Field Season 2010

I'm in the northwoods of Wisconsin for the week, working on a site in Burnett County. Today, the crew arrived at the site in the afternoon, and within 5 minutes I had already found (and savagely murdered) my first tick of the year. My total count for the day was 3 ticks, 1 artifact.

I just cannot understand how a tick ever got made into a comic book hero and star of a television show. Ticks are gross:

They are "blood-feeding parasites," and they don't ask your permission before tapping the keg. Even so, if that was all they did...we'd probably forgive them. Minor nuisances, circle of life, so on and so on. This is similar to the idea that mosquitoes are no big deal - until you remember a little bug called malaria. Ticks wouldn't be so bad if they weren't the prime carrier of Lyme Disease.

You'll never catch me laughing at this guy again.