Acarophobia

 

“Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway.” ~ John Wayne *

Gentle Readers and Loved Ones,

Over the last year, this blog has become mostly me bloviating about hunting with Rowdy, but this weekend, I got a chance to do some Gadabouts with an old friend.  There will be a string of stories, this is the first.   

Al Cave and I were roomies at the Trade School 45 years ago.  He and his wife, Lisa came to visit Ann and I here in Wisco last weekend.  The major reason was for Al and I to hunt grouse and woodcock together with Rowdy.

The visit gave me a chance to see the greatest act of Christian Love and Courage that I’ve witnessed in my three score and 7.   Bear with me while I lay it out….

Lisa and Rowdy seem to have a special bond.  She loves dogs, Rowdy senses it and he just bounces around happy as a lark when he sees her and he just wants to play and play. 

Next, you cannot enjoy the great outdoors here in NW Wisconsin without coming into contact with Ticks.  Deer ticks, wood ticks, big ticks, little ticks, we got ‘em all.  Every night before I bed down, I stand in front of a mirror and check for them.  Rowdy gets a NexGard chew at the beginning of every month and he’s a tick killing machine.  No tick can survive longer than 24 hours on the Doodle’s non-shedding coat.  Which is great because he just gets freckled with the evil insects as he beats around looking for birds.  Multi-Tens of them and you can see them on his light coat.

The tick cycle up here morbidly fascinates me.  Once the first hard freeze hits, you never see a tick again all winter as you would expect.  But come March or April, after the first thaw, within days, there is a tick bloom and Rowdy just gets loaded.  As the summer progresses an inevitable hot dry spell hits in July or Aug, the ticks die down and I don’t see any on Rowdy for some time.  But come cooler September after the first full rain, the ticks bloom back again in earnest.  This year, the last two weeks have been especially bad as the wet cool fall drags on.  Great for hunting, awful for ticks....

The first day Al was here, we beat the woods hard.  Ann and Lisa drove around behind us on the Sylvan Assault Vehicle picking us up when necessary.  The ladies didn’t plunge into the woods but they did get exposed to the ticks.  It didn’t take long for Lisa to discover that a few ticks had jumped on her, many had jumped on Rowdy and while she still loved the dog, understandably, she didn’t want to pet him anymore.  We had a great time and came back to the cabin to clean up and make dinner.  Rowdy wants to play some more and is puzzled that Lisa won’t have any of it.  He’s all ticked up and there’s really not much to do about it but let the drugs work.  I think Lisa knew this intellectually, but that first day reality hit hard.  She really doesn’t like ticks.  Heck, I get phantom tick crawling sensations on my skin that I can't ignore.

Al has been finding them on him and tossing them in the roaring fire place.  My preferred disposal method is to “bury them at sea” in the potty. 

Ann made a wonderful chili, we sat down to eat and said Grace.  A few minutes later, I look over at Ann.  There is a small, black deer tick, not much bigger than a grain of black pepper and the same color, crawling on her left cheek, just below her eye.  Lisa is sitting between Ann and I.  Without thinking, I blurt out: “Lisa, there’s a tick on Ann’s cheek, grab it!”  You can see her shudder.  This is when I witnessed bravery at its finest.  She set her shoulders, reached over and grabbed the tick off of Ann, pinched between thumb and forefinger, even though she really didn’t want to.  Then, she looks quizzically at me.  I held out my hand, she drops it onto my palm, looking very relieved.  I went back and buried it at sea and we continued dinner.

On that happy note, I remain,

Dad/Geoff

*Yeah, I know, the Duke was a racist and he’s been cancelled.  We all stand before God with both our wisdom and our faults displayed in full measure.  I think it’s idiocy to throw out wisdom because there is also evil….