Plague of the Ticks Part 3

Sorry, y'all.

Didn't mean to leave everyone hanging so long. Life got in the way.

Just think of it like the season finale and the next season's premiere.

This post needed time to breathe.

We saw that lone live tick in the bathroom last Saturday.

We promptly put it in the jar of alcohol.

By the way, since this began, we've had a jar of preserved ticks sitting on our kitchen counter. As if that's not gross.

In all honesty, it's not just ticks. It's anything that resembles a tick. A pebble. A crumb. If it's tick-looking, it goes in the jar.

We actually had two jars going. We were conducting experiments on what kills ticks quickly. Not much. But we had to get rid of the first jar because we started putting the egg piles in it and that was just too gross to keep.

So anyway, we saw the tick on Saturday. It's now Friday and that was the last tick we've seen in the house. Alive or dead.

Now does that mean we're in the clear? Not sure.

Just for kicks, we found three live ticks in the car yesterday. We had yet to see one in the car at all until yesterday. They went in our jar.

See, we've learned a lot about the tick in recent days. Specifically the brown dog tick.

We think the ticks in the car were originally like the itty bitty little ones I had seen on the paper. They fed on Abi while she was in the car and dropped off to hide and molt into the "teenage" ones that we'd been finding all over the house. They then come out of hiding, feed again and become adults where they mate, lay eggs and die. We think they came out of hiding looking for a meal to become mating adults. Sorry ticks. The only meal you get is a mouth full of alcohol.

We can catch those individual ticks ok.

What we're scared of are the tick eggs.

Terrified.

Nothing kills them (that we know of). They either have to be found or they hatch. If we can stop the ticks from laying eggs, we keep the infestation out of our house.

Here's where we hope we have our secret weapon.

Enter Abi.

She's been Frontlined. We've checked her for the last few days and she's been tick free. When Matt put the Frontline on her, he saw one die on the spot.

Supposedly, if a tick tries to feed on her, it will die. No matter what stage it's at.

So theoretically, when we let Abi back in the house, any unkilled ticks that hatch or come out from hiding will find her, try to feed and die.

Matt calls her our Trojan horse of sorts.

The part that freaks me out a little is the "theoretically." Let me tell you. Theoretically does not bring me comfort when I consider the potential mess that awaits us if our little Trojan horse lets us down.

So what to do?

Well, I guess this is where faith comes in. We have to get over this at some point. We know that if the Lord wants us to keep dealing with ticks, ticks will keep coming. We pray that's not the case, but we can't know for sure until it happens. Supposedly the next couple weeks will be our crucial timeframe. Matt jokes there will be a Plague of the Ticks Part 5. I don't think that's very funny.

Speaking of faith, we've tried to see what the Lord might be trying to teach us in all this. We believe that everything in life points to God and we've been looking for Him with every hour of this house-scrubbing, tick-hunting, yard-spraying nightmare.

Here are the conclusions we've come to.

1. PATIENCE. One of the worst words in the world. I want to know right now if there will be another tick in our house. Will all our efforts pay off? Will we be able to put this behind us for good? We're not allowed to know. We wait. Just one more lesson on waiting and patience and trust. Never get enough of those.

2. Even though we're waiting, we can't be idle. I'd love to just forget all about the ticks and let the problem take care of itself, but forgetting all about it will just make it worse. How many times in life do I want to either fix it or let it go? But God is calling us to the process of dealing with the ticks, regardless of the outcome. Sometimes, we're called to a process more than the goal. We do the work He's given us to do and let God take care of the result.

3. Sometimes, things get out of hand and you don't realize it until it's a big mess. Sometimes things blow up in your face and you didn't see it coming. In those moments, you can look back and see what you should've known, but didn't. In those moments, you have to understand that you didn't know what you didn't know and trust that the Lord has taught and grown you for the future and will guide you in cleaning up the mess that was created. You have to have grace and forgiveness for yourself (and others) and believe God had a purpose in it happening just the way it did.

So that's where we are with the ticks. It seems like they're gone, but the Lord only knows. If they return, the next blog will be titled Revenge of the Ticks Part 1.

Speaking of revenge on ticks, probably the most interesting and disgusting thing I learned about ticks during this time was this:

Some species of female wasps lay eggs inside an engorged tick nymph. After the wasp eggs hatch, the larvae feed on the tick's internal tissues and then emerge, killing the tick in the process.


Never in my life have I been more tempted to order me a batch of wasps.