Save us, Jennifer Doudna. Well done with your invention of the CRISPR gene-editing tool. Your mission now, should you choose to accept it, is to biologically engineer the blood-sucking tick out of existence.
Makes sense to me, especially if you consider, as many apparently do, that Lyme disease was hatched in a Plum Island laboratory.
Let’s start small — my front yard in Noyac. “Scalability” can come later. To wit, in this supercharged spring, I can’t walk 25 feet from my stoop, across slate flagstones, no less, to the car in the gravel driveway without taking on at least one flesh-burrowing rider.
What, my natural musk is an irresistible draw for their heightened animal senses? I’m not flattered. My manfully hirsute appendages beckon like a sheltering forest, promising a warm and sustaining bounty? Maybe I should wax.
It’s never been worse. The intrusion of little black dots on your person. The annoyance of tweezing them out once you’ve noticed the itch. The awkwardness of carefully transferring the tiny body to a strip of Scotch tape. The horror.
What’s the point of nature if it’s determined to get you and you can’t enjoy it?
My better half says it’s past time to mow the lawn, and that’ll help with the ticks.
“But it’s No Mow May,” I stall, figuring if nothing else I can help the more benign creatures out there in the jungle of our yard — the garter snakes that emerge to sun themselves, the rabbits that hop from their warrens to take in the air as dusk descends, the little gray treefrog that’s taken up residence under a slat of outdoor furniture.
In reality, maybe it’s time to swallow my pride, retire the 21-inch Yard Machines push mower with the trusty puttering Briggs & Stratton, kick back with an episode of “Reacher,” and have someone else brave the parasites to cut the mile-a-minute South Fork grass. The ticks win.