Nothing To Report, But Mites Are Fun To Contemplate!

Here we are, more than halfway through January 2015 and there is so little to report on our sewer project! Sure, there is the County's Monthly Report, and the Recycled Water Report from Cleath-Harris, and you can see from a distance off Los Osos Valley Road the heavy equipment behind the cemetery doing something. It isn't time yet for the next "sewer tour" of the treatment plant's construction, and the pump houses look like more like cute, little cottages every week. I almost expect elves to pop out to fetch the mail. So.....idle minds, as mine has been, sometimes stray onto other topics.

The February 2015 edition of National Geographic has a head-turner mite article! Page-sized photographic blowups of these microscopic, horror movie stars, a dozen of which could polka on the head of a pin, are given true-life stories that will give you unpleasant dreams for weeks, possibly months! They are roaming the pores of your chins and noses as you read this, eating by day, and at night, they come out at night to....no, no—I can't really say what they do on a family sewer blog. 

They might be visually appealing if you like the rubbery tusk look with crusty skin, but frankly, by comparison, dog ticks are the adorable ones, the monster in the "Alien" movie series was a soigné dresser.

Don't you feel special now either! Mites live everywhere. Fruit bat eyeballs, stink bug glands, snake lungs, hummingbird nostrils, and those are just the places I'm willing to write about.

Anyway, if you want to see them, you can just Google "face mites." Or pick up a copy of National Geographic if you want a full-color, double paged spread, looking into a mite maw. 

But I digress. The point of all of this is the curious fact that these personal cranial travelers do not wee-wee or poo-poo! After an egg hatches, the baby mite will grow and molt, getting larger each time. Once adults, they live a few weeks, fill up with excreta and—croak! No exit holes for that stuff anywhere at all! These guys have no need for a sewer, just a proper burial! Think of that while you wash your face, sending millions of grossly stuffed mite corpses into the swirling stew of your septic tank below. (Burial at pee!) I have more I can say here, but I think I am done.


(Do not despair readers. I will make every effort to stay on topic next post.)