Rocky Mountain Wood Tick
Another sign that the season is running ahead of schedule crawled across the counter today after catching a ride in on someones clothes. A Rocky Mountain Wood Tick, harbinger of the less desirable species of the insect season. Actually the blood sucking little b@$tard tick is an arachnid (think spider family) that makes a living as a parasite. They also spread a lot of nasty little bugs to their hosts like Rocky Mountain Spotted fever, Tularemia, Colorado Tick Fever and are a major cause of Tick Paralysis.
So, as much as I hate breaking out the chemicals and slathering up in the stuff I’m sure I don’t want spotted fever or any other bug feces running in my veins. I try not apply stuff like Ultrathon directly to my skin but spray it as much as possible on my clothes, hats and shoes.
Sometimes there is no alternative but to go to the skin in order to keep from being ravaged by ravenous insects and the flocks of swarming insects are even then uncanny at finding that one half inch square of skin that you missed with the bug dope and there is no alternative but to cover up, completely bathe yourself in nasty chemicals or jump into the river with the fish. Well, you could go home and sit on the patio next to the bug zapper but that would be admitting defeat although there is some consolation in each snap that signals that yet another insect has instantly been sizzled.
Waders are great protection from ticks but you still have to cover yourself on the topside, hats, high collars, long sleeves etc. Ticks are especially fond of tapping into your head although other warm, hairy places in the middle latitudes will work too. Using super heated, glowing tongs in those areas are probably not a good idea in persuading your unwanted guest from extracting his beak from you epidermis. And you needn’t grab the little SOB with the tweezers and try to tweek his little head and hope for a clean extraction either because after years of disfiguring myself in various ways while trying to rid myself of these little blood sucking hijackers I have finally settled on a technique that works in just about every situation.
A few years ago I came across some black market spray tick killer that has it’s origins in the US military. This stuff is deadly, probably to me as well, but to a tick its game over. They can’t even walk across this stuff. So anyway, when said tick has managed to actually tap into my hide I get out the spray and shoot a little onto some paper and then run a Q-tip through it. This part is important, DO NOT swab this right on the ass end of the bug, we don’t want to kill him with his head still embedded in you. You want to wave this stuff around very close, like Houdini with his wand. If you’ve got some serious tick juice they will generally start working on the exit strategy and eventually back themselves out.
At this point you can torture the little a$$hole in any matter of your choosing, I prefer impaling them on a small sharp object and torching them off like an overcooked marshmallow. Sometimes it’s these small vindictive acts that make life so much more satisfying.
