A man sought a cure for his nits;

They had caused him convulsions and fits.

But poison and potion

Applied with devotion

Just aggravated his zits.

Plonking it down onto a piece of art paper made the right background in terms of colour balance, but the louse was lost against the flatness and struggled to move. It did not look right. Then I remembered the clippings from the kids’ haircuts a few days earlier. We’d thrown them out into the garden. I don’t know, something to do with improving the tilth of the soil maybe. Anyway, the cuttings were still there and I rescued some sprigs, scattered them on the paper and released the louse.

The louse was very nimble on its claws.

It was remarkably active, considering it had not eaten for several hours; but I put this down to the fact that I had been keeping it in safe and humane conditions. It shot off across the strands at top speed. From memory, I’m guessing it moved at about 2 cm/sec. This was enough to make it quite interesting trying to get the thing in focus as I chased it back and forth across the jumbled strands. It also reminded me why head lice are so difficult to spot on a cursory examination of the dry scalp, and how easily they can scramble over from one victim to another.

What I had in my favour, though, was the fact that the head louse never once let go of the hairs. It ran backwards and forwards, up and down, left and right, exploring every inch of its manufactured backdrop, but it had nowhere else to go; it was trapped. Because, of course, for a louse, letting go is suicide.

Head lice are tiny compared to humans, they are perhaps one hundred millionth the size of their host. If they let go for an instant, they will get injured, or they will get lost. Either way, they will be dead. Head lice do not wander off across the pillow looking for another head to invade, nor do they sit on chair backs, or shoulders, hoping for another hairy human to stroll past so that they can scramble aboard. Within minutes they will start to cool down, and dehydrate. Their body movements will slow, their internal metabolism will start to fail and all the complex physiological workings of their bodies will start to corrupt. After a couple of hours away from its warm moist scalp home, the louse is beyond recovery; its legs may still twitch, but they are its last desperate gropings. No, if a louse lets go, it is as good as dead.

Crab louse, Pthirus pubis, the most embarrassing insect in the world.

On holiday visiting friends in the USA many years ago, my host suddenly appeared very agitated one morning and demanded, in a hushed whisper, something along the lines of “What are these?”, thrusting into my hand a strip of sellotape folded over onto itself. Stuck inside it were some minute grey insects about 2 mm long. My near eye-sight was better then and even without the use of a hand lens I could immediately see that they were crab lice. And, bluntly, I told him so. Oh dear. Never was there a blunter instrument used to deliver such a blow.

Unfortunately, in my objective scientific detachment I had forgotten a very important fact: in polite society, Pthirus pubis is perhaps the most embarrassing insect in the world. These are not nice lice. We don’t much like to talk about them. Incidentally, I like the fact that this beast’s name is coined from an ancient Greek word for louse ‘phtheir’. I don’t think it’s hard to guess how the Greeks came up with such a word. When said with a slight lisp and a nasal sneer it makes a suitably derisory sound, just right for such a revolting parasite — phtheir.

But from this same word we also get the wonderful-sounding job title phthirapterist — someone who studies lice. I always thought claiming to be an entomologist was a pretty cool ice-breaker at cocktail parties, but “Yeah, hi, I’m a…phthirapterist” is not to be sneered at, let alone lisped at.

Anyway, back to the USA and my embarrassed and appalled friend. I was later admonished; couldn’t I have at least said something neutral to him like: “Oh these are interesting, where did you find them?” or “Well, I’ll have to have a look through the lens and check a few reference books.” But, no, I came straight out with it: “You’ve got crabs”. Needless to say, this did not go down very well with his fiancée.

What followed was almighty bloody pandemonium. Beds were stripped, carpets, curtains and furniture were vacuumed, clothes were washed and all visitors were required to administer the appropriate amounts of insecticidal shampoo to nether and other regions of the body for prolonged periods. Come to think of it even the poor dog was probably shampooed too. All this despite my exasperated but quietly muttered protests about personal physical contact, casual sex and puritanical American prudery. We went through the polite motions of disinfection, even though I knew, all along, that it is usually intimate sexual activity that allows these lively critters to move around.

No matter what the graffiti says, on many a public lavatory wall, about standing on the seat, crabs cannot jump ten feet, not even one foot, they can’t jump at all, they crawl, and they’re very good at it. To anyone who’s ever seen a crab louse under the microscope, it’s patently obvious that their claws are perfectly adapted to clinging extremely tightly to their host, and that nothing could induce them to let go, until the precise moment of contact, when another host touches, and they can quickly shuffle across.

After my unnecessary bluntness earlier, I thought it better not to dwell on their precise mode of transmission. And despite the many myths surrounding these curious creatures I restrained my usual exuberant impulse to pontificate. So I let things lie. Or so I thought.

