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I’m glad you got there first, that Green Tick thingy set off my word association downward spiral.

Green tick… Lyme disease… wait, limes are green… oh no, Limeys… why would Limeys eat ticks… Aaarrrggghh!

It gets bad at times.

BRRRRrrr..rrrrrrr….rrrrrr….rrr.rr…..r

Somebody get that thing outta da picture and pop it.

Worst restesses pic ever. Look, weasel has a tick going for her ass.

*in a small voice*
I hate ticks. Brr.

LYME Disease. Poor bastards in the business hierarchy in that Connecticut town have to bear the stigma of having a tick-borne disease named after them. A nasty, sneaky disease at that. Wrecked my friend’s running career.

Wait until you discover that they claim to have “lime” trees in the UK. One day I found out that they were referring to linden trees. Big let down. I thought that England had warmed up behind our backs.

That belly-up tick is really bugging me. Heh. It’s definitely getting under my skin…

Never mind.

Whoa! Weasel gots her stuff delivered!

I did? No I didn’t!

Funnily enough, Jill, I dreamed we did. I went out to the garage to get something and there it all was, neatly stacked away.

If only!

I’ve got several Key Lime plants in pots. You have to bring them in in the winter, but apart from that, they grow quite happily.

I’ve never known any human to get a tick. The dog had one the other day. I pulled it out with a pair of tweezers and threw it on the fire.

Gibby, where did you get the lime plants? I’m looking for some, but the prices here are absurd – over £40 per plant and all the fruits in the shops are seedless.

Dunno if somebody already posted this, but Islamic Rage Boy is polishing his American Idol chops:
http ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk7IN3RNwko

[note the space after http to evade the deadly embrace of Akismet]

Sorry for getting all excited for your stuff ahead of time.

Not sure ‘excited’ is quite the word, Jill…

Terrified, maybe? That 40′ container is going to take some unloading.

Gibby, where did you get the lime plants? I’m looking for some, but the prices here are absurd – over £40 per plant and all the fruits in the shops are seedless.

I grew them from seeds which I procured from here.

I’ve just been searching their site and they don’t seem to stock them any more though. Still, it’s worth looking a their site. They’re very good. I’ve grown a lot of seeds from there.

Here’s an eBay listing for what it’s worth. They’re in Malaysia. I bought a Curry Tree plant from Indonesia and it’s still alive, so it is possible to buy live goods from that far away and not have them die. And I don’t recall citrus seeds being one of these seeds – such as T. cacao – which have a stupidly short viability.

That’s excellent, Gibby – thank you! Have you managed to get any fruit, yet? My understanding is that citrus grown from seed is a bit hit and miss in that respect, though I have high hopes for one of the lemons I’m growing for Her Weaselness.

No worries.

No, no fruit yet. The biggest one is only about 10″ tall and only has a couple of secondary branches. When it does flower/fruit though, I don’t expect there to be a problem. They were advertised as good quality seeds. Not like the Calamondin, the pink grapefruit and lemon plants I’ve also got, which were grown from seeds found in bought fruit and/or acquired fruit.

I had a co-worker come up to me once and told me she had a tick and couldn’t get it out. I said, “Are you sure?” and she lifted up her pantleg and on her knee was this round bloody-looking sore. It was so disgusting and I couldn’t even tell if a tick was there because apparantly she had tried to get it to come out by using lighters and stuff. I said, “oh my God! you need to go to the doctors!” I was kindof horrified by that vision.

A couple days later, my son and I were playing with our cute little ferret that we had not had very long – maybe a couple months. Well, I noticed something on his back and it looked just like my co-workers sore! I thought, OH MY GOD! Flash has a tick! I totally freaked out. I called around to find a vet to look at it (since ferrets are illegal in California) and found one in Palm Springs. I loaded Flash into the carrier and set off down the mountain to the vet’s which was 45 minutes away, all the while apologizing to Flash for being a horrible mommy and letting him get a tick.

So we get to the vet and I’m practically crying over the fact that this has happened. The vet takes one finger and tries to move the tick and it came right off. It wasn’t a tick. It was just a scab where he must have scratched himself. I stood there like a totally idiot! I hadn’t thought to investigate or (horrors!) touch it. The vet just looked at me and said “no charge.”

Uncle Badger – I don’t know your experience level with shipping containers but – I have found on the three occasions I have loaded/unloaded containers that it unloads waaaay faster than it loads. Like, about 10x to 20x faster.

It depends on whether you are going to unload and store the boxes (garage, shed, or basement), or are going to try to unpack the boxes at the same time. If the latter – I feel your pain. I’ve been moved about 6 months and the boxes still aren’t unpacked.

Gibby:

I picked up a tick when I was living in Turkey, where I used to hike the hills north of Tarsus. I noticed the tortoises I found all over the place were favorite targets of ticks; some had hundreds of the nasty little buggers on them.

