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A carpet python from Coolangatta that was fished out of a backyard swimming pool on January 9th by a professional snake catcher was a Lovecraftian horror. According to this article:
A snake that was recently captured near a suburban home in Queensland, Australia, was covered with hundreds upon hundreds of ticks. So many of the bloodsucking parasites clung to the snake that the unfortunate reptile looked like it was wearing a second coat of living scales.
Currumbin Wildlife Hospital Foundation in Queensland reported that 511 ticks in total were removed from the python.
Facebook page here
Nightmare inducing images here and here.
A similar nightmare inducing polyticks infestation here
An extreme infestation such as this likely happened because the snake was already sick, likely with a compromised immune system, Emily Taylor, a professor of biological sciences at California Polytechnic State University, told Live Science. When a tick bites an animal and injects anticoagulants from its saliva, the animal sets off an immune response that can kill the tick or slow down its feeding. However, if an animal's immune response is dampened, "you may see a greater number of ticks feeding or concluding their feeding," Taylor said.
Rebecca Trout Fryxell, an assistant professor in the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture adds
sated female ticks can lay thousands of eggs. If the eggs are fertilized, this can blanket the host with more hungry mouths to feed.
Robots are always the answer.
Although now tick free, Nike, as the python has been named, is still suffering from anemia and "a nasty infection" but it is intended to return him to the wild once he fully recovers.
(Score: 5, Funny) by aristarchus on Wednesday January 16 2019, @06:34AM (3 children)
You know, when you go to feed on the recently deceased, all the fauna that once relied upon that creature for their livelihood are in the market for a new host. So of course the blood and offal covered neck of the Buzzard is you go-to next-best-choice option. So, after a while, the Mighty Buzzard is dragged down by the sheer weight of the parasites, blood-sucking entitlement liberals with Pink or purple hair, but no matter how furiously the TMB grooms himself, there are always more, and so he ends up with a second skin, a skin composed of Racist Former Republicans (Steven King), and idiots in favor of a shut-down (Neutered Gingrinch), and the current parasite in charge of the NRA, Ollie Gone-South. And of course all the alt-right white-supremacists who despise him for his Native blood, but will gladly crawl onto his body when the one they were parasiting before has become, um, not viable.
So this is the curse of being a carrion feeder. On the upside, dinner does not fight back, much. On the down-side, you have to adopt all the parasites, diseases, Trump-tweets, and so on, that are the substance of your repast. Something like the practice, pre-Luther, of "Sin-eaters", who would hire themselves out at a funeral, to eat a banquet, at the price of taking on all the sins of the deceased.
Wow, there is the Wikipedia Entry [wikipedia.org]
The Atlas Obscura [atlasobscura.com] entry on how this was the worst Uber gig of the middle ages. (Hey! Disruptive sin technology! Cool!)
And, of course , there are many movies on this theme, like The Sin Eater [imdb.com] of 2004, but I am not sure this is the one remember. But have fun, all you many and sinful solylentils, in trying to barter sin and bit-coin, in a free market where someone like, but not identical to, khallow, makes sense. Seriously.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @06:38AM (1 child)
Why don't you just do the right thing and kill yourself, you worthless cock-gobbling loser.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Wednesday January 16 2019, @11:19AM
He can't, poor magister, he's so left biased he can do only left things.
You, on the other side, don't seem to suffer the same impairment. Just don't forget to let a letter explaining your suicide, you don't want innocent people be suspected of your death, do you?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday January 16 2019, @07:22PM
Also, Lyme disease causes neurological problems. [mayoclinic.org]
Hmmm....Aris, you might be onto something here!