Tick Magnet

As of last week, I have taken on the title tick magnet. A mild winter, I suspect, has only added to the number of ticks now parading around yards, woods and generally in the landscape. This post explains my dilemma of now being a tick magnet.

It was late Monday afternoon last week when I sat down after having been outside checking on the garden and a few of our flower beds. I felt something on my neck and pulled it off, and my first thought was it was some detritus, a flower bud off the flower crab tree, but as I looked at it I noticed it was a tick. I then proceeded to do what I usually do, and that is stab the tick between my finger nails, but the thing was quick and hard to grab after placing him on a finger tip awaiting the stabbing. It took me a few times to get a proper hold on the tick. 

If that was not enough, I usually do not have much difficulty stabbing it with my finger nail, but this time I did. It took a couple attempts to break the hard outer layer. I showed it to the spouse, and said, I had a tick on me, and she commented that it is best if I not crush the tick, so as to better ascertain what type it was. I guess she wants me to show her a live tick, but the thing was so fast, and quick, I could see it dropping onto her. What happened if it got into her thick red hair? I don't think it would ever be found before it embedded itself in her scalp.

After review, but not instant replay, the call was confirmed on the field that it indeed was a tick. The tick had a further trip as it became part of the average of 40 million gallons per day of sewage treated at the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage Treatment Plant. It was a regular wood tick, not the smaller, more dangerous deer ticks that harbor Lyme disease.

Tuesday, was a dreary day, and I worked on our camper in a shed, and saw the grandchild. Wednesday, was a nice day, so I was outside. I was on the deck nearing the end of Bruce Catton's highly regarded work This Hallowed Ground, which I bought at the Friends of the Library book sale in March. Copy righted in 1955, its subtitle "The Story of the Union Side of the Civil War" unmasks the long-term affair of the Lost Cause narrative (myth) in the nation, which started in 1866. That myth was long engaged academics and others, for generations. Anyway, I digress, but as I was reading the book, I look at my left hand and what do I see, but a tick. Another wood tick, which was easier to stab between two finger nails, than the first. That tick, became part of the detritus with the flower bed at the edge of the deck. 

That second tick must have just dropped out of the Locust tree. Years ago, when the kids were at scout camp, the wife and I camped at Buckhorn State Park, and as I was sitting reading and a tick dropped on me. Rather unnerving. A benefit of having a head with thinning hair is that a tick is likely easier to locate if it were to drop on the top of the head. 

The moral of the story is don't become a tick magnet, and, borrowing from "Hill Street Blues", "Be careful out there."