Greetings from Isaan (10)

House Inquisitor has a problem. Sign. And they are more difficult to combat than you might think. It started quite innocently: during the daily brushing of the three dogs you regularly found an animal, but that gradually became more and more. Too much at one point, LinLin, the mother bitch of four years, has suddenly aged ten years in a short time.

At first it was thought that she was just lazy, due to her status as leader of the pack. But every day we found more and more ticks on her skin, dozens in fact. Farang, the male, and Karot, the courageous female, also begin to suffer badly. It is only through the good and regular nutrition that they receive that they do not perish.

In the beginning, the love was more concerned than The Inquisitor. Born and raised in the countryside, she instinctively knows that you have to be careful with something like this, even for people this is not so innocent. And she goes looking in the area and the garden. Where she simply notices thousands of those creepy crawlies in the grass. And patient when an Isan starts cleaning up manually. Catch, put in water. Egg nests too, many, immediately burn in a steel bucket. A hopeless task in the eyes of hubby, who for the time being keeps thinking of 'it came naturally, it will go away by itself'.

But every day it gets worse, the dogs have to be picked out daily, dozens on each four-legged friend. Tens? At one point De Inquisitor counts them and ends up with seventy-two with the male Farang. And LinLin continues to deteriorate, according to sweetheart, her blood is already affected. The two cats are also screwed. Because they are no longer allowed in the garden, we don't want a sign inside the house. Cat Toulouse bleating and angry all day long, cat Fynn ignores The Inquisitor in protest. In the meantime, De Inquisitor has also switched to manual cleaning: he sweeps the terraces that are the entrance to the house twice a day and catches every crawling animal that attempts to break in. hopeless job.

To the vet too, but taking the dogs with you is impossible, they would go completely crazy, they are too free-spirited, too many nature animals, accidents would happen in the town. Special shampoo which afterwards turns out to be completely useless despite the high price, the next day they are full of ticks again. A very expensive medicine (seven hundred and fifty baht for a tablet, three needed), with a 'guarantee' that the dogs will be tick-free for three months. Exactly five days and it started again….

The signal for The Inquisitor to become more active. He will tackle that quickly and efficiently. After ten minutes he understands that he is stuck. Just search the internet for how to combat ticks. Everything full of Western-typical warnings against chemical agents, but no or hardly feasible alternatives.

Whole stories about how dangerous those critters are, but no solutions. Oh yes, many websites indicate that a 'new and environmentally friendly remedy' has been found. Some kind of worms. Yes, thank you. Where do you get those worms here in the middle of the jungle?
The few chemistry that is mentioned by name causes the same problem. Nowhere do they know that here. If you ask for your own remedy against ticks, you get that oriental smile, they don't have it. Or are they real sellers, 'try this remedy'. No thank you.

Still searching the internet, De Inquisitor finds a reason why the ticks are so massively present, a learned person has posted that on a website. Ticks love shade and moisture, which is the ideal environment for them. They don't want sun.
Are we at the end of the ... dry season. No rain for more than four months and a minimum of ten hours of sunshine every day. Smart guy that scholar.

The Inquisitor is ready to wage a real war. He proposes to sweetheart to set fire to the grass of the garden in a controlled manner. Love panics: her vegetables, her fruits, her trees. Fear that the fire will spread to the house, the pump house.

For the moment it is sweet not to be convinced, The Inquisitor keeps this in hand.

He does want to drive down the still dry and short grass and burn the waste immediately. That will already remove a large part of the sign, he argues. And remove the compost heap. That information can also be found, an excellent place for ticks and this can be correct, moist, warm and in the shade. Only, dear-dear, her sharp eyes don't spot a single tick there… .
But the sweet also asks for a delay about this: she herself found something on the internet the day before yesterday and is trying out that remedy. Traditionally, without telling The Inquisitor, of course. But she claims she sees fewer ticks where she applied the product. It's something they use on the cows, brother Piak's are also full. Can also be right again, De Inquisitor reads in an article that ticks are transmitted by four-legged friends, who graze and transport the vermin through their bodies. And Piak's cows weren't there a year and a half ago, moreover, the stable is close to the garden. In the past we hardly had any problems with ticks, but yes, our own dogs also go out in the evening, of course.

Meanwhile, The Inquisitor is busy making a remedy. Even something from the internet. Citrus, ticks don't like that. So oranges cut into pieces and boiled. May be sprayed on the dogs, and in places where you do not want ticks. So it can be used on the terraces and inside the house. Well, if it works. You should have asked this Westerner a few years ago. In this way a person becomes a kind of homeopath.

If a reader also had to deal with it, in Thailand that is, and was successful in combating it, The Inquisitor would like to know how? But that information at "Isaan level": little available in the shops, De Inquisitor can hardly go to Bangkok to pick it up. And professional help: it is not in the area here.

This is how you help to avoid sweetheart's greatest fear: that The Inquisitor sets the garden on fire if not solved within a week.