Icky Stuff
We've gotten a ton of rain, which is not icky at all - we really need it for the crops.
However, remember that we are in a grassland. Most folks with horses know what happens right
after it rains - the TICKS come out!
They hike their way up the tall waving stems of grass, in the hopes that some warm-blooded critter will brush against them and ~whoosh~ that tick has a free ride and a meal. We have dogs, and they come in the house at night. Them and their ticks. Ick! Everynight, we have a "tick party"; Dick and I each take a dog and examine them from nose to tail, picking off ticks and drowning them. Some nights we got a dozen or more from each dog. Last summer, Wayne would get around 30 off of Junior!
We seem to have found the solution to this grossness at the garden center.
Yes, 5% Sevin powder. Once a week, I take a little and rub it into the dogs' coats, all over, especially where we find the most ticks - ears, face and spine. The ticks will still get on the dogs, so we need to check them at night anyway, but they die before biting. So if we find any, they are pretty groggy and easy to get off the dog. The other good thing about Sevin is that it is safe for cats. As I was checking various vet-dispensed tick remedies, I discovered that many of them are harmful to cats. We have 2 cat families - Babette and Dupree, the outside cats,
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and Yahoo (Zazu) and Lucy, two Persian cats given to us by a breeder friend who was going out of business. (Photos not yet available)
The Persian cats stay inside all the time. The dogs and outside cats just love each other, and the
Persians are warming up to them so we wanted to be sure whatever we used was really safe.
The weather has been bizarre, at least after having lived in California for nearly 10 years. Just so
you, my friends, don't worry unduly when you see the weather reports, remember that we live in
South Western Nebraska. Here is a map of the area, we are the red star.
We've had a few tornado watches and several thunderstorms with hail. But we are fine and the wind hasn't knocked any trees over yet.
