What are your LEAST FAVORITE outdoor pests?

[Elleth]

... and how do you deal?

My top contender has got to be blackfiies. Somehow they're worse even than mosquitoes. They just hover in a great big clouds around your face, and when they bite it stings.
... then the bites instead of being itchy pink bumps are tight bloody pimple things that are prone to scar. They're the worst things I've ever come across, but at least they're only around for a month or so: the first real heat of summer tends to burn them off and then we only (only) have mosquitoes and ticks.

I do (modern) mosquito head nets and thick clothes and Off, or (period) linen scarves (sometimes cheating with Off residue on them) and just picking my times and places.

What about you guys?

[Erfaron]

Mosquitoes 100%, I can deal with no see um. But you get back from a day in the woods and are covered in mosquito bites, no thanks

[Harper]

Ticks.

I've had too many family members, neighbors and friends who have gotten Lymes.

Some nearly died.

[Eofor]

Due to the sheer terror factor I have to nominate this bastard of a thing.



After that, other humans and leeches (I itch for weeks after a leech bite)

[Elleth]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

[Yavion]

At this point, Tics. I'm originally from the Pacific NW in the US. Mosquitos were really the main outdoor pest out there. I've moved to a region of the US where they have tic warnings at playgrounds. *Shudder* yuck.

[Tom_Ranger]

When it comes to pest, there is one terror to freeze your soul. Chiggers.

I wanted to die exactly twice in my life, and both times was because I had a bad case of "Chiggers". Once when I was a kid at summer camp, and once as an adult in the Ozarks.

Best defense is to
1. Avoid tall grass
2. Wear long pants and high boots. and long sleeves
3. Use a sulfur bag to dust the lower part of your clothes to defend against them.
4. Never wear the same clothes twice. When you take them off, wash them immediately.
5. Take a good shower and a bath to clean yourself up.
6. Never run out of Chigger medications (feels like squirting super glue on open wound), believe me that is the only relief you will get and it's prefered over the itching.

Hopefully none of you get it. Scabies is very similar. I don't think the scabies are as intense, but they can last for years. Chiggers are very intense, but a week is about it.

[Iodo]

I think I can only give one answer to this, the Scottish midge

everything else in the UK is just meh... mosquitoes are annoying but I can live with them because they come in small numbers (relatively speaking), and yeah ticks are a bit of a problem (more so in Scotland at the moment because the deer population is way overinflated because no one was able to go to game reserves to shoot for two years because of the plague), but the biggest problem with midges is they come in such quantity that they slowly eat you alive while driving you insane

the only solution is to only visit Scotland from October through to May, when the midges aren't out

[Jack]

Part of me hesitates to call any creature within the scope of its own habitat a "pest" but the rest of me hopes there's a special circle in hell specifically for ticks that manage to make it all the way up to nooks and crannies best left unspoken in polite society.
DEET and Permethrin (the latter sounds kind of like a Sindarin word doesn't it?) work well enough but obviously aren't lore/period correct.
I haven't experimented with leg wraps for this specific purpose yet but considering how well tucking pants into socks and wearing gaiters works I cant imagine leg wraps being any less effective if not better.

[Elleth]

I have played with winningas / puttees a bit - provided your boots are still high enough they're covered well, they work just fine.

... the issue I have is the little guys making it over my farm boots, up my trousers, then under my top. Ugh.

[Tom_Ranger]

... the issue I have is the little guys making it over my farm boots, up my trousers, then under my top. Ugh.

The solution to that is a sulfur bag. Small cloth bag with sulfur in it you tap against your boots and lower trousers and it leaves a fine dust on you that many pest just don't like. You can't buy one; you have to buy some sulfur and make the bag (a baby sock will work).

[Togon]

Due to the sheer terror factor I have to nominate this bastard of a thing.



After that, other humans and leeches (I itch for weeks after a leech bite)

Are you in Mirkwood or did you try infiltrating Cirith Ungol? You could keep it! Got chased by one of these little buggers in 29 Palms. They don't like red light!
Oh.... Those fangs... Thats a funnel web or a mouse spider, isn't it? .....I'm out. I'd rather take camel spiders.

Mine are ticks. And they're everywhere. I've pulled dozens off of dogs in my day job. And they're aggressive! Found one trying to bite through my linen trousers. I will not skimp out on DEET. Eru Iluvatar forbid I bring some home to the Halflings.

[Greg]

...the rest of me hopes there's a special circle in hell specifically for ticks that manage to make it all the way up to nooks and crannies best left unspoken in polite society.

HEAR HEAR!

My biggest annoyance is definitely anything that makes it difficult to sleep in the Wilds at night. If it's flying around my face, and trying to fly up my ear canals or biting while I'm sleeping, I begin dreaming of Deep and Napalm. Not necessarily in that order.

[ForgeCorvus]

You lot get Thunder bugs over there? They don't bite, they don't sting are the single most annoying critter out there..... And they're small enough to get into everything