From: Slick The Tick
Howdy, everyone!
I'd first like to say I'm a big fan of the Hawk Road site. My Aunt is in the area now, and e-mailed me the address. I registered with the Clipboard, so drop me a line anytime. My name is Slick, and I'm almost one and a half years old...just a wee larvae now, about the size of a period in a newspaper. If all goes well I should be a nymph by Fall. Mom had me and my 3000 brothers and sisters last Spring then died. Her sister, my Aunt, wasn't lucky enough to find a tasty critter to gorge on and is still around. Her arthritis and high blood pressure have certainly slowed her down, though.
Really not much excitement to report on this end right now. After I hatched in April, everything was sort of a blur until two weeks ago. Did you guys get all that rain down there? To be honest, my crash course in swimming was really my first memory. After that I've just been hanging out waiting till August. I'm still on the fence as far as my preference goes, but I'll probably shoot for a bird of some sort. I've heard you get a lot of crap from mice and raccoons. At the end of the day, though, I'll have to take what I can get.
A friend of my brother's...Louie, I think his name was...said there was this thing going around, and that's kinda the reason I'm writing. Not that I wasn't going to write under normal circumstances. I've been meaning to, but the connection's slow out here. Anyway, I'll just say it. Louie said that his barber said that a guy came in for a cut one day and this guy asked the barber if he could keep a secret. The barber said that he thought he could, so the guy said he had heard that ticks had been placed on the Infectious Hosts list. Louie said that's when you're a life-threatening danger to other animals. The barber asked him what the reason was, and the guy said that there was this spirochete bacteria everyone was calling Lyme disease that was spreading like crazy. It wasn't like ehrlichiosis or Rocky Mountain spotted fever...it was a lot worse.
My brother told me not to dwell on it. If Mom didn't have it and I wasn't born with it, I couldn't pass it on until I was a nymph next Spring. Kind of like AIDS for you guys. But he told me to steer clear of mice and rats...oh, and blue jays, but I think that was just cause he's a bandwagon Yankee fan. Those animals usually get stuff faster than anybody, and there's so many of them that it's hard to stop the spreading. They're like the Chinese.
He said that after I jumped off my host this Fall I'll know if I got it or not. He said it's kinda like taking four tylenol 3's all day for us...really woozy and stuff. I guess you don't really notice it when you're dormant all winter, but in the Spring it kicks in again. Funny though if you think about it. Us ticks get high off the stuff that kills everybody else. Weird.
Most of you guys won't even know I'm there if I happen to catch a ride with you in August. I'll have filled up my tank and detached as a slightly bigger poppy-seed size than I was before. But if you happen to see me next May make sure you ask me if I'm feeling a little tipsy. If I'm a little out of character just ignore me and continue on the trout path. Apparently, the barber told Louie that in the North-East US, about 25% of the entire nymph population carries that Lyme bacteria. Crazy, huh? Doesn't make me want to rush out and grow up.
Louie said it's better if I don't mate on the host, but I think it'll be hard not to take the opportunity if it comes up. I mean, she'll be head-first in the fur, the glue her mouth makes and her two incisors locked like a pitbull's jaw. I know my Dad was never one to pass up a defenseless lady with her arse in the air, and I doubt I will either. But at least I'm confident in my sexuality...not like this guy I met when I was swimming named Brad. He said he knew this guy named Bambito from down your way. Anyway, this guy was as pink as they come. He was a close-talker, too; that's something that really ticks me off, no pun intended.
Anyway, nobody here can seem to tell me what kind of health care you guys have, but if you see a ring around our bite marks form after we leave, see a doctor. You should probably vote for Martin, just in case. Right now that's the only thing making you different from the States, and if one day you have to pay for your illnesses by any method other than taxes, you'll be sorry. These are not the days to be conservative thinkers.
It's getting late and I should catch some Z's. Oh yeah, I wanted to give a shout out to 22 Ends. My aunt said she was hanging out in Brandon's rug right now, and was going to Tompa's on Saturday if she could get a sober driver. She said she was pretty sure she'd have to leave the current area to do that. And she also suggested Steaka and the gang consider naming the group "22-Boned", but I think that's just her being a celibate perve.
