The Virginia opposum’s blood contains a near universal antivenom for the most poisonous spiders, snakes,scorpions, etc. Scientists have figured out how to make it without their furry blood donors. We can learn alot by studying nature.
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A reading of the original article, is “sort of” on the opossums. They don’t actively seek out ticks and eat them (like say chickens or guinea fowl) but actively kill a large percentage of the ticks that land on them. Since apparently opossums like walking around in tall grass and get attacked frequently they do note this is likely a nice negative effect, but not the most efficient for ridding your property actively of ticks.
Guinea pigs do not kill ticks, and can quite easily be infected and catch the typical tick borne diseases that attack most rodentia (although why you let your guinea pigs wander around outside is a second issue).
Guinea Fowl, on the other hand do (although not entirely of course)
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Part of it depends on how often you will be running print jobs. For the previous generation of printers the Canon printers tended to be less troublesome for the occasional user. The Epson’s needed to be used more frequently or you could have issues with the print head.
The newer Surecolor printers seem to be much more reliable than their predecessors. On the other hand, the smaller Canon’s (Pro 1, 10, and 100) seem to be a bit more problematic out of the box than the printers they are replacing. Although custom paper profiles would likely fix that.
In the next several months I will be looking to get a 44" printer myself. (Considered canceling the GF order to get the printer instead.) At this point I am leaning towards the Epson.
The P9000 really only makes sense if you have to match Pantone colors. Otherwise you should likely stick to the P8000. You might think the extra orange and green inks would make a big difference but it really doesn’t buy you anything for photos.
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Was wondering about that, trying to visualize a tick-killing Guinea Pig. 
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I had an Epson for years that I loved. Granted it was purchased over a dozen years ago now, but only really started to decline in the last year or two if I could justify it, I would buy another In a heartbeat.
I think he needs to combine these and get a tick killing wide-format printer!
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I use an HP DesignJet Z5400 at work. It has a few minor quirks, but for the most part it’s been pretty great. It’s been discontinued, but the Z5600 looks pretty similar. (Main difference is that they’ve dropped the light grey ink and replaced it with red. I guess more customers wanted to print photos than text and black and white diagrams.)
They have some 8-ink models that probably do better photos. And some models that can print a lot faster; the Z5400 is somewhat on the slow side. (Although it’s roughly 8 times faster than the ancient DesignJet 1055CM that I used to use, so I’m not complaining!)
It’s been a few years since I picked out the Z5400; I haven’t really kept up on the reviews of newer models. It looks like Epson has been topping the charts lately, but I haven’t looked at them in any detail.
I have a Canon ipf 5100 and an ipf 8300 that both need some love and $$$ thrown at them in Georgia. Come take the 8300 out of my kitchen and give it a good home please! 
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If only I were closer… 
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If you have not already, request print samples from all of the manufacturers that you are considering, and ask for as many different variations/substrate samples that they offer or are willing to give.
I’m going to the ISA show in Vegas in april, and if I am buying a printer, that is most likely where it would happen. Walking back and forth between vendors making them fight for your purchase can land you a great deal.
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but they still carry fleas, and harbor lots of other diseases. very very very rarely rabies, though
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