The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
-by Sherryanne De La Boise
As I was doing my morning absolutions, a tick meandered across my nightgown. I stood up quickly, grabbed a couple of tissues, captured, then tossed the tick into the toilet. Quickly flushed.
I was sending the creature on a whirlpool water vacation, only to have to commode back up.
The tick vacationing on a floating, white tissue island.
Grabbing the plunger, I ended his vacation. But, the plunger is black. How could I be certain that the tick was not lurking inside it, ready to pounce and turn me into his vampire feast?
As I rinsed and sanitized the plunger, messed up the shower. So, Monday morning will be starting with a well-scrubbed bathroom, all before the 6 am puppy walk.
Just in case the puppy was the source of the ticks, he had an 8am grooming appointment. His stitches/staples were removed a week ago. The leather of his skin gaped a little right by his private parts, so I have been reticent about getting him wet and keeping him far from his river pleasures. But, the threat of ticks has ended that hesitation. He's at the groomer, as I write this.
Normally, I am not so crazed about a mere insect. However, last night, I removed nine of them from my scalp, one from the front and the back of my ear, two from the shower floor, and two from Mother!
I offered to make up the sofa for my long suffering husband, in case he was worried about a missed tick wandering to his side of the bed. Like the good soldier that he is, he volunteered for duty and climbed into bed. This morning, he stripped the bed (being laundry day). He made report of finding only one insect under the bottom sheet. "Not a tick. It was a stink bug."
Yesterday, we had been merely weeding the flower bed by the front door.
It had been overtaken by Creeping Charlie, that deep green groundcover with the pretty purple flower. It would have been a lovely carpet to replace mowed grass, except that it chokes out everything in its path including the expensive shrubbery, carefully selected flowering plants and small fruit trees that we have put into our landscaping.
I had been tossing the removed Creeping Charlie into a large circle of poultry wire with the other weeds, but the Creeping Charlie had refused to render itself into mulch. Instead, it has rooted and carpeted the top of the compost pile and is projecting though the chicken wire on all sides, flourishing amidst the kitchen scraps. The look on the hardware store man's face when I asked about a weed killer for my compost pile…..
He wanted to sell my series of smaller, closed plastic bins. The mice would just chew holes into the plastic. Can't have hawks and owls without mice, so the mice have an easy route through the poultry wire.
So, now I do the extra work and spread the weeds onto the asphalt driveway. The sun bleaches them to death, saving me the expense of purchasing chemicals.
"How you gonna plow-off snow from a planted driveway?" asked my mailman. He mis-understood using the sun to kill the weeds, and thought I was trying to bury my asphalt with a carpet of Creeping Charlie.
As I was pulling up the Creeping Charlie and its tangle of myriad roots, I have to admit that I was thrilled with the number and variety of insects that I encountered. Not just the usual ants and worms, but three sizes of ants, seven types of beetles, four types of spiders, stink bugs, slugs and several insects that will need to be looked up. I did not find ticks, but boy did they find me!
Having just had my blonde eyebrows tinted brown and blonde eyelashes glued to extensions, I was not supposed to get them wet, to give the dyes and the glues a chance to set. But, upon finding so many ticks, I lathered up and hoped that I would emerge from the shower with both brown eyebrows and a couple of eyelashes still attached.
FaceBook had one of those quizzes to determine if a woman was high maintenance. I think the scoring was wrong. I consider myself plain scrubbed with simple makeup and jewelry.
According to this particular quiz, my morning routine is the equivalent of a Drag Queen. And, that is without any points for sterilizing my bathroom against ticks twice in 24 hours!