Previously on Patient Zero.

They can be stately, and they can be cute.

The deer are also considered a menace to health.

They carry ticks which can spread Lyme disease.

This one is exoduscapularis, so that is the deer tick.

That's the one that is associated with Lyme disease.

Borrelia perforreye.

So those two mice were the species paramiscus leukopis, and that's the white-footed mouse.

That's the mouse that's everywhere. When do they honk the horn?

They didn't do it.

It's the law.

They're supposed to honk it three times and they leave the dock and they didn't do it.

Last August, I got on a ferry and I took off towards an island off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

I was hoping for a horn, but apparently they only have to honk it if it's foggy, so I improvised.

Try it sound like a horn.

Nantucket.

Nantucket. It's a charming old waling island, shaped like a flat boomerang with a big tourist season, but a permanent population of only about 11,000 people.

Tick check. One, two. One two.

I was there to attend a meeting at the local library, a giant Greek revival building called the Athenam. Tic-Tic-Tac-Tac-Tac-Tic, Tic, Tic Tic Tic T-Tac-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-T-S.

If someone walked in off the street, they might be under the impression that they had stumbled into an evening of live music.

But then they might have second-guessed,

once they'd seen the free shortbread cookies, shaped like mice,

...