit with a venom of little bother.
I've been bitten by spiders lots of times. I even had one hanging from my fingertip by its teeth ('fangs'?) one day when gardening.
You might end up with a red sore lump but you won't be needing a trip to A&E.
 
I have had 2 or 3 spider bites in the UK that turned nasty but put it down
to whatever was on it's fangs when it bit not any venom it may inject.
This is not the biggest we get round here one or two have made even me jump back.

1691050655847.jpeg
 
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It wasn't a spider. The bite on the underside of my arm (the one I felt) is now swollen and red and hot and itchy. The other bites are red and itchy but not swollen, so whatever got me on the arm was more potent than the bites elsewhere.

That's it, I'm never gardening again.
 
hunck said:
All ants bite but only some sting

Stinging ants species​

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Like I said, bitey little bastards. :mad:

This doesn't just apply to ants though. Remember, we don't know for sure what species of bitey little bastard attacked @catseye.
Could easily have been a stinging little bastard.

Couple of years ago I was targeted on the thigh by some stinging little bastard that I never even saw. Hurt so much I honestly thought I'd been shot with a pellet. :chuckle:

The sting came up in a huge tender lump and looked horrific. Took a week or so to heal, no complications, I was lucky really.
 
A slightly unusual event this morning, I was walking towards a railway footbridge, with a hedgerow separating me from the railway line. I could hear crackling and sparking noises, but couldn't see any obvious signs of electricity arcing anywhere. I went up the bridge, still hearing this noise, and looking for sparking from the live rail, but seeing nothing. At the top of the footbridge I stopped and had a good look... and soon identified the source. Some local wildlife, a badger by the looks of it, was lying between the live rail and the nearest normal rail, touching both, and was... cooking. I couldn't see any arcing or sparks, but there was plenty of... steam? smoke? coming off the poor blighter.
 
My mother would never allow us to scratch insect bites. Her father had died,when she was just ten, as a consequence of doing so, although I'm not sure of the exact details. His brother was still maintaining, even when I was little that it was the local doctors fault for not taking it seriously when the bite/sting first started presenting as a problem. Grandad ended up being taken to hospital where he died.

Anyway he was a working class entrepreneur type and had just started a business that was going well. After his death Granny had a really tough time bringing up my mother and aunt on her own.

But damn and blast it I could have been brought up middle class if it wasn't for that bloody little bitey/stingy bastard. Plus I could have had the pleasure of not feeling guitly for having a good scratch after being attacked by various little creatures :)
 
Any repellent with DEET in it will put the little bastards off, if you get bit
a wash with soapy water then wipe with surgical spirits as soon as you can and a bit of Hydrocortisone Cream,
it will likely be ok in a day or two but left and it can take weeks to go away.
 
Peripart said:
However, you might want to check your sums there...
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No...silly....
Mr Rutter uses a calendar of his own devising which (much like the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1582) incorporates a 10 'jump'.
Or it incorporates an extra 10 years.
Or summat.
I haven't really thought it through but you know what I mean.

1691073458696.png
 
Sollywos said:
My mother would never allow us to scratch insect bites. Her father had died,when she was just ten, as a consequence of doing so, although I'm not sure of the exact details. His brother was still maintaining, even when I was little that it was the local doctors fault for not taking it seriously when the bite/sting first started presenting as a problem. Grandad ended up being taken to hospital where he died.

Anyway he was a working class entrepreneur type and had just started a business that was going well. After his death Granny had a really tough time bringing up my mother and aunt on her own.

But damn and blast it I could have been brought up middle class if it wasn't for that bloody little bitey/stingy bastard. Plus I could have had the pleasure of not feeling guitly for having a good scratch after being attacked by various little creatures :)
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Scratching an insect bite can cause infection by opening the tiny wound further and letting in bacteria like Streptococcus and Staphylococcus. These bacteria are everywhere and can be carried on the hands.

This might lead to cellulitis which can rip through the body tissues: possible consequences include blood infection (sepsis/bacteremia), the flesh-eating bacterial infection necrotizing fasciitis or even bone infections known as osteomyelitis.

So yup, this is what most likely happened to Granddad. I'm guessing it was before intravenous antibiotics were available. There was probably no saving him once the infection set in.
What a terrible tragedy for your family.
 
escargot said:
Scratching an insect bite can cause infection by opening the tiny wound further and letting in bacteria like Streptococcus and Staphylococcus. These bacteria are everywhere and can be carried on the hands.

This might lead to cellulitis which can rip through the body tissues: possible consequences include blood infection (sepsis/bacteremia), the flesh-eating bacterial infection necrotizing fasciitis or even bone infections known as osteomyelitis.

So yup, this is what most likely happened to Granddad. I'm guessing it was before intravenous antibiotics were available. There was probably no saving him once the infection set in.
What a terrible tragedy for your family.
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My middle daughter got cellulitis when she was three. Her father trod on her by stepping back and not looking where he was going and grazed her shin, which swelled up horrifically. The doctor diagnosed it as an insect bite until her entire leg swelled to double its size whereupon she got antibiotics.

She's thirty now and still has a scar down her shin and a dent in the bone of her leg. It's a horrible illness. My brother, who is diabetic, suffers from it a lot and is often hospitalised with it.
 
catseye said:
It wasn't a spider. The bite on the underside of my arm (the one I felt) is now swollen and red and hot and itchy. The other bites are red and itchy but not swollen, so whatever got me on the arm was more potent than the bites elsewhere.

That's it, I'm never gardening again.
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It may be a tick bite. Get it checked out.
Tick bites have a distinctive appearance.
 
escargot said:
So yup, this is what most likely happened to Granddad. I'm guessing it was before intravenous antibiotics were available. There was probably no saving him once the infection set in.
What a terrible tragedy for your family.
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It happened in 37 or 38. Yes lots of harrowing stories have been passed down from that time including two of the many fortean stories that I was told growing up.

Grandad had seemingly had a premonition before he got ill, It was summer but he'd chopped enough wood in readiness for the winter. Granny asked him what he was doing it for and he'd replied 'I have a feeling that I might not be here to do it later'.

One of grannies jobs to try and make ends meet was moving into the homes of the more wealthy pregnant women a bit before the birth of their babies to take over the houswork, to be on hand to assist the midwife and then stay on for the lying in period.

Description. A 1932 publication refers to lying-in as ranging from two weeks to two months. It also suggests not "getting up" (getting out of bed post-birth) for at least nine days and ideally for 20 days.

(How times have changed!! Granny herself wouldn't have had such pampering but at least it gave her chance to earn much needed dosh and she was thought of with much fondness for years afterwards.)

In one of those houses she kept getting woken up in the night to the sound of someone walking down the corridor to her room crying and assumed it was the labour starting. She'd rush to the door to find no one there. Thought she must have been dreaming but when it kept happening she mentioned it to her employers who told her 'Oh we should have warned you that's our ghost the grey lady don't worry she's harmless'. :)
 
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