Mange

​Mange
I think it is my turn to pick a word from the dictionary.  I suppose it is just as well as I am the only one up at the moment.  When I say only one, I mean in this house.  I am sure others are up but I do not want to go door knocking and present a startled occupant with a dictionary.
So I shut my eyes and turned the dictionary this way and that until I did not know which way was front or back and put my finger down at random.  My finger fell on the word “mange.”   The dictionary defined mange as “skin disease in hairy or woolly animals, caused by an arachnid parasite and occasionally communicated to man”   
According to other definitions it is basically caused by a mite.  I wish this dictionary had said this in the first place.  It could have saved me all of around seven seconds.  I will never get those seven seconds back again.
In our environment it mostly affects dogs and some cats.  I think anyone who has a pet rhinoceros is safe because it is not woolly.
It is occasionally communicated to man.  Maybe that explains my baldness, but I don’t think so.  I get the feeling that is hereditary.  It is the way my dad was and the way my oldest brother is.  Why it missed Stuart I don’t know.  Perhaps that was mum’s influence.
Besides. Who’s to say I am balding?  Perhaps I just part my hair in the middle.  A really, really big part.  As a table tennis team of three, one time we called ourselves “dreadlocks.”  It was ironic as none of us had hair on top.
I actually do have hair on top.  But a person needs to look really closely.  I have always admired those hairs.  The vast majority have abandoned the scene.  Not those ones though.  They stay there through thick and thin.  In this case thin.
I don’t know that mange has ever been communicated to me from dogs.  I have seen it though.  Dogs with bald patches where there should not be a bald patch.  I feel for them.  Not in a “let me share your load” kind of way though.  They can have that one on their own.
The good news is it can be cured.  There are different types of mange, and some are more severe than others.  One type is called scabies when it infects humans.
It is the sort of thing that just reading about makes me want to have a shower.  But I won’t.  It is not September 17.
I have learned a bit about mange but not having pets it has no current application whatsoever.  Unless I count worms, but I do not think worms get mange.  Besides there are hundreds of them.  Taking them to the vet individually could get really expensive.  If mange ran though their colony I would no doubt try some things but then it would be like “oh well” and start afresh.
Still, I now know stuff.  It may never be useful but then again it may.  In the meantime, I have found it interesting finding out about it.  Except for that seven seconds.  They were lost forever.