Monday, April 27, 2009

Niguas / Shichas


(The following was written by my youngest daughter Jayde.
Let me just warn you that she is quite the character!)

Shichas. They are horrible little creatures, and I haven't the faintest idea why God invented them but He must have had a reason.

These little shichas were little tiny flea-like bugs that lived in dirt and would climb into your foot and make a nest of baby shichas IN YOUR FOOT. The only way to get rid of one, was to poke it out with a needle. This, as you can probably imagine, hurt. And the fact that I ran around bare-foot, made me come home with little nature presents in my feet nearly every day.

Mom was the shicha remover. She was the mom, thus, she had needles and therefore, was the one who dealt with the problem. She would await us in the room, like she wasn't happy to have the privilege of holding our jungle feet and picking disgusting shichas out of our foot. What an honor! I can't imagine why she wouldn't be thrilled...

It would start with HER. Spotting us limping as casually as we could manage, (which wasn't very discreet.) The shichas ITCHED LIKE YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE while they were in your foot. They squirmed around and built nests all inside your foot. So, trying to walk in a casual manner was NOT as easy as it may sound.

We weren't overjoyed to have someone pick at our feet. It hurt and tickled at the same time, if you can imagine that. Dad was the funniest whenever he had a shicha in his foot. It was family-time. We'd all gather around as Mom prepared the foot. She would place it on her lap, needle in hand, and one of us kids holding the Somergan lotion. Somergan would kill the little devil, hiding in our foot. Mostly what mom would do was poke a big hole and DOUSE the fellow with Somergan.

Dad would sit there. Holding on to something. Usually he clutched the chair so hard that we all feared it might fall apart.
"Ready?" Mom would ask.
"Uh-huh..."
"OOkaay.." And with that, she could pierce the needle into my Dad's foot and--
"YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! OUCH OUCH OUCH!" He would yelp, and he would move, and Mom had to point out that if he moved again, it would hurt him even more.

Dad sat still for maybe two more minutes as Mom poked and prodded around in his foot. If he had a nest in his foot this process could take hours. We would beg Mom to leave it alive.

We kids were evil to them. Once we took them out, we'd steal Mom's needle, the Somergan, the matches and begin the torture. We hated shichas. They made us look like idiots for scratching our feet during Sunday service. It was FINE if the Indians did it, but if we did it, Mom would take us out of church and home and then pick it out and we'd go back to church feeling relieved.

One night, we had an experiment. We wanted to see just how tough Demon, (that's what we named it) was. We filled a cup with water. He swam around. He was smaller than a flea. Then he JUMPED out of the cup and we dashed for him. We didn't want to kill it, because we weren't done playing with it yet. Josh finally caught him, digging into our cat's tail. The cat took care of it, and then my brother Josh pried it away from Maxine. He held it in a napkin.

Next we burned it. Over the gas stove, we speared it with the needle and roasted him like a marshmallow. Only...we didn't eat it.

We tried soaking it in a bowl of Somergan, and we tried to flush it down the toilet. The toilet worked, and we had to go to bed.

The next day, someone, I won't say who, used the restroom and ...well...we'll leave it at that.

We enjoyed shichas. Part of life. And we dealt with them appropriately and enthusiastically!

14 comments:

Ana D said...

Dear fellow mom,

My name is Ana and I recently created a blog for missionary and everyday moms called EVERYDAY M.MOMS, I would appreciate if you could come and visit us sometime.

Here's our link http://everydaymmoms.blogspot.com/

Happy weekend,

Ana~

MightyMom said...

awwww come on!!! spill the beans!!


WHO got shichas up thier butt???


I just gotta know! hahaha
what a story.

Happy Elf Mom (Christine) said...

YOWIE!! What awful stuff!

Liz said...

YIKES!

Betty said...

I think Jayde has to become a doctor or something like that. She enjoys describing the "torture" too much... :)
Great story. Makes it come so "alive" !

Joy said...

What a great story. I felt like I was there living thru the experience.
I got to go...my foot itches.


Joy

Kathy said...

EWWWW! That's one thing I am happy to read about and don't need to experience! :)

Unknown said...

Can I tell who got the shicha on their butt?? Pretty please!//
Good job Jayde! Your writing brought us all right into the story.

Grace S. Sanchez said...

Oh that is what those things are called! One time when we went to the jungle i had one of those but it didnt itch or anything for a while and i mean i had it there for like 2 months and i didnt even know cuz there was this lil spot and i thought it was just cuz i had jammed my foot on the door to my room. It was horrible once we found out it was there and getting it out! AWFUL! I think I was prolly kinda like your dad... It was very painful cuz i had to sit there for hours while my mom picked through my foot put ice on it and then went back to picking it was in pain for a long time but at least I didnt have that nasty stuff in my feet. Ow.
~Grace

Most Rev. Gregori said...

"The Family that gets 'Shichas' together, stays together", or something like that.

Gosh, my feet itch. lol

Thursday's Child said...

OK, maybe I shouldn't complain so much about sand. At least it's inanimate!

Anonymous said...

That's pretty horrible. We have red bugs in Georgia and they will bite you and get in your skin , and itch. But I don't think they have nests in people. That's like something out of a science fiction movie.

Unknown said...

What a story! I couldn´t stop reading, and I thought for sure the toilet would be the end of that vicious bug.
I must say I don´t think I would go barefoot!

Michelle D. Argyle said...

This is crazy! Ewww. But thanks for sharing, as always, so fascinating!