Ticked off

Last night I removed a tick from poor Tyler's ear. This is his second tick this season, and it's only April. Also, I found a tick in the bathroom last week, just crawling around on the white floor, unaware of the impending flushing down my toilet which probably didn't even kill the damn thing.

In looking at the picture below, both ticks found on the Mug Man resemble the female tick very closely. How lovely, knowing our home is a haven for potentially pregnant ticks.


According to Medline Plus, "diseases are often carried by ticks, including Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Colorado Tick Fever, Lyme disease, and tularemia. Less common or less frequent diseases include typhus, Q-fever, relapsing fever, viral encephalitis, hemorrhagic fever, and babesiosis."

While I realize that many creatures seem unpleasant to humankind and various other species, they can have a purpose. I'm thinking about how certain bugs, fungus, bacteria, etc. survive by eating old food, thus helping things decompose return to the earth as fertilizer for new life. All that is fine and dandy. But why the hell do we have ticks? When has the presence of a tick ever made anything better on the planet? They are evil, disease-carrying, skanky parasites. They harm humans, our pets, farm animals, wild animals. I've never heard of a tick helping out with vegetation. So when one of these buggers gets under my Tyler's skin, and I can't think of a single purpose for the existence of its species ... BAH!