Eat, or be Eaten
I am all about live and let live these days, with one—well, two—current exceptions: ticks, and mosquitos.
Like you, I brake for garden toads scrambling to get out of the way of the lawnmower. I do the same for the garter snakes that slither after them. I had a toad up against a stonewall this morning that was trying desperately to make it to a higher crevice. I drove around, giving it some berth, and will have to go back with grass clippers to even the uncut patch that remains (although, seriously, that is not going to happen; it will wait until next week).
But you understand. I do not like to mow, shoot, drown, hit, or smoosh any little thing if it can be avoided. I am known to release beetles and bugs into the wild, shoo wasps out the window, help caterpillars across the road. Maybe I hope it adds to my total score when life is complete, and atones for my cruelty to small creatures as a boy: for instance, the summer afternoons I spent experimenting with sunlight and a magnifying glass to frizzle ants. Or the vacation a friend and I decimated the sand toad population of a Lake Erie beach in Canada with firecrackers. In those days, if I saw a spider in my room I would thwack it unhesitatingly with the heel of a slipper, provided I could reach it without risk of something grabbing me by the ankle from under the bed.
I am all about live and let live these days, with one—well, two—current exceptions: ticks, and mosquitos. Black fly season is over. I suppose they died by the dozens by my hand while they were around the past several weeks, but they are so small, and swarm in such numbers, that we cover ourselves in long pants and shirts, with nets over our heads, to simply avoid them. A few unlucky ones find their way past the protection and get crushed against my neck or forehead. Last week, someone said it looked like I had been bitten by vampires given the amount of small, incisor-like marks on my neck following an afternoon working in the garden.
When it comes to my sense of compassion, my red line (no pun) is the bloodsuckers. Think of it this way: they are the only animals in the food chain that continue to stalk us. Around here, we live surrounded by bear, coyote, bobcats, moose, but unless we are caught, accidentally and awkwardly, with one of their children, they leave us alone. Live and let live. The bloodsuckers never accepted that sort of liberal weenie nonsense. It is eat, or be eaten.
So be it.
Among their kind, what is mostly left to contend with for the balance of the summer are the mosquitoes and ticks. The mosquitoes have just arrived. Their noise, alone, drives you to distraction, especially after dark. Zzzz, Zzzz as they float in, bouncing, weaving, flying very much like they are over the legal limit, making them difficult to swat, midair. So, I let them land, at which point, preoccupied with drilling, they are defenseless. Poor mosquitoes. They care more about the survival of the species than the individual. They flood the zone, hoping one or two will manage to safely land, feed, and escape without getting plastered. And plaster them I do.
But the tick. The tick. A part of me thinks we will all be working for them some day. There is no way to assess their personality. They may be very pleasant to one another, passing in the tall grass, catching a ride on the same host. Fish and game rangers say a moose can be infested by 100,000 ticks over the course of a season, meaning ticks must have learned to get along and avoid territorial disputes. With us, however, they are only, ever, unpleasant; the sort to sneer—thanks to their built-in numbing agent— this won’t hurt a bit.
Right now, it feels like several are crawling over my body. Thank goodness I work alone because I am disrobing regularly in anxious search of the creepy devils. Every year at this time I get slightly psychotic imagining things all over me, which is one reason I suggest ticks may eventually succeed in driving us mad enough to enforce their will, trapping us inside, handing them the outside world. You may already know people who will not take summer walks in the woods, or go on picnics. I do.
Lyme disease is the thing, of course. Not only are ticks preloaded with an anesthetic, many are preloaded with disease. Skillful. Diabolical. I ask you, where did all that anger come from? Anger that leaves behind a skin rash the size of your fist.
So be it.
Into the fire, down the drain, under my foot. I am for “all creatures, great and small.” I do not bring a sense of dominion over all others to my place in the natural world. I take what I need, honoring it best I can, and leave the rest that we might go along and get along. But everyone has their limits. The moose certainly must. If they had opposable thumbs, 100,000 ticks might face serious reprisal, bringing them to the bargaining table, we could hope. Who knows? The tick I pulled from a leg this morning was prepared to leave its head behind. I mean, who does that?