A pesky bug is getting even peskier.
Lice are keeping experts in Green Country very busy, as well as frustrating parents.
In August researchers foundthat lice were resistant for common treatments in at least 25 states around the country. Now, it appears, that what some are calling super lice have arrived in Oklahoma.
On Thursday, Michaela Blain nervously sat with a head full of lice.
"I have to itch it every day," Blain said. "When I keep itching it gets hurt."
After her mom tried several times to get rid of the bugs, she ended up in front of Serenity Hair Rescue's Vanessa Decker. In less than a minute of combing through Blain's hair she found a ton of lice.
She said it is becoming a common site with many children.
"Thousand of little eggs and little tiny hatchlings," Decker said as she removed the lice from her comb. "Each one of those would grow up to be a bug and in two weeks start laying their own eggs."
Decker said they could very well be super lice, making her job that much more challenging.
"We definitely have it here," she said about Oklahoma.
Decker said the mutant lice are resistant to treatments that kill off other forms of lice.
"On the resistant lice we found that it doesn't kill them," she said as she applied a lice treatment to one child's head. "But it stuns them and freezes them for about 12 hours."
Lately Decker's chair isn't sitting empty for long, as her schedule keeps filling up.
"Almost all summer, and the first couple weeks of August, we were getting 50 to 100 calls or texts a day," Decker said.
Even though it is proving to be an uphill battle for many families, when she finished treating Blain she had good news.
"She will be considered lice free today and not contagious," Decker said.
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