The wonderful thing about nits and headlice is that they survive - wonderful for the nits that is. As long as even one person in the community has them, they will keep coming back. You send a nit free child to school, they come back not nit free.
And back they have come. So instead of shooting up north to visit family we are doing the nit check and annihilation procedure.
So far Dad has been pronounced clean, J and E show signs of having been got, and we don't know about M yet since she is checking everyone else, but no-one has checked her yet. M is more concerned than the rest of us, partly because she is Mum, and partly because she has long hair - no fun.
The joys of parenthood.
Meanwhile how about some fast facts:
- Head lice are parasitic insects found most commonly behind the ears and near the neckline at the back of the neck.
- The medical term for head lice infestation is Pediculus humanus capitis.
- The life cycle of the head louse has three stages: nit, nymph, and adult.
- The life cycle of a single louse from egg to egg is about 1 month.
- Head lice eggs are called nits.
- Nits take 6 - 9 days to hatch.
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1 comment:
I would like to correct NHS Direct who say that headlice walk and do not jump. They jump. I am (sorry to say) quite experienced in this matter and I have witnessed them jumping from a comb onto my hand, for example. Much too large a distance to be taken by a louse footstep one go. I don't know what evidence they have to say that they cannot jump. But I have the evidence of my own eyes on more than one occasion. Have you ever squished a largish one with the back of your fingernail? Oooh, bloody!
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