Freaking about Mites (again)...

[Jenk]

The last few nights, my face has felt itchy (which hasn't been the case since we were in the middle of our drawn-out mite issue). There are no visible bites, but I never had visible bites in the past, either.

Then tonight, Zoe scratched her face/ears like mad for a bit. She actually stopped what she was doing to work at these areas. She even shook her head, thumped her foot and flicked her hind legs in irritation over the itching.

Now I'm freaking out....:cry2

Jenk

 

[Maureen Las]

I doubt if either she or you have mites again ; it has gotten really warm here and I have been sort of itchy myself.
I have a few mosquito bites on my face from walking the dog yesterday .
you could be itchy for a million reason other than mites.

Zoe probably is just having an itchy moment which my rabbits have sometimes from being in their hay.
Don't worry... I'm sure that this is just a temporary itchiness at your house

Don't freak out ....
"Hugs"

Maureen

 

[AngelnSnuffy]

Snuff does that alot as he is a Lop bunner and he's healthy as a horse. If ears check out clean and ok and no mites, etc. I'd say you're good to go!

 

[Jenk]

angieluv wrote:

I doubt if either she or you have mites again ; it has gotten really warm here and I have been sort of itchy myself....You could be itchy for a million reason other than mites.

That's what I repeated to myself just before going to bed. Of course, I just had to peek in on Zoe several times before then to see if she was scratching. (She wasn't. Just eating and drinking normally.)

Zoe probably is just having an itchy moment which my rabbits have sometimes from being in their hay.
Don't worry... I'm sure that this is just a temporary itchiness at your house.

I've not seen that level of itchiness in any of the buns since the mite situation, which is why my momentary serenity was shaken.

Don't freak out ....
"Hugs"

My husband did tell me, as I crawled into bed, that Emma had been cleaning Zoe's face, while he had been playing with Zoe's ears just before she went on her scratch fest. So I'll try to remember that news and breathe, breathe....

Thank you for the virtual hugs; they've helped me calm a bit, believe it or not.

 

[Jenk]

AngelnSnuffy wrote:

Snuff does that alot as he is a Lop bunner and he's healthy as a horse. If ears check out clean and ok and no mites, etc. I'd say you're good to go!

Another sign of a problem would be if the other two bunners (plus our cat) all start dropping to the floor on a dime to scratch like fiends.

One thought that does keep my worries a bit more in check is that, when the mite issue struck our boy, he basically started scratching constantly on day #1. If this were mites, I think I'd have seen Zoe scratch more yet last night.

 

[tonyshuman]

Did you treat the house with diatomaceous earth? From what I hear, it might be good and safe for carpet/upholstery treatment. I really hope it's not mites again, but discomfort from the heat.

 

[Jenk]

tonyshuman wrote:

Did you treat the house with diatomaceous earth? From what I hear, it might be good and safe for carpet/upholstery treatment. I really hope it's not mites again, but discomfort from the heat.

We did use DE and won't ever again use it in the house. For one thing, many distributors instruct customers to vacuum it up. Bad move. The grains are so fine, they can burn out most vacuum's motors. (This didn't happen to us, but we used a wet/dry vac for most of the powder.) Plus, it's so fine that it "sticks" to hardwood flooring (which means that it can scratch it, too).

We really shouldn't still have anything living in the house. The animals were treated for much longer than the normal time span; plus, we had an exterminator treat our home three times. (Mind you, the EPA has banned two chemicals that were the weapons of choice for exterminators; so our chosen guy had to use less strong stuff. But three treatments should've done the trick....)

 

[tonyshuman]

Oh my. You really have bug bombed the heck out of your house. I am guessing it's just paranoia.

 

[Jenk]

tonyshuman wrote:

Oh my. You really have bug bombed the heck out of your house. I am guessing it's just paranoia.

We'd reached the point of not being able to tell what was normal scratching and what wasn't. Also, the first three months' that we had them, the vet didn't treat them frequently enough. And it didn't help that my parents caught whatever it was that we had, and the parasite ran absolutely rampant in their home. (They also have suppressed immune systems, which makes anything--bacterial, parasitic, viral--much, much worse.) So I had to hear constant updates about the mite crisis in my parents' home.

Actually, if you're personally affected (bitten) by mites, it's natural to reach a state of paranoia. Having someone constantly bring up the mite topic (every 1-3 days') doesn't help, though.