May
12, 2020
Today’s
image – In life, there are takeaways, and then there are TAKEAWAYS. My hallowed
ground, wildlife refuge trip sent me off with a significant takeaway, and one
that took most of my attention today – deer ticks! Only minutes into that walk
along the levee, I was commending my good providence for hiking on the slough on
such a beautiful but chilly day, and glibly remarking to myself about the
absence of mosquitoes. My comeuppance arrived
around 9:00 pm last night as I noticed a little tickle of something moving across
my hand. I looked up from my book – augghhhh! TICK! TICK! TICK! The red lights in my brain flashed as the
sirens of my amygdala screamed. I search
my arms and legs; I felt around my scalp and armpits. I looked at my pup, and a primal nitpicking session commenced as I combed his fur and my head with
frantic fingers. Dozens of ticks had hitchhiked
home on us from the tall marsh grasses. Before retiring, I stripped down and re-searched
every crevice. Still at 3:00 am, they
woke me like a bad dream, and I was picking ticks from my pillow and sheet and
more from my dog, telling myself here was the reciprocity of the marsh, an eye
for an eye and a parasite for a parasite.
With the finest of aversions, I was participating in a relationship that
predates humans by one hundred million years.
Yes, the ticks came first, some say, out of the Cretaceous Period. Maybe
my loathing of them is a trained one, and perhaps it’s not the ticks that I am
so fearful of but the pathogens that they carry and pass along.
Given
the mild-ish winter we experienced, I hear that insect populations will be
impressive this summer, and from the looks of things, so will arachnids. They
will be food for something we appreciate more, I suppose. And also conveyance for
microbes that bring illnesses to complicated matters in this COVID shakedown. Here
is more writing on the wall; this is not a great way to end a school year or
start the summer season. I am feeling
like loose change in a flush eco-economy.
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