Frolicking ticks take home the prize! The 2023 MIWP Fourth of July parade float “Some Like it Hot”, an ecological treatise on deer ticks and other unlovable beasties loving a warming climate, earned the coveted Best Float award! While there are some things that I would have done differently, I still think the image of giant ticks in bathing suits is a perfect metaphor for this warming world. Throw in a spongy moth and some soon-to-arrive Lone Star ticks, and you’ve got the picture.

For the 2023 MIWP Fourth of July float, we are once again going to take on my old nemesis climate change, although somewhat obliquely, in a float called “Some Like it Hot”. Think of all the nasty beasties that are doing better in a warming climate: deer ticks, bark beetles, spongy moths, deer ticks, mosquitoes, emerald ash borers, deer ticks… Now picture those same guys dressed in bathing suits and truly enjoying their newly tropical environment. Lyme mojito, anyone? You can see where I am going with this, even if I can’t, so join us and make it work!

I have wanted to do a float about climate change for the last five years, but it’s a tough one: complicated, data dense, and above all not very funny. But climate change is the granddaddy of environmental issues, and this year we are going to take the plunge, at least in a small way.