YouTube, Two years in J-land, and Lonestar ticks

Ugh! I've just spent two hours playing around with a video that I want to upload to YouTube so I can add it to my journal here. It is something that shows what we did in Montgomery, Alabama, and I just wanted everyone to see it. If I succeed in accomplishing this feat, it will be the first time ever I added a video that I made to my journal entry.

Tomorrow (well, today actually, the third of August) is my 2nd year here at AOL journals and I wanted to do something special to mark it. Adding a special video clip would be just the thing.

My problem, I think, is that I have a video clip, just 1 m 52 seconds long. However, it is 198 mb large. YouTube will not accept anything over 100 mb. I don't know how to shrink my video so it will fit. Timewise, I am well within their parameters (limit of 10 minutes).

I talked to a computer savvy friend of mine, D, and he said I could probably go to Windows Movie Maker and edit my movie. But I really don't need to trim any footage from it. I just need to make it fit within 100 mB.

Any of you know how to do that? Patrick... he's made movies on YouTube... he's the man I should talk to! Yeah, I think I'll email him.

I played around in Windows Movie Maker to see what I could do, and it was interesting because I had never done that before. Didn't even know I had the feature until an hour ago.

Until I get that video, I won't be writing about the Montgomery trip. It's just something special I want to do.

Instead, may I substitute another topic of interest?

Have you ever seen such a small critter before? Next to the penny.  Looks like a tick, doesn't it?

                                                     

                                             (photo credit Iowa State University Entomology Department)

It is the lonestar tick. I had never heard of the lonestar tick until two days ago when I found one on me. It was so small, I thought it was a mite. I only found it because I could feel it crawling on me, and I studied it through a strong magnifying glass. I stuck the sticky side of scotch tape to it so it couldn't escape while I figured out what it was. I thought it was a mite.

I searched mites on the internet, but did not find any suitable pictures to match the littlest bug I have ever seen.

I found six more on me within the hour. I was about to freak out, you see, because I was still thinking mites, and how was I going to get rid of mites. I knew it wasn't lice. I wasn't even thinking ticks... the dog tick, brown tick, and deer tick ... now these I would recognize.

I gave both my dogs baths, vacuumed the carpets, and scrubbed myself thoroughly in the shower trying to get those critters off of me. It worked. I didn't feel creepy crawlers onme for the rest of the night.

I had managed to save five of them (on the sticky tape). The next day, I dropped them off at my veterinarian's office so she could examine them through her microscope. She called me, they were lonestar ticks... in the larval stage. She told me that lonestar ticks can attach themselves at any stage. She was concerned that I had found so many on me... and how many more might I not have found?

Worst, they are often carriers of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. I marked my calendar just in case two weeks from now I get sick.

Here's what I gleaned from NC State University:

All stages of Amblyomma americanum, the lone star tick , readily feed on man and large wild or domestic animals such as deer and dogs. Adults and nymphs are abundant in the spring and summer months. The mite-like larvae of this species, commonly called seed ticks, are abundant in the fall. In this stage, the lone star tick readily attacks humans. This tick is found in habitats similar to those of the American dog tick. It transmits a form of Lyme disease called STARI (Southern Tick Associated Rash Infection) caused by the spirochete, Borrelia lonestari. The lone star tick also transmits bacteria that cause erhlichiosis, which is similar to RMSF, but is rarely fatal.  The lone star tick occurs predominantly in the coastal plain, but it rapidly invading the piedmont of North Carolina. http://pamlico.ces.ncsu.edu/index.php?page=news&ci=PEST+1

How did I get them? Our home is surrounded by trees and woods. Lots of wooded vegetation between our home and our neighbors. We love the view, the dogs have freedom to roam, there is a sense of privacy here, of being out in the woods. These are the good points of living close to nature.

However, Tuesday I walked through the woods on a narrow doggie path to my neighbor's home to see how she was doing (widowed 18 months ago). Later, I walked back home (roughly 50-60 yards) the same way. I've done this many times in the past without picking up pesty critters. But this time I must have walked through a massof recently hatched ticks. These baby ticks, or seed ticks, are so small, the only reason I saw them was that they were moving. They were smaller than my smallest freckle.

Here's another photo of an adult female,and  a tiny larva, next to a dime for size comparison. The white spot on the female gives them their name. I found the photos on the internet.

                               

                                (photo credit Iowa State University Entomology Department)

 

 Here's some idea of just how tiny the thing was. Actually, this is showing a deer tick nymph, I believe. The ones I had were even smaller than this. This photo came from http://www.canlyme.com/ticks.html

For now I appear to be tick-free. I'm going to fumigate my house just to be sure that I've gotten the ticks, the ants, the moths, wasps, spiders, centipedes, millipedes, and whatever else could be crawling over us, on us, or between the walls of our home.

http://www.ent.iastate.edu/imagegal/ticks/aamer/a-amer-larva.html

http://www.ent.iastate.edu/imagegal/ticks/aamer/aamerfandnwdime.html

 

                                                               

 

 

Tags: Lonestar ticks, uploading videos,