Tick Attack!

We are under siege by creatures the size of fly poop.  Like Agamemnon's army they surround our house on all sides, dropping down on us from the trees if we go into the woods and climbing up our pant legs if we venture into the field.  The only place where we are relatively safe is the yard, where the grass is still short.

2012 was a bad tick year, and we blamed it on the early spring.  There's been nothing early about this spring, and the winter was good and cold.  But the ticks just holed up in their deer fur duvets and now, like the rest of us, they want to be out doing stuff. 

Every time the dogs come back from a walk I check them over, but it's just a formality.  What chance do I have of finding a crawling fly speck in Wolfie's super-thick undercoat?  Bisou, whose hair though long is much sparser, should be easier, and sometimes I do catch one crawling around.  But I usually don't find them until the next day, with their heads deep into her skin, sucking away like tiny Draculas.

These are bad enough, but not as awful as the ones that drop to the floor like ripe olives, having had their fill of blood and transmitted their parasite du jour into my dogs.  Bisou has had Lyme for a couple of years, though fortunately you'd never know it from watching her.  Wolfie has anaplasmosis, another tick-borne illness, and despite three courses of antibiotics has never regained his stamina.  Most of the dogs I know have Lyme, and several of my human friends do as well.  New diseases carried by ticks are identified every year. 

Tomorrow my dogs are scheduled for their annual vet check-up.  She and I will have a depressing discussion about which insecticides do the most harm to the ticks and the least harm to the dog.  There are no good answers.  For decades I have held fleas at bay by sprinkling liberal amounts of garlic powder on the dog food, but there are no natural tick deterrents, and every few years ticks develop resistance to the latest manufactured toxins.

Fortunately, the tick offensive doesn't last all summer.  It will diminish in early summer, just as the black flies emerge.  Black flies show definite preferences for certain people, of whom I am one.  They leave me with bleeding, itchy welts around the back of my neck.  But they are little sweethearts, compared to ticks.

A Good Day To Be Outside

It's miraculous weather here at the moment—blue skies, cool breezes, no bugs. Well, almost--I just got my first black-fly bite of the season. It made a big lump behind my ear, and blood trickled down my neck. I think it's a badge of honor, a sign that I'm a real Vermonter.

This is the kind of weather that makes even weeding enjoyable. The ground is moist and loose, the weeds young and naïve. They give way easily and I dump them into a big tub and carry them to the goats and chickens, who enjoy picking through them like customers at a yard sale.

Later in the year, sweat runs into my eyes and stings me as I weed. But now, barely breaking a sweat, I congratulate myself on getting a headstart on the weeds. Pretty soon the “good” plants will form a canopy over the ground and smother the weeds in their cradles.

Everything smells so good. Here is what I smelled this morning: lilacs of a certain age (I dislike the scent of immature lilac), lemon balm, orange mint, lavender, ornamental sage (strong stuff), some unidentified mint, chamomile, apple mint, rose/lemon geraniums, and drying hay.

After weeding, I started moving stuff around: some thyme into the bare spot next to the back steps, some sunflower volunteers from the vegetable garden to the area under the bird feeder, and the mystery seedlings to a bed I made for them in a sunny spot (I'm sure they're the descendants of Halloween pumpkins we chopped up for the chickens last fall).

I filled the watering can in the tub garden and watered the new plantings. Then I refilled the tub garden with the hose. Why not water directly from the hose, you ask? First, because plants hate cold showers, and the water from the tub is not icy like the water from the hose, which comes straight from the well. Second, because this allows me to renew the water in the tub, which will help to keep my two precious Shubunkin, Alpha and Omega, alive.

Since I got the two fish a week ago, I've barely caught a glimpse of them. I read that you should provide fish with a good hiding spot, and I did such a good job of that that nobody would guess there are guests in the tub. I'm hoping that with time they will get over their shyness.

After the gardening I realized that this was the day to wave the buck rag.

Here's some more goat ob/gyn: goats come into heat every 18 to 21 days. The signs of heat are tail wagging, restlessness, bleating, and secretions from the appropriate places. Usually a goat will show all these even if there isn't a buck for miles around. But some goats have “silent” heats, and that's when you have recourse to the buck rag. This is a piece of cloth that has been rubbed on a buck's scent glands (on the top of his head) and carefully stored in a glass jar.

With the wood thrush as background music, I opened the jar and waved the cloth in front of Blossom and Alsiki. They were certainly interested. They sniffed and sniffed and tried to nibble it. (The buck rag, by the way, smelled like very old goat cheese, the kind I can't stand.) Then they tried to nibble my shirt.

They did not, however, wag their tails, become restless, bleat, or anything else. Perhaps they were just happy to smell their old friend, the buck Challenger, whom they had visited recently. Perhaps they are repressed, and believe in keeping their feelings to themselves. Or perhaps, may it please the goddesses, perhaps they're pregnant.

This evening, as my husband mowed the lawn, I found a freaked-out toad trying to escape the mower. I picked it up--it lay cool and still in my hand--and carried it to a hiding place near the vegetable garden.