The season of....

...imaginary ticks crawling on your skin has started in New Jersey.  Only problem is, some are not imaginary.  Our garden are full of ticks, brought there by deers and then caught in cat fur and pant legs and, for some reason, my long dark hair. So you go out in the garden, stuff your pants into socks (well, not always...), and then you go inside and an hour or two later you feel something crawling on your neck or arm, and it might be a tick.  The problem is that it isn't always one, often it is an imaginary feeling, a mirage from your brain.  Few ticks actually get stuck on us, but on the cats they love the area around their neck and we have probably pulled of 50 ticks from them in the last few weeks. We put them in a plastic bottle with water and soap to kill them.  The ones we found on ourselves we usually just put between two pieces of tape and throw in the garbage.  Did I mention how hard it is to kill ticks?  I honestly can't see any good ecological feature of ticks.  Do they have any positive use at all in an ecosystem?  I think they are just plain bad parasites, and annoying such as well.  I think it is time to buy Best Yet for the cats.