Personal embarrassment moved to farce a few days later. Louse episode put aside, ignored or forgotten, conversation in the car turned to my long-standing interest in insects, and the young son of our host innocently asked some question about how insects grew. I tried to explain how invertebrates moult, by shedding their skins. I started with the usual analogy of a medieval knight being constrained by tight and inflexible metal armour. He was quite absorbed in my description of how the insect’s chitinous armour has to be pulled off whilst a new tough hide is formed underneath and then hardens as the old shell is expelled. I started to take the whole exoskeleton thing personally. I did lots of actions as if I were climbing out from my own shrunken skin or badly fitting suit of armour. I threw in a couple of rusty codpiece jokes and vowed to beat my esquire severely for not helping me properly. I was really getting into my theatrical stride now.

This being a maritime state of the Union I then went on to give the example of edible crabs, knowing full well that everyone within hearing had cracked open their shells to eat crab-meat, and had found the moulted carapaces of shore crabs along the beach. With quite some relish I then moved on and went into the details of how to tell male from female crabs; different kinds of crab; crab behaviour and crab ecology; the biggest and the smallest crabs; land crabs and swimming crabs; fiddler crabs and crabs in other parts of the orchestra.

It was only later, much, much later, I discovered that my partner had been secretly hiding her head in her hands, slumped in the back seat of the car, willing me silently, but insistently, through her pleading but unanswered telepathy: “Don’t mention crabs. Don’t mention crabs. DON’T MENTION CRABS.”

Excitement mounts in this house — the nit proofs are here. A massive PDF file was waiting in my inbox Friday and I’ve just banged out hard copies on ‘fast draft’ mode from the printer. Here’s a smattering, as a taster.

They look very good, and I’m wandering round with a smug look on my face, trying to read out bits to my harassed family. But I must be calm. We’ve got to read through everything first; my red/ blue/ green/ black editing pen will get full use this week. Then we have to construct the contents and index, check the illustrations, fiddle with running heads, check the spellings of Latin names, in fact, go through everything with a fine-toothed comb.

In it, Justine asked how I study insects, expecting some state-of-the-art high-tech CSI-style equipment maybe; instead she found the answer pleasingly Victorian — basically, it’s just me and a big net. Don’t be surprised, therefore, to find that this is also our approach to writing a book.

We specifically had the kitchen floor done to cope with spread sheets.

Despite the prevalence of desktop publishing, email, spreadsheets and the supposedly paperless office, when writing a complicated book you just can’t beat the spread-it-out-on-the-floor technique. So this was us, just over a month ago, getting the pages in order.

They’ve been tweaked a tiny bit since then, but this was the decisive editing point that dictated the layout, the flow and, indeed, the overall style of the book. No on-screen cutting and pasting, no excel charts, no algorithmic jiggery-pokery; just jostling, shuffling and paper-pushing. Less is more.

Knits. By Kirsty Gordon

To me knitting is alchemy – coloured twine bewitched by clicking sticks into miraculous garments, blankets and toys. My mother was a fine knitter, my crusty sister Lummo knits too (albeit always from the same wool in a hedgerow brown that she bought as a job lot), as do the women in my partner’s family. In fact, the Arran cardi the mother-in-law made me actually stopped the traffic as I crossed the road on foot when one driver hung out of the window to ask me where it came from. But me? I just never got the hang of it.

But I’m genius at nit-checking. I don’t have talent for much – apart from drinking too much, completing 30 lengths frontcrawl without stopping and poaching an egg perfectly – but I can sweep a head of lice in, well, a trice. The secret is not to trust your eyes. Which is just as well in my case because after 40 something years with 20/20 vision, my near sight has crumbled. I told the amused, though slightly wincing optician that I could tell something was wrong when I had to hold my son’s head under a spotlight at arm’s length to see what I was doing with the nit comb and tissues.

The thing is, if you rely on the evidence of your eyes alone, it is unlikely that you will spot any nits (empty eggs that is) until the head in question has got a head full. And as for seeing a live louse? Well, they move darned quick, are fiendishly camouflaged and they have no intention of being caught. Which is exactly why they are so successful. The only times I have  clearly identified live lice roaming on a scalp was when I worked in a nursery and one or two children from ‘chaotic homes’ had serious infestations and I was picking the things off with my fingers.

And as for freshly laid eggs, well they too blend in very well and are usually quietly deposited and glued onto the hair shaft very close to the scalp thereby increasing their invisibility.

As far as I’m concerned, the secret to population control is regular combing, whether or not the beloved bonce in question shows any sign of habitation or not. And combing close to the skull, right at the follicle. And remember, scratching is not a reliable indicator, especially as kids quickly learn not to do it if it means a cross mum and a lengthy session covered in chemicals and conditioner in front of Antiques Roadshow.

So, comb weekly and don’t just leave it to the odd fish through your offspring’s hair at the bus stop during an idle moment to check what is going on in there. A quick sweep once a week should quickly keep the critters in check. Meanwhile, a little light diversion technique might be in order. So, how about getting them to knit their own nit while you comb? (technically, a cuddly louse). They could knit a head full!

