Dogs & Bees

Two interests of mine - dogs and bees - but let me tell you that those two words don't belong together. In fact, keeping those two words and creatures apart is strongly suggested.

While I sit outside and read, Lucy has been following several bees carefully with her eyes and one bee almost landed on her nose, but I gently brushed it away, for fear that she'd try to eat it. This concerns me for two reasons - 1) the bee may sting her and that would hurt her, and 2) she'd kill the bee which is unfortunate as we are trying to promote their colonies.

That said, it's best to keep your dog away from your bee hives. We've read that bee colonies are very sensitive to smell and don't like the smell of dogs either. The dog smell might agitate them.

On the flip-side, Lucy loves the smell of the honey that the bees produce and gets very excited when we harvest the honey in the kitchen:

Fire & Ticks

Is fire the only way to permanently delete ticks?

I was snuggled up on the couch near Lucy and I felt a little tickle on my leg. I was almost asleep, so I considered just ignoring it. It was probably just a hair or a crumb. But, instead, I looked up and moved my leg to examine the spot. To my disgust, I saw a tick crawling up my leg. I brushed it off and grabbed a small glass bowl to lock it in place on the couch. I put three stone coasters on top to keep it secure. Then I made a mad rush around the house trying to find metal only tweezers. Three rooms and four drawers later, I found a pair. I hated to burn the tips off, but I've never been able to smash a tick completely. Then I rushed to the side closet up front and pulled out a tea candle and got matches from the junk drawer in the kitchen.

Operation Burn Tick was underway. Back on the couch, I gently lifted the coasters, then the small glass bowl and snatched the tick with the tweezers. I held the tick in the flame and a moment later, it was ash.

To my surprise, I found this easy to do. I find that killing a cockroach is something hard for me to do, since it is still a living creature. But killing a tick is something that I think must be done as they suck blood and spread disease. They truly are out to hurt Lucy and even me.

In the larger order of species, I'm not sure where ticks fit in, but I guess that they must have their place. I do know, however, know that their place is not on my leg, my couch or on my dear Lucy.