h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The gnats are about again. Everyone is complaining. Apparently the helicopter broke down just as they were going to spray the lava or something, so they missed and out they swarm.

10-15 years ago nothing was done and they were really bad. But it only takes one to ruin your evening on the patio. Worse still, they buzz around the kitchen and at the office.

My plans to write an entry on this topic haven't been quenched, but I must still persuade my husband to finally subscribe to the online version of our local newspaper - there is a wealth of information about the subject there.

Where was I?

Oh yes. This morning in the bathroom, one was buzzing round my head. It must have been right near my ear, but I couldn't see it in the mirror. Eerie, isn't it?

That's a heck of an excuse "oh, the helicopter broke down"


My garden backs onto a horse farm (stables, I guess, I think they do riding lessons too). There is a 15 foot wall between us and them,but I'm convinced their misthaufen (what's that in English?) is directly against the wall. We get gazillions of flies in the summer, and it's difficult to keep them out of the house.

Oh well.

At least we don't get sooo many midgies/mozzies. Unfortunately, when we do they bite the tasty Gruesomes first.

Would that be 'muckheap' then Sho?

thanks - I'm suffering from temporary Germanitis!

Sounds painful!

...and there was I, feeling miserable because I'm covered in flea bites.

insects

Strange how the fleas in my daughter's house make a meal of her and my grandson, yet the fleas here _land_ on Andrew, but don't bite him.
Maybe he's too thick-skinned.
He brings them to me, trapped between his thumb and forefinger, where he's picked them off his leg. He holds it till I have run a bowl of water, then he puts said flea in it. We watch it swimming around then I pull the plug



I'm so glad they can't fly.

s all you insect dinners.

I always wondered: are ticks named after the noise they make when you squash them?

I looked up ticks in a book of insects once. No mention. Silly me, they are arachnids, not insects.

They're usually buried too deep to count their legs.

I learnt the other day that the French word is "tic" but that still doesn't explain where it comes from.

At the moment, we are on the border of the area where ticks carry meningitis, but the border is moving Northwards. Whereas we had to get immunisation to go on holiday in Austria, we'll soon need it to live at home. Pets get full of them, but it's not unknown for humans to get one - my husband had one recently.

There is so much to say about the gnats - I really would love to do an entry on them when I get the time.

Tics are arachnids?

They say you learn something new every day...

for TC's hubbie

How do you treat a human with a tic?

Are gnats, midges and mosquitoes all the same creature?

Ticks have to breathe air, so if you smear a thick layer of Vaseline over them they smother and die, and you can get them out. If you try to get them out while they are alive, they generally come to bits and leave parts in the victim.

I seem to remember that you can kill them with a naked flame from a match or lighter too, but Vaseline is safer.


Zube

You can actually buy a tick remover. You place it as far between the tick and the skin as poss and then twist it! We used to get kids in the surgery where I was with the blighters embedded occasionally. They don't actually breath the same way we do, so Vaseline is better than nothing, but not 100% perfect.

Do you knick the manure for your garden? I would treat as compensation for the smell Not that I'm encouraging thieving or anything

Wondering about the old flame treatment, I googled tick-removing methods, and it seems flames and Vaseline are not recommended these days, since the tick may inject more venom and/or other gunk when killed.

Since people are thinking about Lyme disease these days (in America), they worry more about the tick squirting more gunge into the victim than we used to when I was a child: my parents were just worried about getting all the tick bits out.

Anyhow, current best practice seems to be to use a very pointy tweezers or the plastic mini-claw-hammer Caerwynn mentions, and to pull the tick out (alive) by the head. It's important not to grip the body, as it will just come off, leaving the mouthparts behind.

When our dog was a puppy, she used to pick up ticks and I used the Vaseline method successfully, but now she's grown, and doesn't seem affected anymore. Anyhow, there's no Lyme disease in Ireland (yet ).


Zube

Spooky, I write about Vampires, and an old Researcher name rises from the dead!

Back in your coffin, Hedrigall


Zube

I never understood why you killed off Hedrigall. Why didn't you just rename him?

I never thot of dat.




Zube

"The claw is our master. The claw chooses who will go and who will stay."

Stop it, you zealot!


Zube

Yes here in Ireland the tick is merely a nuisance (so far). When our dogs would pick them up we would just wait for them to become bloated and pluck them off easily. My brother recommended dousing them with gin; the only good use for gin according to him.

The son of friends of ours kept a pet tick in the crook of his elbow for a few weeks, as a teenager. Seriously weird. He's quite normal now, in his thirties, works in IT in London.

Surely the French tic is the nervous twitch, TC? (These French are crazy, toc toc toc.)

No - it seems to be right - we looked it up in a German/French dictionary (The German is "die Zecke" - which doesn't have another meaning to cause confusion)