I've served as operations chair at my sons's preschool for the last three years. This means that I'm in charge of fixing the toilet when it leaks, catching mice when they appear and generally taking care of the school and playground. Most of the time, this is an easy job.

But every spring, someone starts up about the ticks.

Some parents believe that a preschool playground (one that is tree-covered, bush-bounded and mulch-floored) can be made tick-free. Most years, this camp consists of one or two (or maybe three) folks. The vast majority of parents don't care much about ticks, and then there are the three or four folks who have no patience with the tick haters.

I thought I settled this last year, when I wrote an e-mail explaining that we COULD kill all the ticks. All we had to do was spread boric acid all over the playground. Poof! Away go the ticks!

Of course, this would also kill the children. One of the tick haters actually wrote back and said, "What if we put just a little bit of that stuff out?" I was tempted to respond, "Then your son would be just a little bit dead." But I restrained myself. I merely said the school would lose its license if the state found out we were using that particular chemical on the playground. Don't know if that's true, but it should be.

In response to that letter and plenty of other e-mail noise, one parent (who happens to be a pediatrician) chimed in with the fact that her practice sees only a handful of Lyme disease cases, and that when Lyme disease is treated within a week or two (or three or four), there are almost never any complications.

So. All the angles covered. We can't kill the ticks, and most likely, they won't kill anyone.

But it's been rainy and cool this spring, and there are lots and lots of ticks on the playground. Sometimes, you can actually see them walking and crawling from quite a distance. Kids unknowingly bring them into the classrooms. Kids (and parents and teachers) get bit. The tick haters got their ire going, and our school director worked hard to repeat all the information we passed along last year. that didn't work.

I was about to add my two cents (once again), when one parent lost his cool and went off on one particular tick hater. Our preschool e-mail list turned into a flame thrower. After a mild struggle, we managed to restore decency and decorum.

But what about the ticks?

My wife is taking over as co-president for next school year (our preschool is a co-op, so we have co-presidents). She and the other co-president (who, likewise, is very can-do) have decided to take on the ticks. Bushes were shorn, trees were trimmed, grass was cut...all the stuff you can do to try and limit ticks. Did it work? Not in the short term. On the most recent school day, At least three ticks were discovered on children or in a classroom. There's a lot of those suckers out there.

But it will help. And eventually, the summer heat will cut down the tick numbers considerably. That's the good thing about the tick wars: they're time sensitive. Ticks aren't a big problem in the summer, fall or winter, so it's just April and May that we have to do anything about them. And, I'm happy to say, this is my last skirmish. Since my wife is taking over the co-presidency, I have been relieved from my position (effective June 13). Or, as I like to look at it, I'm retiring.

And not a moment too soon. An e-mail just flashed by. Someone saw a snake on the playground. They don't know what it was, but since it wasn't a copperhead, it's not poisonous. Whew. No one's gonna go crazy about a garter snake.

Oh crap. An e-mail from a snake hater.

Let the snake wars begin.

Jon Worley likes snakes and isn't particularly offended by ticks. But he definitely wants to keep leeches off the playground at all costs.