Shopping Tips and Guidance by Mandy Claire

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," celebrating all things, especially those with wings! I'm your host, Anne Johnson. No pie tonight, I'm trying to readjust my girlish figure a bit.

Tonight's topic is a quick one. I need your advice.

My daughter The Spare found our cat, Beta, sleeping in the clean laundry. Spare saw a tiny tick under Beta's eye. Beta sat calmly while Spare plied the tweezers and removed the tick, but the sly little bug escaped the tweezers and fell back into the pile of laundry.

The tick Spare tweezed is a deer tick, the kind that carry Lyme Disease. We have plenty of both said tick and said disease in these parts.

You know how small these champion pests are? The size of a pencil point.

My question is, what should I do? Will the pesky vermin live in my laundry until it hits another warm body ... that presumably will not be Beta? Should I wash the whole kit and kaboodle again? (SIGH) Would it even matter if I did? Ticks, I have found, can survive everything but fire and toilet flushes. They are the zombie vampires of the insect world.

If you can help me out of this dilemma, the number to call is the Comments box. Our operators are standing by anxiously to speak with you!.