We're #1!!
You know, there comes a point when you just find that you have a much stronger stomach than you ever believed. It's now been about four weeks since we discovered that we had been invaded by ticks. We had our first treatment by a major pest control company about three weeks ago. It involved serious decluttering/cleaning first, fogging the house and treating the outside, and then a whole lot of washing afterwards. We saw a lot of dead ticks, and we kept up our daily de-ticking of the dogs.
But things did not seem to get better. I would bring Willow onto the back patio for her daily torture session, and while I was frantically trying to comb through her fur and attack the enemy with tweezers, a new wave of tick soldiers would just swarm out from cracks and head straight for us. We got to the point where another person had to be on tick duty, bug spray in hand, to attack the ticks that would head for the dog like heat-seeking missiles or something. Dog-seeking missiles?? There were so many. But I was kind of getting into a routine. It was getting easier. (Well, J might disagree. He was usually assigned tick guard duty.)
But it wasn't going away.
By this week, Rue looked pretty good. Her paws were not sore or inflamed and though I still had to pull at least five or six or maybe ten ticks off her a day, she seemed to be keeping them mostly at bay (or at least the Advantix was working-- we are on weekly Advantix treatments right now). But Willow! We had to quit using the tick shampoo. Her skin is so irritated and flaking off in patches. We had to remove soooo many ticks that a good number were pulled out still leaving the heads embedded, and those heads scabbed over. (They are now starting to work their way out of her skin, so that's at least something.) Her inner ears are tender and encrusted with scabs. And she is beginning to loathe the process. Friday when I went to bring her out of the dog run (with my fancy blue latex gloves) she snapped and growled at me. She knew what was coming. Pobrecita. I feel for her, but it's not like I can leave the stupid ticks on her. At least we were at the point where every day I felt mostly confident I'd gotten all the ticks off. The number was getting lower each day and I was finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
And then--
Stage Two struck. Ticks starting showing up with alarming frequency inside the kids' bathroom again. These ticks weren't the baby beetle-looking kind. No, they were the next stage of development, ones that look like small spiders. And then a neighbor spotted one on the living room wall near the front door, and I just about had a mental breakdown. That meant the ticks were spreading to areas in the house where they hadn't been before.
How could this be happening???? When would it end?
Worse, through a bad combination of circumstances, our follow-up treatment with the pest control had to wait an extra week. When we got it re-scheduled (for the third time) I think Terence came across as pretty forceful about the situation. So instead of the new guy, they sent us their tick expert.
He called Friday night to check in with Terence and get a read on what was going on. Apparently (we learned later) he thought Terence had to be mistaking some other kind of bugs for ticks. What we were describing didn't seem likely, especially after a full tick treatment only two weeks earlier. But when he showed up Saturday, he was flabbergasted.
He told us that with all his tick experience, including kennels and shelters that have ended up with tick problems, he had NEVER seen anything as bad as our house. We are the number one worst tick infestation he has ever seen.
Awesome!! Do we get a prize for that? A cash prize??? Or a year's worth of chocolate maybe? I won't be picky!
This treatment was far more in depth, with a better treatment of the baseboards through the whole house, some kind of fogging, and granules of some kind practically coating our backyard. It took a lot more work to get ready-- but thank goodness, I have a Super Mom who only lives 45 minutes away. She came and worked for hours on Friday, packing up boxes and cleaning. I couldn't have done it without her.
We also needed to wash everyone's bedding after the fogging again, so we had one heck of a late night waiting to get through all the loads so I could remake the beds. We turned it into a Marvel double feature, watching Thor Ragnarok followed by Avengers: Infinity War. (The older kids had the same reaction to Infinity War that I did-- WTH???? How can you end a movie like this?!) Needless to say, we probably looked like a row full of zombies at church today.
But hopefully, we are over the worst of it now. Please, please let us be over the worst of it now!
But things did not seem to get better. I would bring Willow onto the back patio for her daily torture session, and while I was frantically trying to comb through her fur and attack the enemy with tweezers, a new wave of tick soldiers would just swarm out from cracks and head straight for us. We got to the point where another person had to be on tick duty, bug spray in hand, to attack the ticks that would head for the dog like heat-seeking missiles or something. Dog-seeking missiles?? There were so many. But I was kind of getting into a routine. It was getting easier. (Well, J might disagree. He was usually assigned tick guard duty.)
But it wasn't going away.
By this week, Rue looked pretty good. Her paws were not sore or inflamed and though I still had to pull at least five or six or maybe ten ticks off her a day, she seemed to be keeping them mostly at bay (or at least the Advantix was working-- we are on weekly Advantix treatments right now). But Willow! We had to quit using the tick shampoo. Her skin is so irritated and flaking off in patches. We had to remove soooo many ticks that a good number were pulled out still leaving the heads embedded, and those heads scabbed over. (They are now starting to work their way out of her skin, so that's at least something.) Her inner ears are tender and encrusted with scabs. And she is beginning to loathe the process. Friday when I went to bring her out of the dog run (with my fancy blue latex gloves) she snapped and growled at me. She knew what was coming. Pobrecita. I feel for her, but it's not like I can leave the stupid ticks on her. At least we were at the point where every day I felt mostly confident I'd gotten all the ticks off. The number was getting lower each day and I was finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
And then--
Stage Two struck. Ticks starting showing up with alarming frequency inside the kids' bathroom again. These ticks weren't the baby beetle-looking kind. No, they were the next stage of development, ones that look like small spiders. And then a neighbor spotted one on the living room wall near the front door, and I just about had a mental breakdown. That meant the ticks were spreading to areas in the house where they hadn't been before.
How could this be happening???? When would it end?
Worse, through a bad combination of circumstances, our follow-up treatment with the pest control had to wait an extra week. When we got it re-scheduled (for the third time) I think Terence came across as pretty forceful about the situation. So instead of the new guy, they sent us their tick expert.
He called Friday night to check in with Terence and get a read on what was going on. Apparently (we learned later) he thought Terence had to be mistaking some other kind of bugs for ticks. What we were describing didn't seem likely, especially after a full tick treatment only two weeks earlier. But when he showed up Saturday, he was flabbergasted.
He told us that with all his tick experience, including kennels and shelters that have ended up with tick problems, he had NEVER seen anything as bad as our house. We are the number one worst tick infestation he has ever seen.
Awesome!! Do we get a prize for that? A cash prize??? Or a year's worth of chocolate maybe? I won't be picky!
This treatment was far more in depth, with a better treatment of the baseboards through the whole house, some kind of fogging, and granules of some kind practically coating our backyard. It took a lot more work to get ready-- but thank goodness, I have a Super Mom who only lives 45 minutes away. She came and worked for hours on Friday, packing up boxes and cleaning. I couldn't have done it without her.
We also needed to wash everyone's bedding after the fogging again, so we had one heck of a late night waiting to get through all the loads so I could remake the beds. We turned it into a Marvel double feature, watching Thor Ragnarok followed by Avengers: Infinity War. (The older kids had the same reaction to Infinity War that I did-- WTH???? How can you end a movie like this?!) Needless to say, we probably looked like a row full of zombies at church today.
But hopefully, we are over the worst of it now. Please, please let us be over the worst of it now!
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