They are vile, invincible (it would seem) and disease-spreaders!

“They” would be – ticks! Growing up in a tick-free area, I never really worried about them too much. Now that we are in tick central, I’m more careful, especially since I have wee ones. As of late, I’ve decided that ticks are vile creatures whose purpose, other than striking fear and the creepies in moms of all ages, is unknown. What has brought on this little tirade? I thought you’d never ask.

A week or two ago, as I was buckling DS into his carseat, I noticed a tick on his pants. After a brief, “ewwww!!” moment, I removed it and chucked it out the window and promptly forgot about it. This past week, as we were driving to the babywearing meeting, I hear him saying, “that! that!” and frantically jabbing his finger in the air. I look above my head and what should I see? A tick right above my head on the headliner! Great, so how was I going to deal with this. Obviously, I wasn’t just going to leave it to crawl onto and embed itself in my head. All I had was a plastic bag, so I grabbed it, then was faced with the quandry of what to do with it. I didn’t want to litter and throw the bag out the window, and I certainly wasn’t going to set the bag down. So I wadded it up and squeezed it several times to smoosh the tick. That didn’t work, and apparently, you have to either burn them of smash them with a rock to bring them to their demise. I ended up putting the bag in a little rubbermaid dish until I could properly get rid of the tick.

Several days later, as we were heading out to a friends’ house, I looked in the mirror to do one of my periodic checks of the offspring, and I notice something crawling on DS’s cheek. My first thought was, “it’s a tick!” and so I looked back to get a better look, an action which brought me dangerously close to crashing into a tree. I looked in the mirror again and it’s practically in his eye, so I tell him, “quick, swat at your face.” I’m thinking he felt it at about the same time, since he swatted it away. I stopped at the first place I could, scooped him out of the car and checked his head and his carseat for the creature, but I found nothing. Fast forward a few hours . . . DS is eating a snack with a friend and I move his hair . . . . . .”AHHHHHHH, he has a tick on his ear!” Not only was I totally creeped out, I was so disturbed to see that thing on him. So my girlfriend gave me some tissue, as we’d decided it wasn’t yet embedded. When I went to remove it, I discovered that it was starting to embed. I can’t say that was a life-affirming discovery! I managed to get it and she flushed it down the toilet. YUCK!!! I have no clue how these ticks are getting into the truck, but I’ve tasked DH with trimming back the bushes that are near the truck. And now, I do a tick check each time we leave the house and get in the truck. (As if I needed one more thing to delay our getting out of the house and down the road!!)

Now I’m REALLY reticent to let DS play outside, all I need is for him to get another tick and end up getting Lyme disease . . . .no way!