Tick...Tick...Tick

Great White Dispatch
Notes From Damn Near Canada
No. 26
5-7-09
22:10

When we moved to Minnesota last August, I probably hadn't seen a tick in 20 years. As a kid, bumping around the woods, high-stepping through cricks, playing hide-and-go-seek in corn fields, ticks were a relatively common occurrence. See one, burn its ass and flick it off. Whatever.

Then, I started working, got a driver's license, stopped digging mud bogs just for the hell of it, and more or less became civilized. And once I moved to the city and woods and scrubland turned into parking lots and expressways , even the idea of ticks just became....eew.

An now I find myself in the goddamn tick capital of the world. They're everywhere up here. Literally the DAY the grass peaked through the snow, Tulip the Dog showed up with one of the little assholes hanging to her neck. A couple weekends ago, when some friends from Ohio were visiting and we actually had reason to venture out of doors, nightly tick-checks were a must. Last night, I found two on my head. During my morning 'period of contemplation' in the bathroom, I found a bloodsucking bastard on my hand, which I then accidentally flicked onto my pants. Awesome. Nothing like screeching like a smacked baby while in a quiet office shitter.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm squeamish when it comes to bugs. And spiders...let's just say that two of my favorite hobbies as a kid were flicking field spiders into the pond just to watch them try to swim before the bass snapped them up, and going after the same spindly jack-offs with matches and a can of hairspray. And what is a tick but a spider that drinks your blood? Christ on a bike, that's creepy. Just the idea that you could unknowingly spend a whole day eating for two, and your dark passenger might look like a black widow crossed with a water balloon...makes my balls try to hide up behind by spleen. Rotten little parasites. Two words that really never needed to be thrown together: Vampire Arachnids.

Just didn't want you to think it was all cute deer and party hats up here. Sometimes, you have to dig another living thing's head out of your ass cheek. Garrison Keillor never talked about that.