Welcome to All Things Stacey Longo
  • Home
  • Biography
  • Bibliography
  • In the News
  • Contact

Ticked

6/8/2017

 
I think we can all agree that the tick is best known as the most widely hated bug in the entire arachnid kingdom. Don’t even try to argue that spiders are worse: most spiders don’t seek you out to suck your blood and give you horrible diseases (the exception, of course, is Shelob, the great spider in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but she’s it--and spoiler alert: she doesn’t exist in real life). Ticks are creepy, bacteria-filled vampires that serve no purpose in the circle of life except to instill a heart-stopping case of heebie jeebies in all that encounter them. Listen, I can justify the existence of just about anything in this world. War, famine, giant wasps the size of Buicks (for you spider haters out there, those Buick wasps help control the Buick tarantula population, so perhaps you should start thanking them now). But I cannot justify ticks. Sure, maybe they’re a main staple of the guinea hen’s diet, but otherwise, they’re pointless and rotten. And guinea hens could surely find something else to eat, right?

We’ve all heard that the tick population is especially bad this year. One website even likened it to a George Clooney movie, stating, “Health and insect experts are calling it a perfect storm of conditions coming together to create a tick population explosion.” That’s right, people: the ticks are so bad this year they’re expected to swarm our fishing boats and sink them to the bottom of the ocean floor, drowning all aboard before the hapless sailors even have time to whip out their fine-tipped tweezers.

Or something like that.

About a month ago, Jason had the misfortune of waking me up in the middle of the night. All who have done this know it is dangerous and unwise. I curse (I don’t just mean I say bad words: I utter curses proven to bring about cases of the pox, boils, and my favorite, leaky bowels), I cry, I scream, I throw things. I do not like being woken up. But he had no choice: he had a tick on his shoulder, and having grown up on a farm where tick removal was a part of everyday life, I’m the designated tick-puller in our house. It’s a job title I’ve never aspired to, but it turns out when you develop a pattern of cursing people with leaky bowels, karma tends to throw it right back at you by making you the tick wrangler of the house. So there I was at three a.m., pulling a tick off my husband. I was not amused.

Full disclosure: though I hate the darn things, I’m kind of proud of my tick-removing abilities. I can usually get them out quickly, getting head, pincers, and a bit of flesh in one tweezered tug. Maybe two. This was a two-tugger, then we burned the little parasitic demon, and I went back to bed. I was not yet worried about the predicted Tickageddon. Ticks happen, right?

Except they keep happening. They’re all over, and we’re finding them in the house—hanging on the front door, knocking with their nasty pint-size pincers, or on the shower curtain. I found one on Pugsley last night, and both he and his sister are indoor cats. We’re bringing them in on our clothes—and it’s been too rainy to work in the yard the past two weeks, so they must be hitching a ride on our socks and pants when we’re walking from our cars to the door. Either that, or we’ve got mice in our house that are bringing them in (in which case, Pugsley is to blame for his own tick: it wouldn’t have happened if he did his job and acted like a cat).

I have to work for a living. I can’t be spending every day yanking out ticks. I asked Jason to look into a tick lawn treatment service. He did, and quoted me a price. Apparently, the explosive tick population has also caused an explosion in lawn service treatment costs.

You know, I’ve always liked guinea hens.
Picture
In some cultures, the tick is known as "the bug sent straight from Satan." (And if that isn't quite true, it should be.)
Rob SMALES link
6/9/2017 08:58:34 pm

Found one lying in the hall Wednesday night, like a fat guy sunning himself on a seaside blanket. Apparently having sucked its fill from one of the dogs (I'm betting the long-haired one, this thing would have shown up like a vampiric beacon on the short-hair), it casually dropped off, but had the misfortune to land on its back.

I saw what I took for a moment to be a gray-brown jellybean in the middle of the floor, bent close enough to it to see just the tips of its little legs waving feebly as it tried to reach the ground around its own disgustingly swollen bulk, and said "Holy, shit, you're turning violet, Violet!" Then I dustpanned it up and took it outside to do the mashed potato on it (and I didn't even have a broken arm).

I agree: despicable vermin that needs to be chased across the highlands by torch-wielding villagers and burned alive in windmills.

Stacey
6/16/2017 08:54:34 am

Dear lord, I *hope* it came off one of the dogs. Yecch!


Comments are closed.

    RSS Feed

    Author

    Pretty and perfect in every way.

    Archives

    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010

    Categories

    All
    Aging Gracefully
    Andy Kaufman
    Art
    Bad Actors
    Bad Habits
    Bad Life Choices
    Batman
    Beauty Tips
    Birthdays
    Block Island
    Bloom County
    Bookstore Owner
    Bucket List
    Celebrities
    Christmas Tv Specials
    Connecticut
    Conventions
    Dating Advice
    David Bowie
    Death
    Dieting
    Disney
    Downton Abbey
    Driving
    Duran Duran
    Easter Candy
    Editing
    Etiquette
    Exercise
    Family
    Fashion
    Father
    Fishing
    Gardening
    Generation X
    Greek
    Halloween
    Holidays
    Horror
    Illness
    Iphone
    Kennedy
    Life Lessons
    Love Songs
    Lyme Disease
    Marriage
    Mother
    Mother Nature
    Movies
    Movie Stars
    Music
    News
    Painkillers
    Parenting
    Penn State Football
    Pets
    Philanthropy
    Pms
    Politics
    Potluck
    Presidential Assassination Theories
    Psychic Abilities
    Reading
    Relationships
    Resolutions
    Restaurants
    Ron Jeremy
    Science
    Sexy Actors
    Shopping
    Sisters
    Social Media
    Star Trek
    Stephen King
    Telephones
    Television
    The Storyside
    Tick Removal
    Travel
    Truman Capote
    Vacation
    Weather
    Working
    Writing
    Zombie Apocalypse

Web Hosting by iPage