{"id":148,"date":"2011-02-27T19:34:50","date_gmt":"2011-02-27T19:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fanagrams.net\/blog\/?p=148"},"modified":"2011-03-20T18:16:07","modified_gmt":"2011-03-20T18:16:07","slug":"tick-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/tick-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Tick Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have now almost completed a full year at our new home on the Middlefork prairie.\u00a0 One of the true pleasures is a greater appreciation of the year\u2019s cycles.\u00a0 The movement of the setting sun across the horizon and the waves of migrating birds were both anticipated and welcomed.\u00a0 Our seasonal infestation of ticks, however, was not.\u00a0 Starting in early May, the ticks will be tracked into our house in droves, clinging to our dogs.\u00a0 The anti-tick goo keeps the ticks from lodging on the dogs, but\"\"<\/a> currently there is no human version available, though I have been tempted to go canine and dab the stuff on the back of my neck.\u00a0 Our poorly trained dogs jump onto the furniture and the bloodthirsty ticks drop off and search for new prospects, namely us mortgage payers.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t catch on to this until the ticks starting routinely showing up in our bed.\u00a0 Nick would wake up in the morning and discover three ticks on his neck as he was brushing his teeth.\u00a0 This led to frantic tick checks before getting into bed, carefully making the bed in the morning to keep the ticks out of the sheets, and diligently keeping the doors closed during the day to deny access to the dogs.\u00a0 However, this belt and suspenders approach is not fool proof.\u00a0 One night there was an old gummy tennis ball on the bed, a sure sign that there had been a break down.<\/p>\n

This tick situation caused a crisis at bell choir rehearsal.\u00a0 We were practicing a tricky piece that had a riff of competing doublets and triplets, and I requested that we drill on several problematic measures.\u00a0 Just as we launched into the piece, I felt a tick marching across my forehead.\u00a0 Since we were rehearsing for my sole benefit, and both hands held bells preventing any discrete removal of the tick, I tried to stay focused and ignore the patter of little feet.\u00a0 However, when the tick turned northward and headed into my scalp, I snapped.\u00a0 I dropped my bells with a clank, the music slid off the stand and I yelled, \u201cit\u2019s a tick!\u201d\u00a0 I threw the tick onto the floor, and when I looked up, now relaxed, I saw the horrified look on my musical mates, who looked at me like the epitome of pestilence.\u00a0 At this point, I had grown used to peeling ticks off, but I can understand their disgust and intimation that it is a simple courtesy to delouse oneself before social events.\u00a0 The very fastidious women next to me did not want to proceed until we had found the tick and killed it.\u00a0 While the tick was easily found, killing it is another matter, since you simply cannot crush them.\u00a0 I was then instructed to impale the tick with a pencil, and when I attempted to do this, the point of the pencil snapped and the tick flipped away out of sight.\u00a0 We bravely continued on with our rehearsal, but I noticed everyone nervously fidgeting and looking at the floor.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

This morning I have enjoyed my sojourn on the internet, learning more about the life cycle of a tick, and am pleased to report that they all die by the end of June.\u00a0 Those that have had the great good fortune of a blood meal die after laying millions of eggs, the others just die of starvation.\u00a0 The life cycle includes egg, larva, nymph and adult.\u00a0 The latter three stages all require blood meals, often from different hosts, which seems to be an inefficient and risky way to live.\u00a0 The larva has six legs, but the nymph and adult have 8 legs.\u00a0 What\u2019s up with that?\u00a0 You\u2019ve just got to love the mysterious ways of Ma Nature.<\/p>\n

The missing words in the following poems are all anagrams (like spot, stop, post) and the number of dashed indicatd the number of letters.\u00a0 One of the missing words will rhyme with either the previous or following lines.\u00a0 Your job is to solve the missing letters based on the context of the poem.\u00a0 Scroll down for the answers.<\/h6>\n

Ticks await on the —- of grass blades just out of sight,<\/p>\n

Then crawl up your pants, looking for soft flesh to bite.<\/p>\n

Their hypostome pierces the skin, and they dig right in,<\/p>\n

Using an anticoagulant in their —- to keep the blood thin.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

You certainly don\u2019t want the diseases that a tick transmits,<\/p>\n

So right now check your belly button, hair line and both arm—-.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

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*<\/p>\n

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Answers;\u00a0 tips, spit, pits<\/p>\nFollow Liza Blue on: \"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>Share: \"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have now almost completed a full year at our new home on the Middlefork prairie.\u00a0 One of the true pleasures is a greater appreciation of the year\u2019s cycles.\u00a0 The movement of the setting sun across the horizon and the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVc8-2o","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":319,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions\/319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}