The first clue was the dog.
Years ago, after a trip to Martha’s Vineyard, we came home with the usual Vineyard souvenirs: sand in the car, salt in the laundry, and the stupid conviction that nothing bad could have followed us back from such a beautiful place.
About a week later, my dog got very sick.
Not “off her food” sick. Sick enough that the vet started working through the dark little checklist. Had she eaten something strange? Had we changed her food? Had she gotten into poison?
Had we traveled?
Yes, I said. Martha’s Vineyard.
He stopped.
“Why didn’t you say so?” he said.
Then came the line I have never forgotten:
“They should put antibiotics in the water down there.”
I thought he was joking. He was joking. Mostly. Then he explained that the Vineyard had more tick-borne disease than any place he knew. I filed that away as veterinary folklore, the sort of warning locals use to make outsiders wear socks.
Now I’m not so sure.
A Boston Globe feature this week opens in Aquinnah, where the Vineyard’s resident tick expert drags a white flannel flag through the scrub. Ticks cling to it as if it were a passing animal. Soon he finds a tiny crablike thing no larger than an apple seed.