Did I Mention The Tick Bite?

Wednesday afternoon I was outside putting up some decorations and as always fighting with the chipmunks (Cody and Shelby use to call them Chickmunks) and squirrels.  I was relocating feeders and trying to find places those varmints could not reach!  Do not get me wrong, I know they need to eat too!  I even purchased cheap food for them and I scatter it on the ground. I even made them their own feeder. I do not begrudge them having a meal.  I just cannot tolerate them acting like I have hung their own personal pinata for them to destroy and empty.  They certainly can empty a feeder in nothing flat.  They do their trapeze acts and get them to swinging and before long the feeder is empty.  It drives me crazy!

Anyway, I spent a few hours outside messing with that stuff.  We came in and ate dinner and watched a movie and then I got my bath.  As I was drying off, I noticed a very small weird looking thing on my right arm.  It would not come off while I was drying off.  I began to notice that as small as it was, one part seemed to be anchored and the other part was protruding upward a bit.  I had only seen one other thing that did something like that and that was a tick!  Being a country girl I had seen several of them on the dogs and even on us and in our heads!  But . . . I have not seen any like this it was so very tiny and did not have those lighter brown designs on it like the ones dogs get.  You know, they get really fat and swell up and look like a garbanzo bean.  I will spare sharing a picture of the kind I mean because even just the picture is gross!

Anyway, some of my country girl sense kicked in and I went to get the cell phone to get a picture so I could do the zoom in thing. Sure enough that disgusting thing had legs and was embedded in my arm!  As small as it was I am glad that it was not in my head of hair, I would never had found it.  I started calling for my husband to come help me get it out of my arm.  Good thing he happened to be home that night.  That is unusual in itself!

So, in all fairness, Wes was asleep when I started calling for him. That will explain his disorientation. I show him the tick and tell him I need for him to help remove it.  He starts, of course, doing his happy dance that I have talked about in the past blogs.  He is jumping around repeating over and over, oh my gosh.  He just keeps dancing and saying that.  I tell him to stop, he needs to get this out of my arm. He says he had no idea they could be so small. I KNOW exactly what he is thinking. He wants to stop everything and have me check him for ticks.  You know that moment you hear the word tick or head lice your hand immediately scratches your head?  That is exactly what was going through his mind, I just know it!  He continued with his dancing, but he did try to help me.

Anyway . . . the stuff you read on the internet about removing ticks, do not believe it!  The alcohol did not work.  The soap did not work.  The heat has never worked, it just melts off their legs.  Wes googled and we tried the pressure with the tweezer method.  I was terrified we would just crush him and kill him and he would be stuck in me anyway.  I believe he finally did back out, at least there does not seem to be evidence of a head left in me.  Funny thing, we could not even get the alcohol to catch fire to burn that tick! Wes was really good, he did check my hair, part by part, and then and only then, did I check him.  Haha.  He is so terrified of them.  He still keeps checking his head and it has been a few days now.

Since I work for a doctor, I was able to see him the next morning and was put on antibiotics to prevent a possible lyme disease issue.  The first antibiotic I took only one pill of and had a terrible reaction so I was switched to a different pill the next day.  I am still cringing at the thought of a tick in me!  I do not like them at all.  I am still on the antibiotic – it is a 14 day dose.  I am sure that all will be fine!

Guess what, though?  When I googled ticks in the backyard, it said to try to eliminate squirrels and chipmunks.  GO FIGURE!!!!

(Side note:  Wes went out the next day and sprayed the yard for ticks!!!!)  Too bad that the spray does not work on chipmunks and squirrels!