Head Lice

The kids have all gone back to school and with that comes close contact with others bringing colds and parasites. Yep! September is Head Lice Prevention month.

We've already taken a hit with our first grader so her preschooler brother got it too. The buzz cut took care of his but hers is another story.

When my girls were little, they got it too. The oldest only once. That was my first experience. I was furious about bugs being on my child. I had no treatment for it and no experience with it. I don't recall me or my sisters ever getting it.

I washed her hair with Head & Shoulders shampoo, leaving it in fully thickly lathered for 10 minutes. I rinsed her hair and took the cat's flea comb and went through every single strand of hair. That got it all and she never had it again.

My second daughter got it from both school and day care. We used an over the counter shampoo that I cannot remember the name of, but I never see it anymore either. It's a shame because 1 treatment is all it took. Today's products aren't as good. I, personally, don't know anyone who had used RID and didn't have the lice come back.

We bought this from Walgreen's. The ratings are high and so are our hopes! I would have thought the chemicals in the pool would have killed them on my granddaughter but they didn't. They kill every other bug that gets in the pool.

For more information on head lice and treatment, go to www.headlice.org. Make sure you read all the FAQ.

Some very old-fashioned head lice treatments are:

1. To saturate your child's hair with kerosene and put the child in an empty tub for 10 minutes (a safe place). Then shampoo and comb out.

2. Saturate your hair with mayonnaise; cover the hair with plastic so the mayo doesn't "dry". Comb each strand of hair with a nit comb. Wash thoroughly. Today you can accomplish near the same with a thick coating of hair conditioner. This loosens the nits from the hair and enables you to more thoroughly comb them out.

3. I found this one on yahoo answers:

Homemade Head Lice Shampoo

2 tablespoons Tea Tree Oil

6 ounces Dawn Dish Liquid (Dawn ONLY)

2 ounces white vinegar

Mix the ingredients in a large squeeze bottle, such as an empty dish soap bottle. Use as regular shampoo, leave in hair for 5 minutes before rinsing. Use hair conditioner to detangle hair before combing with a lice-comb.

•Put on clean clothing after treatment.

•Comb dead and any live lice out of the hair.

•Use a Head Lice and nit Comb to remove nits and lice from the hair.

•Check and comb, and remove nits and lice from the hair every 2-3 days.

•Repeat the treatment within 7 to 10 days.

•Recheck for 2 to 3 weeks until all lice and nits are gone.

4. Essential Oil in a Carrier Oil

Essential oils effectively kill head lice, but they are very potent and should not be used undiluted on the skin or scalp. Dilute essential oils in a carrier oil such as olive oil. Two essential oils that work best for head lice are neem oil, which comes from the neem tree that grows in India, and tea tree oil, that comes from a tree native to Australia. Both are available at health food or natural food stores.

Add one teaspoon of neem oil or tea tree oil to a cup of carrier oil and mix thoroughly. Coat the hair and scalp with the oil, cover with a shower cap or plastic wrap and leave on for 2-3 hours. Then wash the hair with shampoo. While it is still wet, comb the hair thoroughly with a fine-toothed metal lice comb or flea comb to remove the nits and dead lice.

5. Vinegar and Listerine

Wet the hair thoroughly with white vinegar, cover with a shower cap, and leave on for 1-2 hours. Rinse with warm water, and then saturate the hair with Listerine mouth wash. Cover and leave on for an additional 1-2 hours. Then wash with shampoo and comb out with a lice comb. This treatment can be combined with the oil or mayonnaise treatments for particularly bad cases of head lice.

6. Lice are believed by some to be repelled by Coconut. You can try using a coconut scented shampoo.

*some of these remedies were found on associated content.

Waiting for the Sand Man

My husband is out-of-town and this is the second night in a row the sand man has passed me by. So, I'm looking for a lullaby..... Blind Boys, please sing me to sleep!

Jigsaw Sunday

School has started and summer is winding down. For my grandchildren, it is necessary to take life into a different direction other than playing in the park and swimming in the pool. If I don't, the winter months will be more difficult than they have to be. Heading off that cabin fever by introducing indoor activity is a necessity. At (almost) 4 and 6 1/2, jigsaw seemed the way to go (after an hour in the pool). Let's just make it a Spongebob Sunday!

Notice how the leaves are falling onto the deck. It's starting to look like fall and they can't wait for apple season and halloween and Thanksgiving!

The American Alligator by Mason Nieman

I am very pleased to share this guest post with my readers. Mason Nieman is a young man who has a love for alligators and knows quite a lot about them. I am honored that he is willing to share his knowledge with us.


The photo below was recently taken of Mason with some of his gator friends. I understand that one or two took a smack to the nose to insure they kept their distance. Mason is obviously a courageous fellow. I sure wouldn't do it.

Mason is sharing the following with us:

The American alligator is a reptile that belongs to the group of reptiles known as crocodilians.

They eat a variety of things. While they are babies they eat mostly small insects, small fish, and small invertebrates.

As they get bigger they eat larger prey like turtles, birds, deer, snakes, even bears, panthers, and sometimes cows to even the occasional person.

They live in slow moving streams, creeks, wetlands, lakes, ponds, marshes and sometimes in the ocean and in canals and rivers and sometimes even in our backyards.

When they are babies, they are no more than a foot long but they grow bigger with the females reaching about 10 feet long and males anywhere from 14 to 20 feet long.

They rarely attack humans unless provoked or if a female is defending her nest.  The everglades is probably the only place you will see alligators and crocodiles living together. They live in many states from Florida and Georgia to the Carolinas, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and sometimes in Mexico and South America. Alligators communicate in many ways. They hiss if they're irritated and bellow in the mating season to attract mates.

If you are to be attacked by an alligator, pray it doesn't have a good grip on you but here are ways to get out of an attack. If your arm is stuck inside its mouth, find the tongue and dislodge it if you can. It will take on water and should let go because it may drown or you can jab it in the eyes as hard as you can and it should let go.

White Alligators

Albino Gator with pink eyes

There are two types: albino and leucistic. The obvious way to tell them apart is the eye. The albinos have pink eyes while the leucistics have blue eyes.  Another way is the the skin. Albinos have no pigment while leucistics do. Also, the leucistic animal is basically a regular american alligator with white skin and blue eyes and they are stronger than albinos.

leucistic white gator with blue eyes

Chinese Gator

The chinese alligator is the american alligator's cousin and as its name implies, although it only lives in china in the yangtze river. It grows only to 6 feet at most. They burrow in caves. American alligators will do this often when it gets too cold and they are also known as keeper of the wetlands because when it gets dry they make gator holes. Other animals benefit from them as well as the alligator. The american alligator can jump for every foot that it is long; so a 12 foot alligator can jump 12 feet out of the water.

Thank you, Mason, for sharing your pictures, knowledge and enthusiasm!

Outdoor Creatures

While camping near the ocean on the Alabama/Florida coast, we had some interesting encounters with nature.

Rattle snake a camper found underneath his RV

A blue crab a teenager captured off the boat docks

Does This Look Dark Blonde To You?

 

What a mistake! It's no different than "light" brown! My husband hates it. I was advised to use baby shampoo to make it fade. I hope it works!