Inspecticide 2: The Tick Necklace

Its important for me to say that I generally like insects -they are most amazing. I have my favorites and those that I simply would rather not have crawling on me. In my search for the type of red creature this is, I can say I've gotten close: a red mite or a velvet mite, superfamily Trombidioidea. It is a mite, not an insect.

But when I get into it, it's not long before I begin to feel that itchy sensation -like they're all crawling on me. On my Tulip Tree journey, I had my first (aware of) run-in with a deer tick. It looked just like this, climbing up my jeans:

Copyright: Lynette Schimming, 2006

I had been in the woods many times. I had stopped to photo the tulip trees, then my wife wanted to show me the difference between the Trillium leaves and the Jack-in-the-Pulpit leaves (another post). I'm pretty sure that's where I picked her up, the female tick that is. I had sprayed my shoes and knees down with skintastic and a citronella product. Tick did not care and was wasting no time crawling up me leg. I flicked her off.

photo credit: Charles Schurch Lewallen, 2006

Nothing is more gross (well, maybe some things) than a fully engorged tick. Our dog used to get ticks attached occasionally when I was a kid. They'd drop off, you'd see them slowly making their way and slam, pop, exploded blood everywhere.

I haven't been aware of a tick on me since 1995, after a three day stint in Hell's Canyon National Recreation Area. I caught it before it started its meal -on my ass! But that's another story.

When attending college in the Hudson Valley, friends and I used to bushwack relentlessly in the Shawangunks. We tick-searched and groomed like chimps afterward and no ticks ever found.

When I lived in San Miguel, New Mexico, I was alarmed to see armies of ticks marching across my patio in the garden I created, but then even inside the house. The neighbors dog was wearing them like gray pearls. Later I was told that the mice in the area, and the straw in the mud bricks used to construct my building, were quite hospitable to ticks. Still, I never wore one.

But once I got the tick on me pants the other day, I became more conscious of the possibility, how easy it is.

I've never been a fan of insect repellent, which I always took to be the first cousin of pesticides, and one that you sprayed on yourself! But I've been wearing below the knees the deet-containing skintastic that was left here by a former resident. Why, because this freaks me out more than anything:

Copyright: Lynette Schimming, 2005

Nymphal ticks, smaller, hard-to-see, abundant!

City gardener, we've got other dragons to slay. I'll take cat cocky, peckin' pigeons, satanic squirrels, foolishly flung footballs, sticky-fingered folks, and what else thy city will throw at me over the blood sucking minutiae of suburbia outward. Not to mention their other dragons -too many to list!

*UPDATE* 

I caught one of those nymphal ticks on me yesterday. I never would have caught it, as it was hightailing up my leg, but I was checking every few minutes because I was stop and go strolling through what I now call the gauntlet -a thin trail with grass drooping in from each side. If I didn't see the moving dot...