No. Not “fornication.” Although that would be an interesting column, too.
“Formication.” With an “m.”
As in the Latin word for ant, formica, which is apparently also the Latin word for shiny countertop.
It’s a feeling we’ve all had: the uncanny sensation of invisible bugs crawling on—or under—our skin. You can also find “formication” defined as “the creeps.” Who knew that “the creeps” was a bona fide medical condition?
Lots of things can cause formication. Surfacing abruptly from a deep-sea dive, for instance. Or a high fever. Even menopause.
Or, in our case, a spring weekend up at the Creek.
We’re no stranger to bugs. Perry County bugs aren’t so different, after all, from Baltimore bugs. We get a lot more mosquitoes down in Baltimore. A LOT more. It’s not uncommon for an unprotected shin to get more than a dozen bites within two minutes in our backyard. And that’s during the heat of the day, thanks to the evil Asian Tiger mosquito, which, by the way, also happens to be a major vector of West Nile virus.
But don’t get me started on that. I’m liable to say something stupid about redefining mosquitoes as terrorists, or handing out free packets of DDT to high school students.
Thankfully, the mosquito population at the Creek seems to be held in check by the bottomless appetites of mosquito predators, especially the frogs, whose full-bellied peeping is one of our favorite springtime lullabies.
We’re not exactly strangers to insect excesses on St. Peter’s Church Road. Not long after we bought the place, we had an epic invasion of ladybugs. If your walls and ceilings are going to writhe with a squirming mass of insect life, there are a lot worse bugs than ladybugs. Ladybugs are cute. Children like them. They don’t bite.
Still, a single adorable ladybug alighting on your finger at a picnic is an entirely different scenario than a filthy stream of them pumping out of your ceiling fixtures like a low-budget horror movie.
No sooner were we sweeping up thousands of ladybug carcasses than a new invader reared its shiny black head: wasps!
These shiny loners, scissoring their iridescent blue wings, would stumble slowly across the curtains of a winter morning, seeking the warmth of the sun.
Of course, all they found was icy retribution in the form of the business end of a Dustbuster.
These were mud daubers, famously unaggressive, as wasps go, interested only in avoiding the cold. But to my mother, who’s allergic to bee stings, they might as well have been a swarm of African killer bees. With a taste for human flesh.
She stopped visiting for a while, and then showed up bristling with EpiPens. “You know how to use them, right?” she asked me. “If I go into anaphylactic shock, just jam the needle into my leg.”
Yeah, right, Mom.
“No, really,” she said brightly. “It’s spring-loaded!”
It never came to that. After the first winter, we learned that certain clandestine parties in Perry County had developed a secret, highly sophisticated form of black-ops insect interdiction.
It was called, “getting the house sprayed.”
So we hired the sprayers. We still get the odd ladybug, and even the occasional mud dauber (please don’t tell my mother). But these are exceptions to the rule, like soldiers marooned on desert islands, unaware that the war has been over for years.
Lately, though, we’ve noticed an uptick in, well, ticks. Brooke, our basset hound, whose hairy belly rides maybe three millimeters above the ground, is an absolute tick magnet. Which is way less fun, I’ve got to tell you, than a chick magnet.
When we first started taking Brooke on long, leisurely smell quests up at the Creek, we weren’t too surprised to find a tick or two on her. After all, walking her is like a dragging a blood sausage through the grass.
But lately, it seems, there have been a lot more ticks. My wife Shana will brush her forehead compulsively for about half an hour after a walk. A stroll across her forehead being a favorite exit strategy for ticks involved in her hair.
Health statistics support our observations of a tick explosion. The number of cases of Lyme Disease has dramatically increased in Perry County, at least through 2007, which is the scope of a study released by the Pennsylvania Department of Health. There is a wealth of information available on the PDH website at http://www.dsf.health.state.pa.us/health. Just do a search for Lyme Disease. Or go to the Penn State Department of Entomology at http://www.ento.psu.edu/EXTENSION/factsheets/common_ticks.htm to learn how to spot the enemy and protect yourself.
Last week, a tick had the temerity to approach me in our pole barn. Across an open workbench, no less. The nerve of that little bloodsucker! A classic American dog tick, sidling slowly across the blond ash wood.
I did what any hardcore formicator would do. I grabbed a rubber mallet, took careful aim, and went nuts.
It felt really great.
This column was published in the Perry Co Times on 21 May 2009
For more information, please contact Mr. Olshan at writing@matthewolshan.com
