Periodically, the furnace of hell sends up sentinels so tiny, they’d easily be missed by the naked eye. They come up into the backyard chicken coop, completely undetectable, until it’s time to collect the eggs. You grab the eggs and begin walking to the back door of the house to pop them inside. You feel a slight tickle, the whisper of an itch on your inner forearm, and glance down.
Horror greets your eyes: hundreds of tiny grey specks, each less than a millimetre in size, swarm over your arm.
Shrieking, you drop the eggs and begin to brush and claw at your arm. Suddenly, they’re in your clothes, your hair. You strip naked right there in the backyard and begin dousing yourself with ice-cold water from the outdoor hose. As you stand there dripping, you must make a time-sensitive choice: burn your clothes or treat the chickens. The next move is up to you.
Sound like a choose your own adventure horror film? Perhaps a tad dramatic but the tiny mites are nothing to sniff at (sniffing them would be a very bad idea). Apart from being an absolute nightmare to get rid of (for the love of god, don’t let them enter the threshold of your house!), they also pose a risk of transmitting zoonotic diseases such as murine typhus (Rickettsia typhi) and Q fever (Coxiella burnetii). Mostly though, they are simply an irritation but surprisingly easy to treat without pesticides.
Bird mites are arachnids, meaning they have eight legs, not six like insects, although the larval forms have six legs because nature loves to throw us taxonomists a curveball. Probably the most common species invading our Australian backyard coops is Ornithonyssus bursa, aka the tropical fowl mite or starling mite1.
And wild birds intermingling with our chooks in and around their coops is likely how these infestations begin: a really badly wrapped gift from someone who wasn’t invited to the party, but saw the snacks and decided to crash anyway. Sometimes, these pesky, introduced birds bring their shitty gifts to a human party and decide to stay.
That’s exactly what happened in Corrimal in 1996 when starlings made a cosy nest in a roof cavity of a home2. The chicks left the nest and just like teenagers, they also left behind their junk (i.e. the mites). The humans awoke covered in mite bites and feeling their skin crawl, which, by the way, is delightfully called formication. Who knew that all that stands between conjugal fun and a literal nightmare is a single hump… as in the letter n? The letter m has two humps… get it? Anyone?
Juvenile humour aside, this Wollongong report from the 90s is the tip of the iceberg, since these occurrences are rarely reported. And although you’d be forgiven for putting the incident down to 90s devilry, these guys are a common occurrence in my backyard chicken coop during the warm humid weather of late spring and throughout summer. Unlike in that case in the 90s though, I do not douse myself and my home in poisonous insecticides. And I don’t burn my clothes, although that detail is the player's choice.
I use diatomaceous earth to dust the chickens thoroughly, as well as their coop after cleaning out the infested material. I hot wash any clothing that’s been in contact and take a hot shower. I repeat this in a week as necessary. Except the shower, that’s daily for your own reference. Diatomaceous earth desiccates or dries out the mites, which is an arthropod's worst nightmare. I like using it because it's naturally occurring, non-toxic (it’s actually edible) and cheap. It is finely crushed siliconised fossil algae. There are a whole bunch of options online or at the local feed supplies store for surface sprays and powders to treat the issue. And if you have chickens, it’s a necessity to have on hand for such occasions.
So, although the sight of those minute demons may induce immediate panic, as you stand there nude and dripping, the neighbours watching on with amusement, remember that you have a trump card. You know their kryptonite: anything that will dry them out, even crushed-up edible fossil sand.
References
1. Doggett S, Geary M. Human infestation with birds mites in Wollongong. Commun Dis Intell Q Rep. 2003;27(3):394-5. PMID: 14510070.
2. Watson CR. Human infestation with bird mites in Wollongong. Commun Dis Intell Q Rep. 2003;27(2):259-61. PMID: 12926740.
