or maybe we have more germs/critters... when I was a kid, we always got this thing called "ground itch" or "sandworms", you could see the little worm track under the surface of your skin and the itch was maddening. I remember laying awake at night as a child with a bristle hairbrush scrubbing my feet raw they itched so bad. We had it all the time, and my mom had seven kids running barefoot everywhere so she would wait til we had it really really bad, just covered in it before she would take us to the doctor and he would spray some sort of freezing liquid on it to kill it.
now people just slightly younger than me have never heard of that. Know why? Its scarey for me to even think of, it was HOOKWORM larvae, entered the body, gestating. But hookworms were practically eradicated in north florida, maybe everywhere? I dont know, but they were eradicated here by this huge public health deal where they made us submit samples every few months at school, made us take meds, made us watch videos that were in spanish and subtitled in english, showing little mexican cartoon children walking barefoot to the outhouse in their sombreros and the little cartoon hookworm sneaking into the bare foot. I swear. How could I make something like this up... But places far north, or out west where the humidity is so much lower, places where the winters are way longer, well, we just have different critters. i remember in california when I first went there someone suggested we go camping on the river and swim, and I thought to myself, why dont we just stick needles in our own eyes, because to me, a camping trip on the river swamp was a sure guarantee of alligators and water moccosins and swimming in a river would be a 100% guarantee of ringworm and having your head shaved, because thats how I grew up... then i saw the rivers in california and went oh.my.gosh.... it was like in Bonanza :) I was thinking "Mississippi" muddy river or swampy fla river... Janice -- even good horses have bad days sometimes.
