2366 Tick!

Friday, April 17, 2009

I mentioned that I don't let the cats out because we have coyotes. I noticed something a little sad this morning. A neighbor got a flock of about 12 or more guinea fowl a few months ago. They are popular around here because they eat ticks, even though they're rather annoyingly loud. The usual husbandry is to let them roam during the day and shut them in a pen at night. They stick together as a flock during their roamings.
(Photo borrowed from the internet....)

They're rather stupid, and I've several times had to stop on the road while they frittered around crossing in front of me, and then I worried because when they seem to have all crossed, it's not unusual for one or two to turn and cross back right under the moving car.

I went to the post office this morning, and the flock crossed the road. Sad. The flock was two birds.

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I felt a small hard raised spot on my side this evening, just aft of the center line - that spot where you can just barely see it by twisting hard. At first I thought it was a wart. I have a problem with tiny warts. I scratched at it, and --- it was a tiny tick! I haven't had a tick actually get attached to me in ages!

[5/15/09 I removed the image of ticks that had been here because I was getting a lot of Google hits on it, and it was starting to make me nervous.]

I probably picked the tick up yesterday inspecting the yard.

The skin all around the tick was very angry red. It was a deer tick, so I'm going to have to watch for Lyme. It was in a spot where I couldn't get both hands to it, so I couldn't use my usual "thread lasso around the mouthparts" removal method. I had to resort to a mirror and tweezers. It wasn't blown up yet, so that wasn't too very unsafe.

Now, every time a strand of hair touches my neck or shoulders, I jump.

Of all the beasties in the entire world, the only one I actively fear and hate is ticks.

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I spent an hour and a half on the phone with Ex#2. Suddenly he's interested in genealogy, and wanted info on my side of the family. I know next to nothing, and what I do know is mostly not true anyway. And most of what he found out doesn't jive with the few things I do know as true. Just because census data says something doesn't make it true. People lie to census takers, you know.

He wants to make up trees as a gift for Daughter and Hercules, two large charts, matted and framed, which he expects them to hang side-by-side in their bedroom. Hearing that, I cringed. Why do people do stuff like that, decide how others should decorate? I'd suggest to him that just a nicely printed set that THEY could either frame and hang, or roll up and keep in a drawer, might be a better way to go.

Well, he comes by it honestly. I happened to once, long ago, mention to his mother that my mother was giving me Smithsonian owl figurines, and I liked them. She decided I loved owls, and for the next four years inundated me with plastic tote bags with owls on them, owls on glass candle jars, owl pins, owl dish towels, aaaaaggggh! Remember, this is the guy who gave me a space heater for our first Christmas.

I'm debating whether I should warn Daughter, or say something to him, or just stay out of it.
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