The Tick Magnet

NOTE: Three months of hard work paid off, and the problem is solved. Hallelujah!

I must admit: I missed the signs. When I caught sight of fresh, thick blood dripping from Moxie's ear that January morning, I should have checked her out thoroughly. I simply mopped it up and thought, Oh well, she must have caught it on something. Long floppy ears are vulnerable to all sorts of things.


Three days later, while petting her, I discovered a little lump in her fur and thinking it was the beginning of a mat, I pulled it out with my fingernails. Yikes, that's no mat! Not only was it a disgusting tick, it had been attached for a while and had left a bloody hole in her skin. Within days I had extracted more than 30 of the little beasts from her coat. They ranged in size from tiny black sesame seeds to fat grey sunflower seeds. Panicking, I applied an old dose of Advantix to her coat that I had from 2 years ago, and started checking out the subject on the internet. Ticks in winter? Where did they come from? Did they hibernate and spring up in that little thaw we had a few weeks ago? Meanwhile, the Advantix did not seem to be doing the trick. Moxie’s skin was a minefield of fresh ticks and swollen crusty scabs.

Finally, I hauled Mox off to the vet with a baggie full of the wriggling fiends. It only took a minute for the vet to examine them and announce the bad news: these were Brown Dog Ticks, the only tick that likes to over-winter in your house. They were probably the offspring of the ticks she had picked up in August on a trip up north—the ones we "successfully" treated, or so we thought. The Advantix wouldn't be much help until we had the house fumigated. With diligence, we could expect to be rid of them within 3 to 6 months.

Since then, Rentokil has made two visits, and I have become an expert Tick Picker with an estimated count of over 150 of the devils. They favour her ears and between her toes, but they can be found anywhere there's fur. Every morning she sits quietly on her grooming table, while I give her a finger massage with a pair of tweezers and a baggie at the ready. Now that we've sprayed twice I've found fewer large adults, but the little ones are easily missed and get more time to grow into fat monsters.

We've all found them in the carpet:

And they're not above jumping on people when they can't find a furry mammal.

Brown Dog Tick infestations are rare and not easy to get a handle on. The engorged female adult can lay up to 5,000 eggs, but more commonly around 1,500. Hiding under your baseboards and behind your window molding, they can go without a blood meal for as long as 18 months. An aggressive approach with chemical spraying (Permethrin, the same chemical used to combat head lice and scabies) is our only choice. This means pulling furniture away from the wall, picking everything small up off the floor, and leaving the house (with Moxie, of course) for 6 hours. It's no picnic.

Dare I say, We’re winning? I’ve found about 6 ticks in the last week, a huge improvement. In the meantime, if you have a strong stomach, check them out online.

Deeping Slogs

German Word of the Week: Zottelig

Poetry for Pets

Mother Doesn't Want a Dog

Mother doesn't want a dog.

Mother says they smell,

And never sit when you say sit,

Or even when you yell.

And when you come home late at night

And there is ice and snow,

You have to go back out because

The dumb dog has to go.

Mother doesn't want a dog.

Mother says they shed,

And always let the strangers in

And bark at friends instead,

And do disgraceful things on rugs,

And track mud on the floor,

And flop upon your bed at night

And snort their doggy snore.

Mother doesn't want a dog.

She's making a mistake,

Because more than a dog I think

She will not want this snake.

—Judith Viorst

This is the very first poem we learned as part of our Well Trained Mind grammar stage memorization routine. Well before we seriously thought of a dog as a pet. Back then we had a stick insect, and a more useless pet I cannot imagine. Then came the leopard gecko, only slightly less useless because you could actually hold him. But not too often, and only if you washed your hands immediately after to guard against salmonella poisoning. Most of your time with a gecko is spent buying, caring for, catching, powdering with calcium dust, and cleaning up after a batch of extremely stinky crickets.

So as pets go, I have to say, dogs win hands down for being more snuggly than an insect or reptile. Sweet, playful, smarter than a gecko, sometimes naughtly, but in firm possession of all our hearts here in the suburban jungle.

I can't remember where I heard this story: A woman is in her kitchen, when she hears her husband call out from the bathroom, "Honey, can toothpaste go bad?" Turns out he had used the dog's poultry-flavoured paste by mistake. Still makes me chuckle.