Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Volunteers needed........

I have a bit of an obsessive personality. Whenever I have a strong interest or curiosity about something I am rarely satisfied with a passing knowledge, rather I will learn and learn until I have a supernumerary knowledge of the subject, often boring my friends and family to tears in the process.

I have a large yard and big dogs who love to run around the yard. Our dogs come in and go out of the house as they please, because we leave the sliding door ajar for them while we are home. The neighbor behind us had two Chihuahuas who would be let out at the same time every day and one of our dogs would run to the fence separating the properties waiting patiently for the little ones to come out to play. They would run back and forth along the length of the fence happily barking at each other. Well, our dog got ticks. And she shared them. With us. Not just a tick here and there, but more like there were ticks everywhere! I was, like most normal people would be, completely freaked out. Totally grossed out. Absolutely panicked. Would my family, my precious babies get bitten and contract some horrible disease like Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever? I didn't know. I had to find out. I HAD TO LEARN EVERY SINGLE THING THERE WAS TO KNOW ABOUT THESE MINUSCULE ARACHNIDS!!!! So I did. First I found out that it is uncommon for ticks in Florida to carry deadly diseases. So, once I found that out they kind of lost their creepiness. I began to see them more like long term mosquitoes and less like tapeworms. I studied them and looked for them on the walls, in crevices, along the door frames and in corners. I discovered that they do not live on the floor. Sweeping and vacuuming will only get up the poor unfortunate tick that happened to fall on the floor or jump off of his/her host at the most inopportune time. I thought, maybe if I introduce some of their natural enemies I could eradicate them. They only have one- the tick bird. And I am not getting a tick bird or a cow for the tick bird to ride on while it eats the ticks. I thought, we can take a vacation and starve them to death. Did you know that ticks can go into hibernation for over a year if food is too scarce? Don't feel bad, I didn't either. I found out that even the so-called experts don't know that much.



WARNING: what you are about to read may be too much for the squeamish. I am going to give you a very brief introduction to the life cycle of the tick. A tick hatches, it has six legs. It finds a host and has what is called the first blood meal. It stops eating and grows two more legs, which is why it is an arachnid. Remember the whole, kingdom, phylum, class thing we learned in biology? Arachnid is the class, it is commonly and mistakenly used to refer to spiders because of the movie by the same name. A spider is simply a type of arachnid. Anyway, once it grows it seventh and eighth legs it finds a mate and another host, if it is a female it then latches on and fills up with blood and maturing eggs. Once she has had enough blood she leaves the host, finds a proper place to lay her eggs, lays them, and dies.

Because I am a bit odd I took one of these engorged,female, ticks and put her in a jar. (Do not make the mistake of calling them pregnant. Only mammals get pregnant). Everyday I would open the jar to get her some oxygen. I am not really sure how much she needed, but I thought, hey, a little wouldn't hurt. Then one day, almost magically, I looked in the jar to discover that she had laid her eggs and withered up and died. There were hundreds of teeny tiny little eggs. Maybe even smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. A week or two later imagine my dismay when I looked at my jar and discovered that someone had opened it up and tossed in some sand. (For those of you who have never visited the Sunshine State, sand is Florida dirt. It is in copious supply.) I had read at a University website that ticks are attracted to the carbon dioxide that mammals release and that is how they find their hosts. Well, I picked up my closed jar that was now full of sand, well not full, not even near full, more like a teaspoon, maybe. Anyway, I picked it up, stormed into the family room where all of my children were sitting and demanded to know WHO PUT SAND IN MY TICK JAR????? Then, I glanced at the jar and saw all of those teeny tiny pieces of sand moving toward my hand. Oh my goodness, they were not pieces of sand, my ticks hatched.(Insert "Awwwwwww" as though I just said my baby birds hatched.) They were moving toward the warmth that they felt through the glass. So much for relying on universities to get things right. I was so proud, in a warped sort of way, of my accomplishment. You would have thought I had been the one to hatch them. I could not understand why no one wanted to see them, or hear about them, or even ask me some random question about ticks so that I would have a chance to WOW them with my brilliance. No, I was destined to go it alone. To ride the road to knowledge all by myself. I felt like a misunderstood scientist. Now, I could truly empathize with Doctor Frankenstein.



I got an email today from Ariel's high school. It was asking for parents to volunteer and it came with a brief questionnaire asking questions such as what hours could you work, what type of work would you be interested in, clerical, classroom, tutoring, etc. My favorite question however? What is your expertise? Do you think..... Is it possible....Suredly I tell you, I am sure they could find a place for the tick lady.

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