Thursday, February 9, 2012

A tick in time

Many people would find it hard to complain about this predominately spring-like winter, except avid skiers, of course, and perhaps the dogs. It means tick season has been virtually unending. We've taken two dog ticks off of Maya in the past two days, despite having put anti-flea and tick treatment on her earlier in the week! Fortunately, those gross gray suckers aren't as dangerous as the tiny dear ticks and are easier to find, but, still, they're awfully high on the disgusting scale. Maya already had Lime Disease late last year and so I'm particularly concerned about it—for us as well as for her.

It is supposed to get colder this weekend, and I would just as soon have a good, deep cold snap. Drive those parasites into hibernation, or whatever it is they do when it's cold, and kill off a lot of other sickening germs and viruses and whatnot. I'm not sure it's true, but I subscribe to the folk wisdom that a cold winter is healthier than this less than half-hearted season. The weather forecasters say it's due to El Nino weather pattern in the Pacific that is keeping the jet stream up in Canada, and a friend of mine in Lima, Peru, told me last night that the city had gotten heavy rain, something I never saw in the six years I lived there. It doesn't rain in Lima usually. It just sort of mists. But my desire for cold might be a mixed blessing for poor Maya. She has thin hair without an undercoat, which I suppose is fine enough for the milder Irish winters and perhaps more apt to dry quickly from all the rain there, and so she might not do too well in the bitter cold. It doesn't seem to stop her in the snow, though. She loves it.  And if need be, she has a jacket.



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