Hike with Kevlar Pants: A horror story about hiking in Missouri

Summary: If you ever going hiking in Missouri, I suggest kevlar pants.

Lisa (my wife) and I had been wanting to go hiking, so she bought a book of trails in Missouri. Missouri being the flat place that it is, we opted for something 2 hours away so as to get something approaching a hill involved, rather than just walking through fields.

We chose a gorgeous day--sunny and clear, high scheduled to be in the low 80s, with relatively low humidity. Still, I anticipated sweating, and so we both wore shorts.

The park we visited was very empty...only one other car was there when we arrived around noon. Walking along the path (a slightly-beaten trail through tall grasses) it quickly became apparent that we were the first to hike the trail, at least for the day, because of the large number of spider webs we walked through. I don't like spiders. Apparently my phobia is wearing off on Lisa to, because we both frequently and spastically slapped at our faces to get the cobwebs off and did the spinning "is there anything on me?" dance.

It wasn't quite swampy where we were walking, but we were right next to a stream, and the bugs were rather frustrating. Lots of butterflies (nice) but also normal flies and high-speed large bees.

Stopping at one of the creek overlooks (we were on a bank 5 feet above the river) Lisa suddenly and quickly trotted back to the path and half-pulled me saying "you want to get out of there". Apparently (though I didn't go back to check) there was a large fleshy black spider almost the size of Lisa's fist right by my leg. *shuddeR*

We continued on, and at one point I was rammed from behind by Lisa who was accelerating through me to get away from the large snake she saw. Yup, right next to the path was a 4-5 foot snake, 1"+ in diameter. Brown. Didn't really look poisonous, but I didn't inspect too closely.

We walked close together from then on, and soon the nettles started. The path at this point pretty much wasn't. The trained human brain could discern the presence of a path by the slightly reduced vegetation, but the plants held no respect for this work of man.

Nettles. Shorts. Stinging. Burning. Itching. Insanity.

I pulled up my socks, we poured water over our legs (and one of my arms) in an attempt to stop the madness, and crashed on through the field, me half-cursing, half-screaming about the fire which was my legs. I picked up a stick and started beating our way through.

Finally the trail took the promised turn up a hill and it started getting rockier and more open. The insects lessened. The burrs increased. Little green spheres which stuck to my socks and leg hairs, and the flat triangular burrs which grab so well entire stalks, stems and all, were being ripped from the host plant and sticking to my legs.

The spiderwebs continued to block our path so at this point I got a longer stick and started using it to clear the path ahead of us. (In the end, I think my arms got more of a workout than my legs.)

The path topped out on the hill with a nice view over the wooded valley. Lisa and I sat on some rocks and ate our packed lunch. It was nice! It was...well, almost worth it.

 

I'm not done. We still had to go down.

So down we went, and discovered that Missouri has cute *little* lizards. Cute little lizards that rush through the leaves and pretend to be snakes. Cute bastards.

A few spiderwebs continued to escape my SDI (Stick Defense Initiative) and cause repeated self-flagellation. And the burrs increased in number, though at this point it was rather welcome...the more things I had sticking to my legs, the less I worried whether things touching me were spiders. (I was so coated with annoying touches what did it matter if one or two happened to be alive.)

Friends and neighbors, it was then that I stepped next to the rattlesnake.

I didn't recognize the buzzing at first. I looked next to the path to see what it was and only saw a fast-fluttering butterfly. Except it was too fast to be a butterfly, too noisy. You know how sometimes leaves get caught in the breeze with mechanical resonance and freakily waver on an otherwise calm day? Maybe that's what it is. Except it's too violent.

All the above I thought in an instant until Lisa said "rattlesnake" and we both leaped back the path. (Though I didn't come to the conclusion first, I'd like to believe I was about to, and would have before I was bitten.) This is when I wished I had kevlar pants. To walk up to the snake and say "I DARE YOU! BITE A ROCK!" *sigh*

I saw the snake flash across the path and away into the woods (it was only a few feet long and it was black...how bizarre) and after repeatedly convincing Lisa that I really did see it leave and wasn't just lying to make her feel better, we continued on. Through the spiderwebs and the burrs.

Finally we got back to the car. We both spent a while picking burrs off our shoes, socks (and me off my legs). I eventually got frustrated and just pulled off my socks. My feet were covered with little dots of burr spores that itched and wouldn't come off well. I brushed off what I could and we decided to drive back home.

...

I'm not done yet.

After we got home, I started working at the computer. My legs itched, and I wanted to take a shower, but I first I wanted to identify the snakes we had seen. As I worked (and still haven't found either to my satisfaction) I kept scratching my legs. I suddenly had an all-too-familiar realization, having grown up in Bryn Athyn. I knew that tickling feeling. That persistent, slow path of hairs, a slight rustle that wouldn't go away with repeated brushings.

Close inspection revealed (yes) a tick. A SMALLLLLL tick. So small lowercase doesn't do it justice. Tinier than a deer tick. As tiny as the period at the end of this sentence (and perhaps smaller, depending on your monitor resolution.)

And then the horrible realization.

The brown dots, the ones COVERING my feet? Ticks.

The dots all over my legs, crawling up? Ticks.

I showed Lisa. I discovered one of the tiny buggers on her shoulder. We said "ooouuuuugh!"

We showered. HOT. Shampoo. Apricot Facial Scrub dispensed freely and scrubbing skin like people...well, like people attempting to remove the infestation of perhaps a hundred ticks almost too small to see.

We showered more. And scrubbed more. Soap. Backbrush. OW, hot water burns the new skin.

Lisa said we should go do a thorough inspection afterwards. At first I thought she was joking but as near the end of the shower I found another one on my foot despite the scrubbing, I decided she had a point. So on went all the lights possible, and close inspection revealed: one on her ankle. Two between the toes. Another on the shin. And I was just getting started.

In the end, we both pulled (yes, pulled, because many had started to bite in) about 10-15 more each off the other. We dumped our socks into scalding water (and without turning the socks our looking hard I later counted around 30 floating on the surface) and gathered every piece of cloth (clothes, bathmat, towels to dry off, bedsheets for inspection) we had touched since coming home and threw it in the washer on hot.

We put our shoes and the backpack back in the car and set off an insect defogger in there.

I tried to keep one of them alive for torturnin' and questioning, but after being sandwiched in the sticky parts of two post-it notes and blinded by the scanner twice, he took a cyanide pill and let his little legs curl up under him.

 

What have I learned? I learned that all ticks go through a life cycle where, after hatching, they only have 6 legs (and are called 'seed ticks'), which is what we gave a ride across Missouri. That ticks supposedly take a day or two to insert their feeding tube, and that before that disease infection is unlikely.

And that one should wear kevlar pants (and possibly wrap their body in Saran Wrap) before going hiking in Missouri.