Disgusting Little Buggers

From "The Life Story of a Tick" by Constance Casey, Slate Magazine: "Ticks not only extract blood, they ooze pathogens from their salivary glands into the wound they've sliced with their tiny claws and penetrated with their barbed mouthparts."

Aubrey and I had a run-in with an army of ticks a couple of months ago. We went to my parents' house near Oakford to get a bunch of pine needles for some flower beds we were building in the backyard. We bagged ten lawn bags with pine needles, loaded them into my dad's truck, and called it a day. We saw quite a few ticks on the bags and on our gloves. We checked ourselves and everything looked cool. No big deal.

A couple of hours later, we started seeing more ticks. Aubrey had a couple on her upper leg, and I found some on my leg, too. Aubrey's ticks had attached themselves and we had to pluck them. I hate that.

We decided not to use the tick-infested pine needles. The next day, I went to get my dad's truck. I drove the pine needles directly to Evans Recycling and paid $1 a bag to have them turned into mulch. Then, I had them give me a full scoop of mulch from their pile. So, I essentially paid $10 for a free scoop of mulch (plus the labor of bagging all those needles, plus the travel of driving to and from Oakford).

Here's the full story on the life of ticks. Pretty disgusting.