by Catherine Back

Created on: March 13, 2009

"Disease"

I am sick.
Not the kind where you roll over out of bed one morning and puke, then it's over.
Nor the kind where you lay moaning for two days in a hot/cold sweat until your body naturally rids itself of the sickness you got while drinking purple hooters by the two's, just to keep up with your best girl friend, and then eventually sucking face with some goon you met at the club that night while wearing no panties during a big winter chill.

Not from personal experience, mind you.
No, this is a much bigger kind of sickness. And 'kind', it is anything but.

This is, Lyme disease.

About seven years ago, I was gardening in my Los Gatos, California mountain yard, about 4 acres of wild life, complete with dear trails which circled the property. Deer carry the ticks, which carry the disease.
But who would know this, unless someone you know has Lyme disease, or you yourself are unluckily, slowly dying from it, like myself.

I remember how I used to love watching the deer all walk along in a happy trail. How beautiful, I thought; mother and babies all in a row, as the sun sets along their silhouette...

By the time I was infected and ready to move out of the home that had supplied so many unhappy memories, I was chucking boulder size rocks, old rusty cans, lawn chairs, shoot, anything I could javelin, just to scare those disgusting carriers of disease, and I wasn't quiet about it.

"Get off my property you blood sucking heathen carriers! You, YOU, Freaks!"
They just stared in my general direction and then went about their way, which was even more infuriating.
Sure, I get the fact that it's not the 'deer's' fault, really. But, unfortunately, without the deer, the ticks wouldn't be spreading so rapidly which is another story all together. So, lets move on

One day, my dog Gilligan started her usual warning 'barks', signaling me that the deer were close by. This was her favorite time of day, and only now did she truly pay the rent she owed, as a pesky little dog she was, complete with short dog complex.
Something grown men had a difficult time dealing with, she was no different.
She felt so proud in her eight pounds of sheer body mass at times she believed she could stop traffic.

This day, I prepared and equipped myself properly.
My source?
Well, we lived partly on an old refuse.
Ah, those minor pesky little things that realtors leave out when its time to make a sale.
But that's another story too.

The land had once been inhabited by two, creepy, single sisters, one hundred years earlier.

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