A tique might look at a lion

Not sure if I'd describe Mark Carney as a lion, possibly more a wise older sheep dog: intelligent, knowledgable, excellent at his job, and able to round others up into a fold of rational thinking, not that Canadians are sheep - far from it if he is telling the truth (which he is; no need to invent and lie, here, unlike the over-bloated blood-sucking acarien who is still clinging to the collective human population of this space-sphere.

Unlike the last mentioned, Carney wrote this speech rather than his staff doing it for him, and although I read somewhere that people don't rate him as a speaker, I'd say he nailed it: honest, articulate and accessible, caring but not sentimental, open; no histrionics or chest thumping. It gives some hope in this unraveling world.

Tic, tiques, ticks,

Don't know how you spell it, and I don't care. These f******** have been eating the small dog alive for months — there's not much of him left. Being an animal of little hair, they choose the ears, especially, way down inside, to quote Led Zeppelin.
The bigger dog has also had an unfair share this year. Is it just the hills around Limoux which abound with these aliens, or are their numbers to do with the long coldness?
What is the point of a tic? Well one could say that about many things. Reality T.V, spam fritters, David Cameron . . . but really, what a life. Wait for about eight months in a freezing bush, jump onto a passing smelly dog, crawl into a dark warm recess (actually, this bit sounds quite nice) and gradually inflate yourself with manky dog blood, until you feel like you really did eat too much Christmas dinner. Then fall off, only to be squashed by the next passing dog. Great.
I am generally 'live and let live' except perhaps with hornets, but the tic...how many ways can you finish off a tic? My favourite is to hold one with tweezers over a gas flame, pszzzzeettyttt! well we have to have some hunter sport in our veggy house from time to time.
One last tic recitation. I was cleaning our bedroom in the old house and removed a large pile of books from beside the bed. Amongst the fluff, etc, from under the books was a small flat brown dot. As I was about to sweep it away, it inflated and stood up in manner of scary metal police man in Terminator 2.
These creatures will inherit the earth, survive any nuclear attack, asteroid collision, or plague, we can be sure of that.