Tick Be Gone
The trials and tribulations of living on a tick-infested Island.
The ticks are so happy right now. Days of rain, lots of fresh green growth, branches drooping with new leaves. They hang out on dandelion stems and blades of grass waiting for you to brush past; they drop from tree limbs into your hair, hop onto your shoes, spend all day crawling up your leg to settle mid-thigh (or worse, higher), or somehow make their way under your shirt to your tummy or armpit.
It's not just one kind of tick anymore, either. Regular old dog or wood ticks – the ones you can actually see with the naked eye and who practically announce themselves with a trumpet voluntary – are almost benign compared to the stealthy, microscopic deer tick, who is kind enough to bring Lyme disease as a hostess gift if invited (unknowingly) to linger.
And you don’t even want to know about the lone star tick and the even nastier lone star tick nymphs, who travel in gangs so that you get multiple bites in one area of your skin, creating a sort of rash that itches like crazy. (With my tendency toward malapropism, I’ve been calling them the lone star lymphs.)
