Nitz and Natz

Guess what I'm looking for.
LICE!
I got a call today from the school that Kieran had head lice.
In any case it's not such a big deal
There's a few other kids in the class with head lice.

After I picked him up, we went to the drugstore to get the lice shampoo.  You put it in the hair dry for 10 mins.  Then you add some water and lather it up.

Then comes the tedious part.  The kit comes with a fine tooth comb.  And basically you search the eggs that are attached to the hair.  The instructions say to comb the dead lice and eggs out with the comb, but it didn't seem like it was doing a very good job, so I started plucking the hair out.

I got Kieran to sit down for about an hour while I combed thru his hair looking for white things stuck to his hair strands.  I felt like one of those colourful baboons picking bugs out of each other's fur.  Except I wasn't eating them after for protein.  I think those strands I pulled out with those things on it are the nits or the eggs of the critters.  They actually don't come out with the comb.  The shampoo contains insecticide so it'll kill the live lice, but the eggs sometimes survive.  So that's when the baboon technique come into effect.  The better baboon you are the higher the success rate.

Kieran sat there like a good boy letting me tear out his nice hair, strand by strand.  So I gave him a gelato cup for being patient.

Next thing to do is check Tresa's hair.
If I have it, I'll buzz my hair off.  It's summer time, I don't care.  It'll grow back.

Update.
Guess what.
Tresa has it too.  I showed Tresa what to look for so she can check my hair.
So far.  Either it's because I've because I've been really sick or they don't like 100% Filipino hair.   Must be all the swimming I've been doing.  My hair is like a wire brush from the chlorine.  It feels like I can clean our BBQ grill with it.  Ah...it's not that bad.  I have thick hair.  No bald spots!  Tresa and Kieran have finer hair than I do.

It's like the lawn.  If it's nice and thick, bugs and weeds have a harder time penetrating it.   I want my lawn to be like my hair.  Except not so high up on my forehead.


We had this lady from Lice Squad come over and do our hair.  She did me first.
Yep...I was clear.
Tresa was pretty good too.  Just empty casings.  Meaning the bugs were gone and moved on.  Either something she is using in her hair killed them.  Maybe my hair killed them?  She said men rarely get them.  Unless you are a Rastafarian.  Then you have a whole ecosystem living in there.
Kieran had the most.  She spent the most time on him.  She showed us what to do.  She also agreed the comb that comes with the shampoo kits, are useless.

Olive oil with a shower cap is apparently good at killing the bugs,  the oil apparently suffocates them.  What if I keep them under chlorinated water for 30mins?  That's how long I usually spend doing lengths.

If you've never seen what common lice are like or what you would expect to encounter, google it.  It'll scare you, but the lice you'll encounter are the size of a pin head.  Not the monster ones.
I think my cousin should write a movie screener on head lice!