Check Out This Tick Killing Robot Being Tested On Cape Cod

Bloodsucking parasites beware, the TickBot is in town. Researchers tested a tick-killing robot at Nickerson State Park in Brewster Tuesday and demonstrated it at the Cape Cod Cooperative Extension Service. It resembles a remote-control car and moves like a Zamboni through tick habitat.

The TickBot drags a cloth treated with the pesticide permethrin along a guide wire and tubing that emits carbon dioxide. Ticks are attracted to the CO2 and are wiped out when the TickBot moves over them. The wheeled-robot was developed at the Virginia Military Institute and several collaborators have been working to determine its usefulness in battling ticks, which can carry Lyme and other diseases.

Hell yes! I don’t even care that it’s not really a robot but more of a remote control car dragging a pesticide soaked Swiffer behind it. I’m not even going to bring up the fact that it would take 137 million of them 238 billion years to actually cover any significant ground. There is nothing cooler than asserting our dominance over other creatures by building mechanical equipment designed specifically to kill the shit out of them.

I’m thinking we should cut to the chase and just start filling up Zamboni’s with poison and driving them all over the countryside. Why even stop there? Let’s start putting pesticides into all the fossil fuels we burn so that it releases into the atmosphere and rains down upon us from the clouds.

The human race ladies and gentlemen, the only known species that uses advanced technology to more efficiently poison the very thing responsible for giving and sustaining life. You know what they say about intelligent life forms… it would be nice if a few existed.

P.S. This blog has raised two unrelated questions I need answers to.

1. Why can’t we Frontline humans?

2. What the hell ever happened to acid rain? Remember how scary acid rain was? People were expecting the paint to sizzle right off of their cars when it rained for a while there..