#532 Right Makes Mite

So the other day I did an essay on a little mite known as the Demodex mite.
Right there you got some potential for funny. Is there a republi-dex mite? Does it only infest right eyelashes while the demodex inhabits the left?
Can you find them in the Dex yellow pages? Under spooky little arachnids who frolic on your face?
But I chose not to go there.
Instead I went for the Andy Rooney reference.
I figured, hey, if a tiny little microscopic mite inhabited one hairy part of your eye region why not another? And if there ever was a macro niche for a micro mite it would have to be Andy Rooney’s eyebrows.
And if you have a niche, um, scratch it.
Especially if that niche is full of mites.
Well I was wrong, and I’m a big enough man to admit it. In going for the joke, I disregarded the facts, and gosh darnit, I’m really sorry.
Mistakes were made. I accept full responsibility.
Mite-a culpa.
A listener called the station and politely informed me the demodex mite is a mite of the eyelash, not the eyebrow. And the article I should refer to was in the June issue of Discover magazine, page 45.
Precisely, as it turns out, where I got the idea in the first place. And which facts I ignored on my way to Andy Rooney. If the facts are close, I never let them stand in the way of a good joke.
In this instance, that kind of sloppy humoring wasn’t enough.
In the original version of my essay, I actually did say eyelash but my girlfriend pointed out that jumping from eyelash to Andy Rooney eyebrow was confusing.
A mite confusing, one might say, mightn’t one?
So I changed all the references to eyebrow, and did science, and my listeners, a grave disservice.
All that said, I just now googled “demodex” and the wikipedia article said demodex mites inhabit eyelashes, nose hairs, and guess what, eyebrows. I take it all back.
Nose hairs. Some potential for funny there.
But for some reason I want to sneeze.
America ya gotta love it