Tick Season Has Arrived

The nymph on the right is about as big as a period. Period.

I hate to mention it, but it's above 28 degrees outdoors. The snow is still on the ground, and the temperatures in recent days have reached a high of 50. So pleasant.

Now for the bad news: Tick season has begun. Yes, ticks like it cool. They creep into action at around 28 degrees.

It's easy to think that snow = cold = ticks are still asleep. But the snow is no protection. The snow lulls us into a false sense of security.

It's time to spray all my clothes with permethrin. Or send them off and let Insect Shield do it for $8 a piece.

We protect our bodies. How do we protect our minds?

Protect your mind by practicing loving-kindness. You don't have to start with loving-kindness toward ticks. Start with someone easy--such as your dog or cat. Protect them from ticks, and thereby protect them from smuggling ticks into your house. Protect yourself and love your pet.

Tick Heaven

I'm going on a month-long silent retreat in tick heaven. The ticks have been asleep all summer, but now that the weather has turned cool, the ticks are out and about again until the freezing temperatures arrive in earnest (like all day long).

I am spraying my month's worth of clothes with permethrin--pants, tops, undershirts, fleece, jacket, hat, and gloves. Then I use TickShield for my arms, neck, and hair. Permethrin is made from chrysanthemums, and TickShield is made from cedar oil. Natural protection.

Anti-Tick and Anti-Stress

I've sprayed my garden clothes with permethrin--an anti-tick spray. Spring finally arrived yesterday, here in the frozen North. I still have a small glacier (a former snowbank, now frozen to ice) at the end of the driveway.

Spring has arrived. And ticks have arrived. They like it cool, which it still is, at night and in the morning.

I hung my gardening shirts and pants on hangers in the woodshed (or the garage) and then sprayed. I used up the entire can of permethrin. I left the clothes in the woodshed all night to air out.

Stressful thoughts "bite" into us and won't let go. We can apply 2 sure-fire antidotes: mindfulness and loving-kindness. It's good to "spray" these onto ourselves beforehand every day, but sometimes we forget. Sometimes the bite of the stressor reminds us: notice the emotion in our body; notice exactly what the stressing thought is. Is that thought really true? Really, really true?

A helpful mnemonic is RAIN:

• R   Recognize what is happening 
• A  Allow life to be just as it is
• I   Investigate inner experience with kindness
• N  Non-Identification.   

RAIN directly de-conditions the habitual ways in which we resist our moment-to-moment experience.

Protect yourself. Permethrin for ticks. And mindfulness for your mind.

Ticks Off

My forester neighbor, Lynn, took a friend out to the woods with her. Lynn was wearing permethrin-treated gaiters. When they got back in the car, her friend had 4 ticks on her socks; Lynn had no ticks on her.

Okay. Now I'm serious about ticks. This morning i sprayed half of my gardening clothes with permethrin, an anti-tick spray. It's probably the same spray i used to spray all my clothes before i packed for India and again for southeast Asia.

While some people bewail the preponderance of ticks outdoors, i think of Lyme disease as our version of malaria. We have had the great good fortune to live in a safe area until just a few years ago. Now we join the rest of the world in having a nasty insect-borne disease.

We are of the nature to become ill--whether or not we want to. My friends with Lyme disease have on-going health issues. My heart goes out to them.

It's hard to have any sympathy for the ticks, but if they stay off me, they will have a much better chance of staying alive.