Dangerous Little Bugs

See all of William's bags!

Today's story is about some dangerous little bugs.  Many people in churches ask us if we are afraid of snakes.  That question always makes me laugh.  I wonder when you all were on deputation before you went to Rio if anyone asked you that without thinking.  Did you see any snakes in that big city of Rio?  Ha, ha!  Maybe in a zoo!

We do see snakes, but there are many worse and more dangerous things than old serpents!

Remember that bed picture with those silly boys popping up!   Well, one time around 2008, William kept waking up with little red,itchy bumps.  The other boys were fine.  But William would wake up with these itchy places on his feet and legs.  At first I thought the fan wasn't hitting him enough to keep the mosquitoes away.  So I fixed two fans for the boys' room.  One to blow air on Greyson and Dalton and one for William on the top bunk.  You should know that all through the years the boys always slept in the same spot.  Greyson nowadays sleeps mostly on the middle or bottom depending on his mood!

Anyway.  I tried to make sure that mosquitoes weren't getting poor old William.  I checked the dogs for fleas.  I sprayed the boys' room at night before they went to bed with bug spray getting up under the furniture were mosquitoes like to hide.  Days and nights went by and still William woke up every morning with new bumps.  I even thought about taking him to the doctor!  Which I never thought of too often as we live in a place sort of far from doctors.

One night I decided to go into the boys' room in the middle of the night with a flashlight and see if there was something crawling around on William's bed...

There was a bug just like this one crawling around near William's feet!

 

 I knew exactly what it was!  A bug called the kissing bug in many places in the USA and a barbeiro here in our part of Brazil.  They make a big bite like a button that hurts like crazy and takes a long time to heal.  They can also be carriers of a disease called Chagas or American trypanosomiasis.  The island camp had a good deal of them.  Uncle Byron had the island sprayed from time to time to control them.  They like to live in the little cracks of mud houses and come out at night to look for their victims.  They suck the blood of a person or animal (even chickens) and leave a little bit of "excrement" after their blood meal.  The excrement {ask your mother what that is if you don't know} has little parasites of the disease if they are carriers.

I caught the little bug alive in a matchbox.  It wasn't easy because they are very fast.  The next day we took it to the disease control office in our town.  There are several bug related diseases that are common in NE Brazil.  Many little cities have workers that help with these kind of problems.  Two men said they would come to the house the next day to look for more barbeiros and see if they needed to spray.

I had an idea that the bug had come from the island to our house, but how and what to do were big questions.  I took all the boys' mattresses off the bunk beds that day and sprayed bug spray everywhere.  I washed sheets and used a flashlight to check every nook and cranny of the bunk beds and the room.  It was quite a spring cleaning day.  But I missed one thing!

That night I told the boys to go to bed in their normal places sure that I had solved the problem.  But I was still curious and in the middle of the night went looking only to see miniature barbeiros smaller than I had ever seen before all over William's bed!  I drug him out of the bed in the middle of the night to go sleep on the couch!

The next morning the men came and looked and looked all around.  I had caught two of the mini bugs.  They couldn't believe their eyes.  They had never seen barbeiros so small that someone had caught.  Now they were sure we had an infestation!  They looked and looked but couldn't find any other bugs.  They decided it was a fluke and left talking about coming back to spray later but never did!

Later after they left I decided to look one more time - Ah, ha!  I had discovered the source!  An old Awana book bag hanging on the bed post at the end of William's bed.  William had bags for everything {he learned it from his mother}.  The old Awana bag was where he kept his Bible and a little notebook to carry to church.  It often went to the island and hung on the hook of his hammock.

The bugs I found were "nymphs."

Apparently he brought back a mother barbeiro from the island who had a whole nest of little baby bugs living in William's bag.  The little bag was full of them, along with the dry shell of a big bug.  I sprayed that bag until it was wet with bug spray and then I left it to soak in soapy water.  I wanted to burn it, but William didn't want to lose it!

So, will William ever die from Chagas disease?  Chagas has no cure.  It was named for a Brazilian doctor that discovered the disease in the early 1900's.  The only way to control the disease is prevention - or killing the bugs that transmit it.  After a person is bitten, if they get a bad flu like cold with fever - they have been infected.  At that point the parasites can be seen in the blood stream of a person and the disease can be treated to some extent.  Many people never know and the parasites stay in their blood for years.  When a person is older, new symptoms emerge as the parasites seen to come to live again and attack major organs.

You can read more about it here from the CDC website:

http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/chagas/

It is unlikely that William will have problems in the future as the bugs from the island have little contact with outside carriers of the disease.  All of us have been bitten from time to time.  Only God knows!

So when you go to bed at night - 

Sleep tight, and don't let the bed bugs bite!

Some time I'll tell you about real "bed bugs" and Uncle Byron in a hotel!  Take care.  Maybe I'll see you soon and tell a live story!