A bad joke...

Vernal pool, I remember when this was just an snow and ice filled hole in the ground...

So I brought my phone with me today just in case I saw something good. I didn't see a damned thing, except a bunch of deer ticks...huzzah!!

I was going to tell y'all about some of the salamanders that I am sort of hoping to see (not going to lie amphibians don't impress me all that much), like how in times of food shortage they go all Donner Party on each other and resort to cannibalism, ok I admit that is pretty cool. But instead I decided that I would like to dig into the amazing world of everybody's favorite arachnid, Ixodes scpularis, or more commonly known as the deer tick. Now just to throw it out there I hate these little buggers and there creepy little heads...  

 If that doesn't get you, how about...
Needless to say they fairly ugly little blood suckers, but what makes deer ticks extra worrisome is that they carry the bacteria that causes Lyme disease. Lyme disease is caused by a bacteria belonging to the genus Borrelia, which is found in ticks that belong to genus Ixodes or hard ticks. While Lyme disease is rarely fatal, it can cause a myriad of health problems that can affect joints, the heart, and the nervous system. Though it can be misdiagnosed because of its similarities with several other diseases, it is usually easy to treat. Back to creepy disease spreading parasites. Deer ticks generally live for about two years. They have only purpose in life and that is to drink blood (they can swell twice their original size) and to make little baby ticks (a single female can lay over a thousand eggs). In fact each phase of their lives; larvae to nymph, nymph to adult, and adult to egg laying, is actually triggered by drinking blood. Now as the name implies they most commonly found on deer, but will also suck on other mammals, birds, and even reptiles. Needles to say the little bastards have a pretty big menu to choose from but they are also tough little brutes able to survive severe frosts before going to dormant for the winter, and are among the first invertebrates to start making a nuisance of themselves in the spring. They do have some enemies including, birds, other anthropoids, bacteria, and our friend that is always among us, fungus (HA! get it).
Oh heard an owl calling and frogs trying to impress each other, more on that maybe next week.