Eight-legged nuisance is terrifying, disgusting

PHILOSOPHERS CAN philosophize all they like on the big questions: Why are we here? What's the meaning of our lives? Why do good things happen to bad people?

But they'll never adequately explain the mysteries of this existence until they can answer a simpler, but far more disgusting, question: Why do ticks exist?

The question occurred to me as I noticed a Lone Star tick struggling to climb out of the bathtub I happened to occupy. A few minutes later, I was called to tweeze from the center of my 4-year-old's back a deer tick that had latched on sometime in the night.

Welcome to spring on the old Suffolk homestead. This is the time of year when we pay dearly for the field to our south, the creek to our east, the swamp to the north and the critters everywhere. We will spend the next several months drenched in DEET, pants tucked deep in socks and, nevertheless, find ticks on us - sometimes in us.

Think you're disgusted? I'm thinking about stealing the dog's collar. I figure it beats the annual course of antibiotics caused by a tick that didn't play fair and bit one of the Luzzattos in a place they couldn't reach or see.

I keep coming back to this notion that a creature so mean shouldn't exist in a just world. Ignoring Paris Hilton as an example to the contrary, pretty much everything has a purpose on this planet. Sometimes the niche is hard to see from a simple human's limited perspective ( bats, fish and other insects feed on mosquitoes, but they feed on us), but it's almost always there.

Except for ticks. Providing occasional forage for guinea hens and beetles seems a rather large price to pay for Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, ehrlichiosis or Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, which sounds positively terrifying.

And let's not forget the general repulsiveness of the things, which is enough to inspire movies I will never see. Generally speaking, in fact, I wouldn't know anything about ticks if they would just get off me.

Thankfully, I guess, one of the nation's foremost tick experts works here in the region, at Old Dominion University. Daniel Sonenshine, a professor emeritus and author of books on ticks, gamely pointed out that his subjects serve as blood-engorged "juicy morsels" for other creatures, but he had to acknowledge that the world would probably survive their disappearance.

"They're good at causing damage," he said. "And causing injuries. They have a role in limiting the host population on which they feed."

Just great. Worse still, the number of ticks is growing with the planet's temperature. For those skeptics out there, those folks who don't believe that the world is warming, the good professor has news for you.

"The principle is," he said, "we're seeing northward migrations into places we haven't seen them before."

In other words, the ticks are coming, and they're hungry. That alone is reason enough to require everyone on the planet to start driving biodiesel hybrids. And stop exhaling.

Ticks have a huge head start on humans. They've been around for 100 million years. Hundreds of varieties infest almost every corner of the globe (Antarctica always seems attractive about this time of year, mostly because it doesn't have them).

Ticks can bring down wildlife, infest houses (I recommend exorcism, followed by fire) and generally creep out anyone forced to think about them. (I'm sorry. Truly.)

Worse, though, they cause billions of dollars in damage to agricultural operations. They make people seriously sick. Not that long ago, the diseases ticks spread were reasonably widespread and often fatal. "They just want to make a living just like anyone else," Sonenshine said. "And they're very good at what they do."

Which is biting me. And making the rest of the planet celebrate their death, whether in flame or alcohol or by the simple application of a thumbnail. That's not much of a purpose, I suppose, but it is a purpose. I guess it'll have to do.

Donald Luzzatto is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. E-mail him at donald.luzzatto@pilotonline.com.