With thanks to my dear chum, clever Kirsty Gordon, who showed me how it can be done….

All those Star Wars Lego sets came in real handy after all

We are a Lego-enthusiast household and the brick box, already full to bursting, has just received a new injection of Christmas model sets. After the success of the spawn-of-the-Devil-maggot-child baby Jesus, three wise arms dealers and Bethlehem’s famous zombie carol singers, a Lego head louse seemed the obvious choice for a father/6-year-old bonding session.

And I have to say, I’m thrilled with the results. There is a certain pleasing anatomical correctness in its proportions, although perhaps the antennae could do with being a fraction longer. I particularly like the contrasting sclerotization of the thoracic and abdominal segments, and the translucent body showing the meandering blood-filled intestinal tract.

Oh, and it’s a female, you can tell by the prehensile nit-glue-manipulating gonopods at her tail end.

Next up…? A cat flea? Or a bed-bug maybe.

A new skill-set for the advanced nit-picker

Meet Gliricola (formerly Gyropus) gracilis, the louse of the variegated cavy and Docophorus ocellatus, the louse of the crow. Justine and I are adopting them as our lousy alter-egos. Obviously Justine Crow needs the crow louse. Pretty simple really. But there is no Jones louse. So what to do?

Flicking through Henry Denny’s 1842 louse monograph offered some interesting ideas. I did think of one of the lice of the jay (as in J for Jones), there are two species to choose from, but they are both very similar to the crow louse. Jays and crows are very closely related, and so too are their lice. I quite liked the sound of the louse of the cuckoo, especially as Denny has it as ‘cuckow’. Or there was louse of the gannet, louse of the spoonbill, and louse of the shoveller, if I wanted to emphasize my poor table manners. How about louse of the eagle, of the falcon or of the ‘kestril’? But these are all bird lice, and they all look very much like Justine’s crow louse.

Other alternatives were the louse of the stag (too grand), louse of the dog (too lowly), louse of the ferret (too comical) or louse of the campagnol (?) vole apparently, and too obscure anyway. But then, there it was — louse of the variegated cavy or guinea pig. Done. It’s a slim handsome insect, elegant and refined. Need I say more. And I quite like guinea pigs, even though I am allergic to them. I appreciate the historical importance of a biological test animal. You can eat them too.

“Oh, not that lovely big one on butterflies?” the man exclaimed and we had to shake our heads ruefully and reply that, er.. no, our insect book was in fact practically the complete opposite of the one he’d described.

“Ah,” he continued with a twinkle, “then it must be The Little Book of Nits!” We both nodded shyly, expecting the conversation to end swiftly. On the contrary, our new acquaintance glittered with enthusiasm – according to his badge he worked in sales and at their recent conference when the new titles were presented he reported that a noisy ripple of interest greeted the announcement that the Little Book of Nits would be published. This gratifying excitement was then followed by an involuntary itch that went round the room like a Mexican wave and everybody found they needed to have a little scratch.

In the book trade, word of mouth is supposed to be the best kind of marketing, but a communal itch that needs scratching? Now, you can’t ask for more than that!   

“Love this poem…had to recite it, aged 10, in front of the whole primary school. Ah, memories. To be honest, we weren’t really sure what it was about, as we called them nits. Think it took a few years to dawn on me that I’d been reciting a poem about headlice!” From Sarah Litchfield, herself now a primary school teacher.

Ha! whaur ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie?
Your impudence protects you sairly;
I canna say but ye strunt rarely,
Owre gauze and lace;
Tho’, faith! I fear ye dine but sparely
On sic a place.

Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner,
Detested, shunn’d by saunt an’ sinner,
How daur ye set your fit upon her—
Sae fine a lady?
Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner
On some poor body.

Swith! in some beggar’s haffet squattle;
There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle,
Wi’ ither kindred, jumping cattle,
In shoals and nations;
Whaur horn nor bane ne’er daur unsettle
Your thick plantations.

Now haud you there, ye’re out o’ sight,
Below the fatt’rels, snug and tight;
Na, faith ye yet! ye’ll no be right,
Till ye’ve got on it—
The verra tapmost, tow’rin height
O’ Miss’ bonnet.

My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out,
As plump an’ grey as ony groset:
O for some rank, mercurial rozet,
Or fell, red smeddum,
I’d gie you sic a hearty dose o’t,
Wad dress your droddum.

I wad na been surpris’d to spy
You on an auld wife’s flainen toy;
Or aiblins some bit dubbie boy,
On’s wyliecoat;
But Miss’ fine Lunardi! fye!
How daur ye do’t?

O Jeany, dinna toss your head,
An’ set your beauties a’ abread!
Ye little ken what cursed speed
The blastie’s makin:
Thae winks an’ finger-ends, I dread,
Are notice takin.

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion:
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
An’ ev’n devotion!