Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Spring 3; Non-Amused Mainer 0

This post is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. I've gotten my second black fly bite of the spring--very unusual for our area, as we live in very southern Maine and the nasty buggers (as Amy called them) just aren't a huge problem for us. All fine and well. I can live with a black fly bite or two, but I can't believe what happened this morning.

We woke around 5:45 , as usual. I feel that my right eye has a lot of what my grandmother used to call "sleepy dirt". While still lying on my back in bed , I dig the sleepy dirt out of the corner of my eye and notice it contains a black lump of something. It appears to be a huge clump of mascara--highly unlikely as I didn't put mascara on yesterday (the Maine office is very casual), and I'd washed my face before going to bed. This requires further investigation (and my glasses).

Upon closer inspection, it is identified as a dead deer tick. IN MY EYEBALL? Gross. Exceedingly, terribly, really, really gross. Disconcerting, icky, just wrong, wicked bad and skanky. Evidence below (you may click to enlarge the grossness, if you like):

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm just doing a full body shake and making noises...

Anonymous said...

Holy crap! You need to get the yard sprayed - can't the bug patrol do anything about them?

Anonymous said...

That is sick. Taking a picture is even more sick. You need to move out of Maine. Now.

Wisdom Weasel said...

Spray the yaaahd, Jb? Now that's a real flatlander solution, ayuh. If we live in the woods, and other things that live in the woods sometimes crawl on us, we shouldn't hit 'em with Monsanto's best. We should tuck our pants in our socks, wear a hat, and go through the time-honored Maine ritual of shouting "tick check!" when we get back to the mudroom. The ticks were probably here first, bub.

Although thinking on it, deer ticks are apparently incomers from Massachusetts in recent years. All that nice global warming brought on by- among-others- carbon hungry pesticide factories to the west has made Maine more hospitable to the little buggers. Wicked ironic, yup.

mainelife said...

She's from the part of Ohio nobody wanted and now lives in NYC--she doesn't know from Nature...

Personally, I'm just hoping to not get "the Lyme"....