Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Won't Miss #444 - dani bugs

Obviously, this is a spider, not a dani bug. Strangely enough, they didn't feature animatronic dani bugs at the local tanabata festival. This was the closest I could come to a picture of an annoying insect that infests your living space and bites you.

When I was a kid, we had problems with certain types of insects, but never bed bugs or things that lived where we slept. Of course, it helps that my home culture didn't have a tradition of sleeping on the floor and that our floor wasn't made of straw. The creepy-crawlies creep and crawl less at higher spaces than lower ones, especially when you're talking about things which enjoy living in the flooring. In Japan, one of the things that loves to live in the traditional tatami mats is dani bugs. The dung (dust) from them causes allergic reactions and the bugs themselves can literally nip at your heels. They leave little red bites behind in pairs. Dani bugs are the reason why you see people beating the hell out of their futon and hanging them in the sun. One of the reasons that you have to vacuum (rather than simply sweep) tatami is to suck out these mites. They also require toxic sprays and bug bombs at regular intervals to keep them at bay.

I won't miss all of the activities that go along with keeping the dani bugs at bay.