Ticks

friday firesmith – August 2026

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Two months of brutally high temperatures saw two weeks straight of 95+ weather carrying heat at one point. Rain was scarce and did little but make the humidity worse. The gnats this year are swarms of tiny flies that arrive two feet after you step into the sauna that was once your yard.

It’s the 7th of August today, and while it’s not cool in any sense of the word, the temperatures are only in the low to mid 90s. The humidity hasn’t picked up until after dawn for a few days now.

Don’t get me wrong here. Mid August and the first part of September can be horrible in their own right. But Summer begins in Mid May in South Georgia. Ticks are a daily hazard a long time before Spring ends.

At the beginning of June, I redid my well house. The gaps between the boards were growing, the roof was rotted, and it was time. We had a cold spell last year that saw a few days of cold in the upper teens, but I didn’t lose any pipes. I ran a heater in the pump house and couldn’t get the temps up above 40. Now, because the insulation is so good, the water in the tap is warm when it first arrives.

And here’s the thing. In 2023, we had a foot of rain to fall in six hours. We had snow, six inches that stayed for four days, back in January 2024. At sixty-five, I’ve seen snow about a half dozen times in my life. Snow that hung around long enough to like it, about three times. But the Blizzard of ’24 (yes I am kidding,) with that much snow hanging around like it did was far out of the ordinary. Severe weather events are becoming more ordinary, and they’re severity is getting worse.

Last year Hurricane Helene hit inland Georgia with high CAT Three winds of 127 miles per hour almost one hundred miles inland. She then went to North Carolina and hit so hard rivers changed their course due to the flooding.

I’m an outside type of guy. Years ago, even during hurricanes and high water, things evened out. Right now, in the back of my property, it’s overgrown and littered with dead trees. The back part of my yard is head high with weeds. I can’t keep up with the damage or the growth of vegetation anymore. Yeah, I am older. But even working on it three or four times a week, I’m losing the battle. All the dead trees haven’t fallen yet. All the wet spots are still greener than ever, and dead trees have flooded the area with sunlight now. It’s also hotter because of the lack of shade.

My home environment is changing.

I’m a bad hurricane year away from the search for a more sane part of the world to live in.

Take Care,

Mike

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Friday Firesmith – The Rites of Ticks

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Early Warning, this essay has not been fact checked so it be interesting and funnier. I did my own research. I Googled until I found things that agreed with what I wanted.

I was bitten by a tick, removed it, then flushed it down the toilet, along with some of my blood. There was a case of a murderer who killed a woman in her apartment, and a tick was found with his DNA inside the bedroom where she was murdered. I can see a sweating defense attorney cross examining a tiny arachnid on the witness stand.

The flushed tick came up in a conversation and a friend told me ticks don’t drown. That led me to having a vision of my septic tank with a layer of writhing ticks at the bottom.

This led me to doing a Google search for how long ticks can go without food and one species has, so far, gone twenty-seven years. But their life span is three years in some cases. This is why fact checking this is problematic.

Up until three or four years ago, ticks were never a real problem here in this part of South Georgia, but now, I have to hose myself down with chemicals to work in the yard. The yard, not the woods, and it’s getting worse. The dogs and one cat are on preventives, but there are a lot of ticks out there right now.

At some point, millions of years from now, alien archaeologists are going to dig up my septic tank and discover a concrete pit with a thick layer of fossilized ticks at the bottom, buried in human waste. Why did ancient humans build these structures? Was it religious in nature? Why did they keep so many tiny bugs in these pits? Were these creatures pets? Was some ritual performed, and many of the members of the religion bound to bring one as a token of their spirituality? An alien describes to the others the ritual of blood, where members of the sect travel long distances, bring a small jar or bottle, containing the Holy Bug of Blood, and lovingly placing it into the pit with the millions of others, and then burying it. It would be regarded as a sign of piety for a human’s blood to be found in many pits, and the investigation would begin to discover if humans traveled long distances, and why some locations showed no sign of the ritual being performed at all. Did wars break out over this, and some places at odd with those who refused the ritual?

Or perhaps, humans kept their DNA in these creatures and buried them hoping they would gain immortality in some way. I can see the aliens now, scratching their heads, both of them, with all seven hands, wondering how the ticks got there.

And then one discovers a tick has survived and is attached to his fifth leg. The alien screams in horror.

Take Care,

Mike

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