When I returned from one hike, I found a tick gainfully employed on the inside of my thigh. A drop of whiskey caused it to remove its head from my flesh, whereupon I put it in an ashtray and made tick flambé.

The memory still gives me the oogies, and I’m not squeamish about much.

Every time I’ve had a tick I initially thought it was a mole for a second or so. Not so easy to remember all the exact locations when you’ve always had a few peppered around, and some new ones.

Ticks, pfft. Go with the Leech. My cousin taught me a useful anti-leech trick… Panty hose. Me cousin was a SEAL in Vietnam and his biggest worry was being captured by the VC wearing panty hose. The whole manly thing.

Dude, dude, you had bigger worries, says I. Until I discovered the joys of Central America. Hanes, baby.

I swam a lot in Lake Pontchartrain and the surrounding bayous down in Louisiana, and despite my supreme oogitude regarding leeches, I never got one on me. If I had, I’m sure it would have replaced that tick in my personal Oogie Hall Of Fame.

Leeches are about a 3.5 on my oogiometer.

But a tick? A nasty, blood-filled grey sac of a tick? Elevenses, Precious, elevenses.

Oooo, I bet Weasel is full of pride with her mninions. Who else can discuss blood sucking creatures with such aplomb?

My all time favorite is the vampire bat. It’s saliva contains an anti-coagulant called draculin.

Doesn’t leech spit and mosquito probe-juice also contain anticoagulants? Just sayin’…

Or maybe it was just herbs and spices. *shrugs*

Ticks on the oogie scale! I can tell none of ya’ll have lived in the country! Put garlic powder in the hound’s feed at night (oh yeah and use Advantage EVERY month) and check your lover EVERY night for ticks. Below the Mason-Dixon line, it’s refered to as Foreplay! Grits and tick- checking……it’s a southern thang!

I second armybrat’s comments. Here in central Virginia I must get between 50-100 ticks on me between April and June.

Then between August and Septemeber I inevitably brush against a plant covered with deer ticks in the nymph stage and get several hundred of them which we attack with duct tape. If they escape the duct tape they cause horrible itchy bites in embarrasing places.

The tickses. We hates them.

I’ve lived in the South my entire life and gotten a tick only once, while camping in Arkansas. But then, I live in a big city and am not exactly Outdoor Girl.

McGoo, when I moved into my house, I accumulated a huge pile of “oh, I’ll deal with that later” in my dining room. So I took a Saturday and forced myself to unpack every single box and find a place for every single item. Not fun, but I got the job done. (Mostly. I still have a pile of “going to Goodwill.” And I only just now cleaned up from hurricane prep – I had thrown a bunch of stuff into the garage pre-Ike, and just this weekend finally cleaned it up. I feel better already.)

Well, damn. I guess some of us are just big helpless wussies about ticks, then. 🙂

jw, wendyworn – you gonna lose sleep over it? Me neither… 😉

Mrs. Peel – yea, I’ve been there – done that. But this time I’m blocked from progress by the fact that I’m I’m lightly (and slowly) remodeling the basement for the home theatre system, Gun&reloading room, electronics hobby room, and library. Additionally I’m having to soundproof the furnace room/laundry room. I’m doing this all myself – and I’m not young.

Therefore I can’t (won’t) unpack the boxed-up stuff for each room yet. That’s all my books, movies (dvd and laserdisc and tape) electronics equipment and supplies, etc.

*screams in frustration*

I’ll get there. I have the rest of my life! And I am having fun!!!

July 1975.
Jim ran out of water before they crossed into Fort Stewart. It was Georgia hot, his first day bicycling. No water. Jim passed out in Hinesville, heat stroke, next to the Tastee-Freeze. Fell out in the pine litter.

When he regained consciousness there were spots all over his body.

He thought the spots were hallucinations secondary to hyperthermia and dehydration.

Nope. It was ticks, dozens and dozens of ticks, crawling in all directions on his dermis, making themselves at home.

The Mayor of Hinesville, it turned out, ran that Tastee Freeze.

Does weasel eat ticks after they are removed? That is Sophie’s favorite part.

What were you doing in Turkey jw? Apart from acquiring ticks, I mean.

Speaking of ticks, does anyone remember The Tick animated tv series? I loved that show. ‘Duh-dwee, duh, duh, duh, dwee-dow…’ Yeah.

The Tick was awesome. “Villains! I say to you now – knock off all that Evil!!” They even tried a live-action version of the show a few years back. I don’t think it lasted a single season.

I love this:
http ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49lFPyzTfjw
(Mind the gap)

I think it’s because of the music. Good music.

Gibby: My dad was over there supervising a tunneling operation. Me, I was learning Turkish, cutting classes at Tarsus American College, and enjoying the country.

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