HARVEST MITES

Small in stature, but around late summer these cause untold misery for cats, dogs and humans.
Most people in the South Lakes will be familiar with these little creatures.  They are bright orange, just visable to the naked eye and are often found as clusters in the animal's paws, although they can attach themselves to any part of the body.
In humans, they show a predilection for areas where clothing is tight - especially underwear.
They go by many different names, chiggers, berry bugs, harvest bugs and some others that are less polite, but sum up the problems they cause. 
Harvest mites (Neotrombicula autumnalis) are invertebrates that are closely related to ticks and spiders.  Like ticks they have several stages to their life cycle; passing from egg, to larva, through nymph before becoming the adult.  Most of these stages occur in vegetation but it is only the larval form that bites us.
They are active from late July to mid September and will crawl onto any warm-blooded animal, bite and take a feed.  Once full, they fall off and complete their life cycle.
One of the most peculiar things about the mites is how localised they are.  I have been told that Windermere hardly suffers from them; where Kirkby Lonsdale is particulary bad.  Further afield, Derbyshire has none but East Anglis most certainly does.  We assume this is due to certain types of plants that the adults live on, as sometimes one garden in a village is the only one affected.
When they bite, they, like all blood suckers, secrete a substance into the host's body to stop clotting.  It is this saliva that causes us to itch.  In addition, the areas around the mite's mouthparts form a small tube - which can occasionally be seen on our skin as a little dot in a raised red lump.
Itchy as we find them, there are some dogs, but more particularly in cats that really suffer.  Some groom so hard as to damage their skin and lose weight from the frantic scratching or grooming.  Treatment is difficult, but one of the few effective products in Frontline Spray, although this may need repeating as it does not last very long.  In extreme cases we have to give the animals steriod injections to stop them scratching.