Battle of the bugs (how to get ticked off)

My girlfriend has ticks. There’s no pussyfooting around it. No funny intro; no catchy opening. How can there be when my girlfriend has ticks? There’s nothing amusing about that. I go away for a few days and she gets ticks. Shudder. I feel icky just thinking about it.

Thursday I went to her house and she told me she had a bug problem. According to her, the past few days she’s seen bugs on her couch. She led me over to the couch and quickly pointed out four of them.

“Those look like ticks,” I said. She insisted they couldn’t be. I put the four critters in a Zip-lock bag (alive) with the hope of identifying them on the internet.

It wasn’t that hard to do–I googled ‘ticks’ and found ’em on the first page I looked. I was kinda hoping I was wrong. When I lived at home, one of my brothers managed to get the house infested with ticks. Disgusting creatures. The ticks I found on The Girlfriend’s couch were nowhere near as big as the bloodsuckers we had–but they were definitely ticks. Thanks to the easily identifiable pattern on their back, I was able to determine The Girlfriend had Dermacentor variabilis–a.k.a., dog ticks.

I told her that we probably had to get rid of the couch–which did not go over well. Parting is such sweet sorrow–and I think she’s more attached to that couch than me (makes sense: she’s had it longer). After taking another look at the couch, I immediately found six ticks without really even trying. They were mainly on a blanket she had over the couch, but they were still there. That’s when The Girlfriend realized the obvious: we had to get rid of the couch. She didn’t want to and I understand why (it’s a fairly comfortable couch). But ticks are ticks. Even if they weren’t coming from the couch, the couch was probably infested by now. We put it outside and contemplated our options how to get rid of it (I wanna post an ad on craigslist: free couch. Possible tick-infested. You haul.).

When I looked on the floor where the couch used to be, I found another half-dozen or so ticks in the carpet. I didn’t cover the entire floor but I saw enough. I did a quick vacuum and hoped none of them attached themselves to my clothes.

Upon further review, it looks like the ticks are coming up from under the floor. I found a bunch of ticks around a floor vent. We pulled the vent cover off and found numerous buggers inside. That means my girlfriend isn’t a filthy, dirty, bug-infested woman: only her house is. Even though it appears the couch isn’t the source of the problem, that piece of furniture has no chance of getting back in the house.

I don’t like bugs. I work very, very hard to keep ’em out of my house. I make sure the door is open only long enough for people to get in an out of. I don’t leave food anywhere. I eat only in the kitchen. After that tick fiasco my mom had, I want nothing to do with them. I’ll never forget how often I’d swat at something bothering me and end up squishing a bug filled with my blood. It was disgusting.

It was so stupid how my mom’s house got infested in the first place. My brother’s girlfriend rented a room from a woman who was a total slob. From what I was told, her house was filthy. Food everywhere. The carpet had never vacuumed. When my brother’s girlfriend decided to move back with her parents, she gave him the mattress she used when living with the slob. My brother brought it into my mom’s house and the rest was history.

Every piece of furniture he sat on got tick-infested. Anyone who sat on the infested furniture, spread ticks to the rest of the house. All of us–all of my brothers, my folks–everyone in the house had ticks. We threw away the mattress that started the infestation. I had to toss my mattress, pillows, and a chair (I wasn’t taking any chances). We also discarded a couple couches. The infestation was a disaster. From everything we were told, overcoming a tick infestation was very difficult. I think we even had to call in an exterminator. We had to wash all of our clothes in industrial washers. Replace all of the linen in the house. Because if just one tick remained–one batch of eggs–the infestation would return. The eggs were very hard to kill–even with all the pesticide. I seem to recall something like the eggs could remain dormant for years–hatching when the weather was just right.

Shudder. Just thinking about them makes me sick. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. This might revoke my man card, but I don’t give a damn: I hate bugs. And when you’re dealing with bloodsuckers (I would quite often wake up to find my arm bleeding from a recently-finished parasite feeding), I will take every precaution to get rid of them. I think The Girlfriend should move. I can tellya this much: I’m going to spend a lot less time at her house in the upcoming months.