Immortal Bugs

   Oh yeah. I have my share of irrational fears. I've talked about my fear of demonic toys, and how I think that my mom's cat is kin to the devil, but nothing compares to the big fear. Besides death and permanent injury to my child, this is probably the biggest fear of my life. And it starts with l and ends with e. And unlike in that Ice Age movie, Sid was right the first time. Oh yeah, lice: immortal bugs. My fears do tend to be on the supernatural side, but that should tell you something about these bugs. They aren't like some harmless spider; these bugs are not natural. Nothing kills them, and I mean nothing.

   My daughter has only caught this dreaded pest once, several years ago, and once was enough. She caught the pest from daycare or school, and she brought them home. All her little buggy friends. So I went out, and I bought hundreds of dollars of chemicals that are supposed to kill the buggy invaders, and stocked up on laundry soap, so I could wash every single thing in the house, and garbage bags so I could suffocate the ones that couldn't die a sudsy, watery death. And I took the chemicals for my daughter's head, read the instructions and began the process of killing the pests carousing in her hair. 

   Except  that the chemicals, oh they don't work. As I was combing out her head with a fine-toothed comb, I was finding plenty of live bugs. I also realized that my poor baby was suffering from a full-scale invasion of pestilence. And her hair was long, hanging down to her waist. Now, I could have cut that hair, but I felt she was already suffering enough. I couldn't stand the thought of humiliating her further by cutting off all her hair because of bugs. So I combed, and I combed, and I combed, and thought that I had gotten them all out. 

   But they were still alive, as I had mentioned, and some of them escaped. She failed the lice check that she had to pass to be let back into daycare and school. One of the daycare teachers suggested that we try mayonnaise and a shower cap. Leaving the mayo in the hair covered by a shower cap over night would suffocate the bugs in the same way that the garbage bags would, and the mayo was a more natural, chemical free solution that seemed safer. Word of advise: never do this. Not only did my daughter smell like a sandwich, bad enough, but washing out mayo that has gone bad the next day? G.R.O.S.S. This is the most disgusting, horrible lice treatment ever. Truly gag-worthy. Foul and nasty. The smell! The slime! Never, ever, ever do this. And the mayo didn't kill the bugs. When I combed her hair out, they were still alive and kicking. Her hair was super-shiny, and home to hundreds of little crawling things.
   I tried a different type of chemical, still alive; I tried more home remedies, nothing worked. My daughter had been out of school almost a week while we battled these buggy immortals, and I was at a loss, searching the internet for any solution that did not involve shaving my daughter's head, because I was still determined that my poor baby girl would not suffer that humiliation on top of every thing else. That is when I found out about tea tree oil. Supposedly, this treatment really worked. So  I tried it, and I combed, and combed, and combed, and the treatment seemed to work. I was over the moon: happy and relieved. Her bugs were gone. 

   This is a treatment that I swore by, until I suggested this treatment to a friend, when the bugs invaded her daughter, and guess what? Tea tree oil did not work. Not even a little bit. I am now fully convinced that those bugs are immortals, and the only reason that I managed to get rid of them is because I harassed them into packing their little buggy bags and finding a new home, where some crazed woman wasn't trying to do them in with every nut-brained concoction that she could find on the internet. And now my whole family can attest to fact that I am batshit crazy about lice.