The World Is Crawling

Before coming to Chile I heard lots of advice on how to the avoid fleas, but I never imagined how hard it would be! Fleas are everywhere, even more so now that spring has sprung. I think its the climate here, or maybe the quantity of stray animals, either way, there are so many fleas that many of the locals barely even notice them; they have developed a tollerance. But me? In Idaho fleas are rare. Ive never been exposed to them, and for that reason I am allergic. The red bites are surrounded by red bumps that are pure allergic reaction and i can not help but scratch them. I sometimes wake up with blood under my fingernails from scratching them in my sleep. Some of the bites I have had for a month and they still itch!!!

At first I thought if I never pet dogs, I wont get fleas (which proved to be hard because I love dogs) but that didnt even work. The first fleas I got jumped off a street dog that bit my leg (not very hard though, I think he was just drunk because he was fighting in front of a night club). Then the fleas jumped from my pant leg to my bed where they continued to chew me up for about a week. Finally i got rid of them, but yesterday i found yet another flea bite on my leg!! Someone explained to me that fleas live in taxis (colectivos) also, and i take the colectivo all the time! Also if you sit next to someone with fleas on the bus the fleas can jump on to you there also.

Since its nearly impossible to avoid fleas, I think i will just have to learn to live with the occasional bite and make my new best friend the flea bite cream.