TICKS

Where we live is tick heaven. In summer, we find a tick on us nearly everyday. Sometimes two. If we’re lucky, we spot it before too long, and it has not yet had time to embed itself. So brushes off easily.

But often have to use a pair of tick tweezers. Just get it out. All that jazz about corkscrewing, etc. Bullshit. Get’em out by any means necessary. Sometimes I have scraped them out by accident with my fingernail, thinking it was just a scab.

No matter how much you brush your clothes before coming into house. They appear on your skin as you get undressed, etc. I try to remember to put some strong smelling oil on ankles and wrists and throat before going out, but hard to remember.

Today I thought I felt a scab, but pulled it off with tweezers. Under the mag glass, little legs wriggling. Consign it to the sink. But I think of how I must kill another living critter so that the living critter called Moe can avoid disease, maybe death, etc. Life is immersed in the death of others, and in the country where I watch our and other animals eating grass and bugs, making it into meat, milk and eggs that I will eat, I sympathise with vegetarians, but know that they have taken the wrong turning. Even plants are alive, and must be killed to be eaten. Hinc illae lacrimae.

I hope our little English ticks have not yet been infused with the diseases that American ticks have. Maybe even vaccines?