Yep, that is right, my new worst enemy is the tick. Not only is it a blood sucker but it has become a major time sucker. I don't know if it is the new plants our landlord had planted or the time of the year but holy crap...they love Dillon so therefore they end up in the house, just walking around like they own the place, which they probably do. In fact they almost did until I found this fine lady today under a piece of furniture right beside where Dillon sleeps.
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| Mommy and her eggs, isn't that cute! |
Did you know that a tick can lay up to 18,000 eggs? OMG! So the time sucking comes in because every time Dillon goes out to take care of business I have to do the once over to get all of the hitch hikers. Tonight after he went out and just before bed I took off 25 ticks! Seriously, look:
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| Hitch hikers looking for blood |
And that happens more than once a day. The thing is that 99% of them are the same size. I have only gotten a few giant ones, I guess the rest are laying eggs in my house getting ready to take over.
Poor guy, he looks so sad, like he has leprosy or something, but actually he gets SOOO much more attention and rubs than ever before. I give him a full body look see and rub down three times a day.
The other time sucker is the research on ticks, how to get rid of them, what to do if they are in your home, etc. Luckily they have not gotten on us yet as we all know what nasty creatures they are and the diseases they carry. The cleaning, sweeping, looking, taking down the curtains and putting all of the carpets and other linens that aren't a must (bed linens) away in plastic bags. I can literally spot a tick the size of a large knat 20 feet away and the ticks here are immune to Frontline. So what is one to do?
1) We could get or borrow a chicken, they eats ticks and they are a dime a dozen here, which I am very close to doing. But then I need to learn how to keep it around. I have seen that the chickens in town are not in cages and pretty loyal to their owners. I need to do more research.
2) People say put the dog in the ocean every day, but then he will get bacterial and yeast infections as we have already experienced. No bueno!
3) Fumigate your house but it doesn't help if the dog keeps bringing in the ticks. Your first step is to make the dog unacceptable to ticks. OKAY! or have your chicken eat all the ticks around your house.
4) Go on a long work bender and let Ozzy worry about it:)
I vote for # 4
I don't have time for this s@#t! I have less than one week before I go back to work, I am preparing an hour long presentation that I have to give to both Alex and Trace's classes on Thursday, separately, on airplanes, the business and places I have visited, (I don't think I ever prepared this much when I was in school), I had to prepare lunch for Alex's class tonight, which I totally forgot about until 2 this afternoon. These lunch preparations can take all day sometimes. Luckily I picked an easy one. And the topping on the cake, if you follow our blog you can probably guess... yes, the car is broken and in the shop, we were out of power in most of the house for two days, go figure, most of the house, ie.. we are getting power from two different sources in the town, only in Mexico, luckily the refrigerator worked so we ran an extension cord from the multiple outlet on the fridge to run the router for the Internet and other miscellaneous things, and made it work and it is light enough long enough so we really didn't need lights and we had food. I have something going on with my ears, infection, sinus, maybe a tick is making a home in one of them but I cannot lay down long enough to put the right medicine in to help them, that should be fun on the airplane and for the next two weeks at work. The good news is we have water and we do not have lice! But if we get lice maybe the ticks will eat the lice and then the chicken will eat the ticks. It is all about using the food chain that is available to you.
Ahhh, another day in paradise! Who wants to come visit?;) We have room.
