@Maj. Bill Martin
I know you are a yankee because all southern boys know the best and quickest way to kill redbugs is with fingernail polish. They breath through your skin,and the fingernail polish suffocates the little bastards.
@sneakypete Well, about that....
It's a myth that chiggers actually burrow into your skin. They don't, and suffocation/killing them doesn't apply. They just inject you with an enzyme that keeps working for a few days, and itches like hell. Once they have injected you, the itch is there and isn't going away. But that's due to the enzyme that is decomposing your skin, not the chigger still being alive. Tons of articles on it.
The Marine Corps is about 50% southern boys, so fingernailnail polish was something we all learned about very early on, along with about 20 other supposed remedies. Most of them, like the polish, are basically just a placebo. I of course tried it, and it really didn't do anything. You might get some tightening/drying of the skin that helps a little bit, but there are other things that can do that better. The real reason the fingernail polish seems to "work" is that by the time you know you've got the bites and they're itching like hell, and so put on the polish, the itch will start to diminish is a couple of days on its own anyway.