By ELIZABETH SHEPHERD
For The Beachcomber

It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that when Sarah Day, nurse for the Vashon schools, began to plan the district’s recent Head Lice Expo, she asked Lance Morgan to appear in costume as a giant louse.

As the longtime office secretary of Chautauqua Elementary, Morgan has become known for doing things that stretch his job description, including creating a paper clip museum housed in a school hallway, writing Chautauqua’s endlessly looping school song and amassing a quirky body of work as the school’s videographer. At Chautauqua functions, he has dressed up, variously, as an orca, a cowboy and Waldo of “Where’s Waldo” fame.

For his appearance at the Lice Expo, held last week in the Chautauqua lunchroom, Morgan donned a costume stitched by Day from a set of beige curtains she found at a Value Village store. As worn by Morgan over a pair of khaki pants, the costume looked somewhat like a cute and cozy, though ill-conceived, sleeping bag.

With long, quilted skirting attached to a long-sleeved tunic, it was topped by a hood featuring soft, floppy antennae.

“It’s really comfortable and warm, but the only problem is that I can’t use my fingers,” Morgan said, as he extended the costume’s clawed mittens toward a group of curious kids who had gathered around him. “These are for grabbing onto your hair,” he said.

Morgan couldn’t answer many questions about the life cycle of a louse — “I can’t explain it, I just am what I am,” he answered, in character, to one visitor’s queries — but luckily, others at the Expo were armed with facts about the hard-to-get-rid-of but harmless parasitic insects that seem to be increasingly seeking safe haven on the hair shafts of Vashon schoolchildren.

Organized by Day and a group of Chautauqua parents who call themselves the Lice Squad, the Expo was intended to be a light-hearted and community-minded way to tackle the lice issue head on, so to speak.

“It’s not that this is a problem on Vashon,” Day said. “It’s a problem everywhere.”

All over the world, Day explained, lice have become increasingly resistant to over-the-counter chemical treatments such as RID and Nix, so parents need to take a more hands-on approach and inspect their children’s hair at least once a week.

While the elementary school has seen lice outbreaks in the past, so far this year there have been an average of 5.6 cases reported per month. Day said those numbers are comparable to nationwide average for lice infestation.

At the expo’s combing station, Day ran a lice comb through the hair of several young attendees, looking for the telltale signs of infestation — live bugs and their tiny, eggs, called nits, which are attached to the shafts of hair.

Day was joined in her work by Larissa de Ruyter, who has a local business called Nit Pickers — de Ruyter specializes in lice and nit removal as well as organic treatments for lice prevention.

As they combed through and peered at the heads of children who lined up for inspection, the pair kept up a running commentary that was aimed at dispelling myths about the insects.

“Lice don’t fly or jump, they only crawl,” Day said. “It’s really important to remember that this is not about having a clean house. Lice can’t live long on carpeting or couches, and their little claws have only evolved to hang onto a human hair. That’s the only place they want to be, where it’s warm and moist.”

The expo also featured a science fair-like display where kids and parents could see lice specimens up close through three microscopes. Younger kids were also encouraged to color cartoonish pictures of the bugs in a handout called “The Latest Greatest Coloring Book About Lice.” For puzzle-minded kids, there were copies of a jumble that included a search for words including “infested,” “scalp,” “blood” and “crawl.”

At a lunch table, members of the Lice Squad held court with helpful advice and explanations of why they decided to get involved in the cause of lice eradication on the island.

Christy Veal, Lice Squad president, moved to Vashon in 2013 after spending a few years in The Netherlands — a country, she said, with a much better system for keeping lice in check.

“In Amsterdam, a group of moms came into the school and checked every single head three times a year,” she said. “It wasn’t a big deal, but when we came back to the U.S. it was so different here. It was a big secret, and so dramatic.”

The mission of the Lice Squad, Veal said, is to “educate, empower and remove the stigma” surrounding lice, as well as provide support and advice for parents dealing with the issue. The group has a hashtag — #licefreevashon — and also hopes to use social media to spread the word about how to prevent transmission of the bugs.

More events — possibly including Lance Morgan, dressed up as a louse — might also be in the works, they said.

That seemed to be fine with Morgan, who remained in costume and in character as the evening wore on.

“We all have a purpose in life,” he said, as the louse, in a musing that was both philosophical and poignant. “I just mostly annoy people, but I don’t hurt anyone.”

For more information on lice or the Lice Squad, contact Sarah Day at sday@vashonsd.org.