Lazy Germophobe

This is my nineteenth Vermont winter. I've decided that’s enough years for me to assert that January 2020 was too warm. It’s supposed to remain below freezing around the clock, except for a brief thaw when everyone washes their cars. Temperatures that stay in the teens or 20s make for beautiful, clean snow, tundra-like dirt roads (easy to navigate), and best of all, no mud—and NO BUGS. In January I get a break from giving the dogs their twenty-bucks-a-pop flea and tick medicine, and I normally don’t have to inspect them (or myself) for ticks after a walk. This year, though, we saw 30s and 40s, meaning slush, mud, and even bugs. It felt like March. On my walks in the snow I noticed the snow fleas. I remember being kind of freaked the first time I ever saw them up here. I kept seeing black dirt on the snow on warmer days, which didn’t make sense because I was nowhere near a road. When I looked more closely, the dirt was jumping. FLEAS! They looked just like in that ...

October. The ticks are back. April into June, and again in October–November, they are the absolute worst. The dogs pick them up on our walks. Once we get back to the yard, I try to remove and crush as many as possible. A lint roller helps, but unfortunately, the ticks like to hide out under the fur. I’ll see them later, crawling around on the dogs IN THE HOUSE. And that’s the real problem. The dogs are well protected. They take an oral pill to kill fleas and ticks, and unlike humans, they can have a Lyme vaccine. It is the rest of us I’m concerned about, because the ticks hitch a ride into the house on the dogs. Ticks that bite the dogs will die; ticks that drop onto the floor or transfer from dog to person are free to infect us all with nastiness. Sadie in particular is apparently irresistible to ticks. I once removed three dozen of them after a walk. My goal each and every year—so far, completely unsuccessful—is to find a nice bug repelling spray, safe to a...