The terror of dust mites

(and don't be shocked, so many little creatures live in your house)

For about two years now, I have had a dust mite allergy. I can tell you: it’s crap. Literally and figuratively. It comes down to the fact that you are allergic to -pardon my French- the poop of those creatures. Or little creatures I should say, because those fuckers are about 0.1 to 0.66 millimeters big, making them invisible to the naked eye.

They particularly enjoy dropping little poops in your mattress (HELP), on your duvet, in your pillow, and in all other places that are nice and warm and cozy. Seriously, I can barely handle typing this. Then those droppings get airborne with the slightest movement, which you and I breathe in, and so they can cause allergic reactions in some people. I personally get a huge red runny nose, the urge to scratch my eyeball out, and sneezing fits that could knock over an average toddler.

Look, the dust mite is an unwanted friend that gives us the creeps, you get it, I get it. But there’s also something mysterious about it, and here come my sadistic self-torturing tendencies to look up all sorts of facts about my enemy. Warning: just click now As I announced recently, I am working on The Great I'm-Going-On-Vacation-Plan. The weeks are flying by and on the 21st of November, I will really be in the… if you’re not in the mood for disgusting trivia.

Are you still there? Okay. That little pest of a dust mite is actually a relative of the spider and whitish in color. And it has eight hairy legs. It gets worse. A mattress can host up to 1 million dust mites. Technically, we are just sleeping on a graveyard of hundreds of thousands of dead or possibly living insects. At this point, I’m honestly starting to itch a bit. Now comes the worst part: they feed on human skin flakes. And on mold. And they also immediately devour the flakes from your pets. Okay, that’s it, jeeeezus I hear you thinking, stop it. Nobody wants this, not even you. Long story short: I am allergic to poop. To poop. If it weren’t so damn annoying, I would almost find it a good story.

P.S. Okay okay, soon I’ll have some tips to deal with dust mites less this winter, deal? Enough for today.

P.P.S. Last disgusting fun fact: aside from dust mites, there are about a hundred species of spiders, lice, mosquitoes, and beetles living in an average house in the Netherlands. I heard that on the radio yesterday. Cozy, right? YES YES OKAY SORRY I’M GOING BYE. SLEEP WELL TONIGHT.