I was always curious what got Mr. C so bad. I remember the claim was scabies but Chris said it was a flying insect?
My mom was a crazy dog lady and I remember our house got infested with fleas. When they're so abundant that they're hopping around random surfaces they don't care what they feed off. Maybe you've had a different experience but I seen't it.
It's my first time dealing with them. My personal experience is different from the standard flea story because there are no pets here nor has their been an animal here since March. The visit wasn't long term either. Despite the hardiness of fleas, they have very specific desires/needs/attractions. They hate human blood, have trouble reproducing with it, are stimulated by movement and body heat to begin their life cycle, and love humid conditions. While it seems some fleas and their eggs took residence in my room (where the cat was and where I work online) they didn't seem to be anywhere else. It's likely because human blood was the only thing available and they struggle reproducing with it. Sure it could have been a lot worse and spread to the rest of the house, but I had trouble finding evidence of them outside of the bites and some flea dirt. Most people with flea issues have animals that spread it throughout the house and once the fleas can no longer compete for animal feeding do they bite humans. The Exterminator even was puzzled that I had a hard time finding them, because he believed that from the number of bites they should be throughout the house, but no one else got bit.
Now this episode began in December, so it could have gotten worse but was dealt within 3 weeks. 3 weeks is a lot of time for a house wide infestation, but my human blood was not enough to maintain a population that spread further from my bedroom in that time period. Furthermore, fleas are lazy and they'd rather lay eggs in the nearby carpet than use their energy to search the house for fresh victims. Usually, flea eggs are spread by pets.
Now let's get from TMI back to Chris Chan. The Chandlers have poor eye sight and are fairly unobservant. Something that is dark and that ranges in size from a grain of sand to a quarter of the size of a pebble is likely to go unobserved in 14bc. Top that off with the plentiful animal prey (Chandler Cats, Dogs, Stray Cats, and possible rodents) they wouldn't likely receive very many bites. Also there are many areas of 14bc that is used as storage that hide flea predators like Spiders and ants as well as the Hoard itself creating unfavorable conditions for fleas to multiply in, and its likely they move around unnoticed. Additionally, Virginia isn't the Deep South, and winter does come by to do its work in killing off fleas depending on what the indoor heating conditions are like. It's important to think of 14 Branchland Court not as a home but an ecosystem at this point, with all manners of bugs, animals, bacteria, fungus and shaded areas.
I suppose an argument could be made that the house should be ridden due to the animals, but with stray animals (including rats where rat shit has been seen before I believe at the rental home which was an upgrade) coming and going, with natural predators lurking everywhere and with Chris' and Barb's obliviousness, it can at least be inferred that the population is under some sort of natural control that a careless middle class suburbanite with 1 dog in a decent home wouldn't have. There are also other weird things with flies, like how they hate certain pleasant scents such as lavender, mint, cedarwood, rosemary, citrus and eucalyptus as well, I think there is a reason Bob got bit really bad and not Barb or Chris Chan trooning out. Most women have pleasant, scented soaps, body lotion and shampoo that fleas find disgusting. They'll still bite if desperate regardless but they'd rather not whereas most men don't use those kinds of products.
As for the Scabies thing, it's confirmed here:
https://sonichu.com/cwcki/Barbara_Chandler#.22Holey_buttocks.22
On October 14, 2013, Chris elaborated in a Facebook post, stating, "my mother stresses me with her continuous rants about her damn miniature scabie flies, her suffering, the
low finances and shit!!!"
Apologies for the Autistic explanation and personal story, but I felt it necessary to kind of detail the weird behaviour of fleas in relation to humans.
Scabies would be horrendous for them because they are microscopic and infest every piece of fabric. Chris has never seemed itchy as hell and there's no way he could avoid contracting them because all you have to do is hug someone or sit on a chair they've used in the past week to catch them.
I've suspected bed bugs could be there, but you really notice those evil fuckers. They can go months without a single meal and still be there. You have to raise the entire houses temperature to like 140° for an extended period and if they're in the walls forget about it. (Interesting fact: they were originally a mite that infested bats. Places with bat colonies are notorious for having them still)
I think the best candidate is a simple flea problem. In the Old South, even a perfectly clean home with no pets can have an issue if near patches of woods and there's a population boom that season.
I believe that Chris is more health conscious than many would like to believe. Not in a preventive, hygienic sense but in a "what can I buy to get rid of this" kind of sense. I imagine they spend good money on healthcare or exterminators every year or 2. Not that they get check ups but on an Emergency level.
As for scabies, I believe it's similar to the flea situation where Barb isn't the preferred target of the mites. I don't know enough about scabies to be honest to guess why Chris didn't get them.
As for Bed Bugs, they're a bit of a meme concern in my opinion. They're the Nuclear ICBM of the bug world that everyone is afraid of. Anytime someone gets bug bites at home, Bed Bugs are the suspect. People are so concerned about Bed Bugs that in my personal experience, they're equivalent to folklore. I saw a Bed Bug once in a basement bedroom I was renting from many years ago, caught in a spider's web and my landlady freaked the fuck out even though nothing resulted from it. While they are the devil itself, they're either overly looked out for in polite society that they're very rare or they exist in bubbles in areas and are not really as widespread as believed.
The only times I've heard of bedbug infestations is from third-worlders or poorer people renting cheap motels in 3rd world countries and bringing it back home. It's not really something that Chris Chan who never travels nor invites vagrants back, nor visits cheap illegal immigrant prostitutes is really going to have in his house. I could be wrong, maybe you can enlighten me. If someone got bug bites, I'd suspect more so anything but bed bugs.
