I’m going to have to check you for…

Can I talk to you about a personal matter?

TICKS.

(Cue screams)

I hate ticks. Everyone does.

(More screams)

Except for maybe tickologists. That’s the scientific name for people who study ticks. (Screams) Tickologists might like ticks. Or not.  Do you have to like something to study it? I don’t know.

Oh, and Brad Paisley might like ticks. He wrote a song about them. Well, actually, he wrote a song about using a come-on line about ticks. Not that he’d need a come-on line. He’s gorgeous. And he married Kimberly Williams, who is also gorgeous. But I digress.

Ticks are the summertime bane of dog owners.  As a dog owner, I know this. In fact, I know it too well, since last week, a friend and I walked our dogs along the Minnesota River, and when I got home, I found exactly a gazillion ticks on my shoes, my legs, and even on our couch. (Cue lots of screams)

Obviously, the ticks on the couch were from the dog, since I didn’t take the couch along with us on the walk.  The dog sheds ticks because she’s been dosed with Frontline, a tick repellant. That does not stop her from bringing in the bloodthirsty little suckers, however. They get a free ride on her to invade my home.

People cannot use Frontline. My friend gave me a recipe for a tick repellant that is basically a bottle of vinegar, but I haven’t tried it yet. I don’t want to smell like vinegar. Also, she gave it to me AFTER we walked along the river and collected our gazillion ticks. Ah, thanks.

In light of the present tick population explosion, however, I no longer want to walk with our dog on anything this summer but paved surfaces, which means roads, parking lots and sidewalks. Actually, I am now of the opinion that really wide sidewalks are one of the world’s engineering marvels. I hated them in the winter because they were covered in ice and I was afraid to walk on them and fall on my rear end.

(I did, indeed, take several rump bumps in the course of the winter, which I’m sure were highly amusing to the motorists passing by. Slow-motion pratfalls have always been big crowd pleasers in physical comedy, after all. In fact, if this authoring gig doesn’t pan out, I might look into slapstick as my next career.)

In the summer, however, sidewalks are like a demilitarized zone between the maniacal hordes of ticks waiting on either side in the grass to hijack unsuspecting humans.  This, I’ve decided, is really why sidewalks were invented – to protect people from tick death.

Thank you, sidewalk inventor.

Now if I can only find a way to dissuade the ticks from hitching a ride on the dog, my couch could be tick-free.

I know! The vinegar recipe!

“Here, puppy….”