Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Ticked off


Ticked off
Originally uploaded by goforchris.
This, gentle reader, is a tick bite. It is on my arm, just above the wrist. It itches like something unladylike with which I shall not sully this blog. And it's been there for rather longer than I think healthy, so in an hour or so I shall see the practice nurse and find out if my arm is about to fall off. And no, the nurse is not practising on me.

I do not remember ticks as featuring largely in my childhood. I don't mean the hours spent playing on a bomb site or among the trees above the underground shelters in the west end of Glasgow, but I do mean the annual two months in which I roamed, more or less as I pleased, in the woods and hills of Arran. All these times we lurked in the bracken hiding from one another did not result in later minute examination of the skin and attack with oil and tweezers.

Why are there more of the creatures? Are there more deer? And how is it that something so miniscule can effect so much damage in the space of an hour? Answers welcomed ....tick all the boxes, if you can.

Hmm.

8 comments:

  1. What a colourful picture you paint of of our childhood! I,for one, do not remember any deer but I do remember the head high bracken with no tics.I think they love you more than most though as I have been back in that bracken in recent years and not been attacked.

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  2. Anonymous5:42 PM

    Ouch! Sorry you are suffering so - and hope it gets better soon.

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  3. It's about frost. They die if the temperature truly drops below freezing. Warm winters mean more ticks. Dunoon has one of the heaviest tick populations in Britain: something the vestry of Holy T TOTALLY failed to advertise in it's profile!

    ps -- the random letters for blog security has offered me the Latin for 'they all go out'. How ironic.

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  4. Oh dear, I hope you were treated and that bite is better now!

    Here in the (northeastern) US, we have to be aware of the dreaded Lyme Disease. My older brother, a rough, salty hermit wholiveshuntinginthewoods suffered from Lyme Disease. I often wonder if the open heart surgery and aortic valve replacement he underwent had something to do with that...

    Although we live in the woods, we are told that there have been no instances of Lyme's here. The ironic thing about the disease is that when one gets a tick bite, it is often unnoticed. I think I should be more like you, with the darn thing driving me nuts!

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  5. We have Lyme disease here nowadays, with the result that I am now on the antibiotic prescribed to prevent it developing. :-(

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  6. Anonymous1:41 AM

    Well, Chris, the antibiotic may or may not do any long-term good, for the court is still out on that, as far as I know. But, assuming that you are not hypersensitive to the drug, it can do little harm. Best to watch for the usually present (but not always) peculiar red ring around the bite site–but don’t expect a pocket full of posies. In any case, the odds of your being infected from even a carrier tick are not really all that high, so not to worry, yet.
    Walter

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  8. Walter, there is a red ring of about 4cm diameter around the site. Hence the hypochondria....

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