And just like that, all of the stinking cluster flies have left the building (FINALLY!!)! That was quick — just 8 months. (insert extreme eye roll here)

And just in time for Tick Season. This is the next phase of U.P. bug-pocalpyse that has a month dedicated to it, and though it sucks, we know it is part of what keeps the hordes of people from living here. It tests some of us pretty hard.

Stay in the short, sunny grass. Do not go into any long grass or into the woods without the expectation of lots of little climbing creatures finding their way up into cracks and crevices later. Unless you do a tick check. Do a tick check! is as commonplace of a phrase as Jeet? around these parts. In case you don’t speak Michigander, I just asked if you’ve had any nourishment lately. Or how about Imunna? Not as widely recognized as Ope! which flies out of our mouths about 936 times per day, Imunna is very useful when you plan to do anything at all.

I swear, next year, Imunna go South during Tick Season. Ope! There’s another bugger on my leg! Honey, get the match, hey? By the way, I’m hungry — jeet?

Do you do tick checks where you live? I know many of you have ticks where you live. In our little bubble around our home, our ticks are not the disease-ridden kind. So it’s just the creepy factor that is relevant. I have heard rumors of ladies in their shower screaming and begging for help after having found a head embedded in a thigh. I’ve heard stories of manhood-regions hosting the crawlies. It is possible that wives get instantly furious when the husband’s tick check FAILED and produced a creepy little nightmare hours later on the couch or worse, in the SHEETS!! Just rumors, I’m sure.

Hell hath no fury like a woman whose husband brought her a tick.

-Alison Kirksey

And then some days, we feel braver and take a walk anyway. Some days we aren’t turned into paranoid nuts that refuse to go outside.

Because we need to enjoy the new warmth before the upcoming season — the only one that produces the real anger and causes a loss of sleep and makes yours truly yearly wonder what we have done. Stay tuned…