what does head louse look like?

[Lasvegas]

I have wet combed childs hair and in it were what I can only describe as sesame seeds. They did not move. Is this a louse? All stuff on internet shows a magnified picture but I need to know what it looks like to naked eye. Many thanks

sesame seeds sound like empty egg sacs to me. a fully grown adult louse can be up to 1cm long, and you'd know if you'd seen one, visible legs, body, like an insect. brown eggs are unhatched, yellowy ones are empty and hatched.

this might help, shows lice of various ages from babies to adults

also some info here which might help

Bless you lucky kate that is so helpful. Now I know what I am looking for. It was eggs I removed in nit comb. Where could the adults be? Could they hide from conditioner ans comb?

They are the eggs.

DD had them for the first time, for a good week, poor mite, as we had spent a good few days on the beach beforehand and I just presumed they were bits of sand stuck in her hair (wembury beach has grey slightly shelly sand) .

It was only after a couple of days of her itching her head that it dawned on me what it might be and then i looked for the lice themselves. She had long hair so they were not immediately apparant. But when i did see them, they were disgusting! But, they might be small still, and if so, they will look like little grey blobs/translucent coloured I guess.

I would invest in a nitty gritty comb. Then, if not lice, you will have it for the future, and if lice you can get started on removing the eggs/hatched eggs and lice immediately.

Does sound like them to me though.

I would get hedrin and treat everyone````````````, just in case.

oops, kitten typing.

at a guess, the lice will either be still there, if newly hatched, they will be tiny, so you may well have combed some out but just not seen them, or some may have been transferred to other people. if there has been a lot of eggs, just do a wet comb every day for the next few days, and you'll get them all eventually.

not wishing to sound OT here, but here's a microscopic view of one:

here

sorry if TMI as well....

(they just look like pale brownish dots normally)

Thank you. I have used a nitty nit comb and used it twice first day bigger eggs found in comb, when wiped onto white loo roll. Day 2 many less eggs and they were smaller than day one eggs. If there were adults would they not also get caught in the comb?

I have used hedrin on child and on me. A friend mentioned full marks is that better?

They are probably on you now!

full marks is not a proper pesticide as such, it dehydrates the lice so they die, it does not smell or sting or anything

worked well for us, follwed up by nitty gritty comb and frequent tea tree oil/conditioner used now