We stayed Wednesday night in a hotel where my bf and I got eaten alive while sleeping. I figured maybe there was a mosquito in the room.

...Until we woke up with more bites in another hotel an hour away from the first. So whatever it is has gotten into our luggage. They may be whatever bastards were on my laptop when I started it up - in the first two minutes, three crawled onto my monitor. They're about the size of a flea, and look like an ant with silver wings, or a gnat with an ants body.

We got no bites while driving in the car. The bites don't seem to be limited to any part of the body.

The itching is worse than a mosquito bite, if that helps to identify them. I don't think it's bedbugs - our bites don't look like bedbug bites, and I GISed bed bugs, and I haven't seen anything like that. I almost think they're the fly-like things that swarmed us on the beach when we got up for a sunrise in Stuart, FL (right now, we're in Marathon - 5 hours away), which also bit. My bf has a line of bites along where his sandal straps were from those things. When they bit me, they itched for a while, and then went away completely.

I'd like to know what they are so how best to kill them in the items we can't wash so well: laptop bag, camera bag, pillow

I'll get a picture if I can.

[Edited on August 17, 2007 at 9:58 AM. Reason : sea]

8/17/2007 9:54:03 AM

no see'ums

8/17/2007 9:58:15 AM

As far as I can tell, that refers either to chiggers or sand fleas. These things have wings, so I don't think they're sand fleas, but the bites look almost identical to the bites google shows as sand flea bites.

8/17/2007 10:03:11 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_flies

8/17/2007 10:45:44 AM

sand fleas are those little crab things that live in the sand. there is no way that critter is biting you.


chiggers (red bugs) are little teeny tiny and don't look like ants at all.


sand flies are more likely the culprit, as mentioned above.

8/17/2007 10:50:27 AM

scabies?

8/17/2007 8:47:31 PM

not lupus

8/17/2007 8:50:21 PM

^^haha. sounds like it to me.

8/17/2007 10:23:55 PM