This weather really ticks me off
I’ve enjoyed the spells of pleasant, warm weather we’ve been having lately. But you know who’s enjoyed them more?
The ticks.
I don’t like bugs in general. There are those I consider mostly annoying, like mosquitoes and gnats; those that I find repulsive, like earwigs; and those that scare me, like spiders. Ticks are the worst, though, filling me with a trifecta of fear, disgust, and loathing.
And with the balmy days we’ve been having, they’re celebrating like it’s Mardi Gras. With a magnifying glass, you can see them cavorting around the woods and fields, wearing strings of colorful beads and carrying open containers, making bad choices they will have time to regret when (if) the weather ever gets cold enough. (Yes, this is a humor column that touches on the effects of climate change; try not to laugh too hard.)
When I was a kid, I had heard of ticks only as creatures that carried Rocky Mountain spotted fever. That was before Lyme disease was all the rage. I worried far more about killer bees, which we heard were moving in swarms up from Central America and would be murdering us New Englanders en masse by the 1980s.
“Have you ever tried to get a close-up look at the outside of your ankle?”
The killer bees didn’t live up to the hype. But the ticks overperformed. And now, on balmy days—the ones on which I would most like to be outside—they rush my dog like Black Friday shoppers pouncing on a scarce game console.
Over the entire summer, the dog might have picked up a tick or two. After a single walk in the woods one sunny October day, however, I found over a dozen on him. I crouched on the porch, frantically combing them out of his fur while resisting the urge to break into a St. Vitus’s dance of revulsion; my reputation in this neighborhood is already iffy.
Though I spend about a dollar a day to protect the dog from the illnesses ticks can carry, they still climb aboard—sometimes ending up loose in our house. (If you suddenly feel imaginary creatures crawling on you, pause here to scratch. And brace yourself; it gets worse.)
Not long ago, I was in bed when I felt a tickle on the outside of my ankle. I instinctively swiped at it and felt something hard. Maybe a scab?
I switched on the 40-watt bedside light and put on my glasses to peer into the semidarkness. But my vision wasn’t up to the task—and neither was my physiology. Have you ever tried to get a close-up look at the outside of your ankle? It’s farther away than you think.
Making a mental note to do more yoga going forward, I managed to contort myself into a position that briefly brought my outer ankle into focal range. What I had mistaken for a scab was, in fact, a bunch of tiny legs sticking straight up out of my skin. (I warned you.)
A calmer human might have said, “Oh, let me go into the medicine cabinet to search for a pair of tweezers with which I might pluck this embedded arachnid from my body.”
I, in contrast, began screaming and half-gagging. In a panic, I pinched the tick with my fingernails and yanked it out of my flesh. I ran to the bathroom, flushed the tick down the toilet and took a long shower to wash away the full-body ick.
I was left with a sickening tick-shaped hole in my ankle—which healed without incident or illness—and a residual attack of shudders any time I recalled the event.
I know bugs are never entirely gone, even in winter. One or two confused mosquitoes always show up in the bathroom around Christmas. And just last week I got startled by a wolf spider on the wood pile, prompting me to set a new personal best for standing high jump. But usually by this time of year, most of the bugs have died, migrated, or gone into hibernation.
Not the ticks, though. On the unseasonably warm days when I most want to walk with the dog, they want to ride him like a party bus.
My growing rage against these disgusting little parasites has changed me in a profound way. By that, I mean I’m having thoughts that are out of character for a person whose toes are typically numb from December to March.
I’ll just say it: I hope the weather turns bitterly cold and doesn’t get above freezing until spring.
(Originally published in the Addison Independent, November 2024)
