Technically it’s saturday where I am and well, I meant to post earlier. I also meant to have a far more productive day. Instead non-productive stuff got in the way, like needing to travel to civilisation to procure a birthday present for my nephew, not having enough sleep so that all my brain would do when faced with the prospect of writing the next bit of my dissertation was go ‘huh?’. And discovering a tick. On me.
Not the most fun thing in the world. Now, I’ve had them before and they’re not the paralysing type, just annoying. I kinda felt sorry for this little guy, cause I’ve had larger ticks than this one assume I’m dinner, and he reminded me a of a newbie teenager, out on the town without his or her (because I don’t know whether it was a girl or a boy tick) parents knowing and then discovering itself in a heap of trouble. In this case the trouble was trying to drink me. And a tub of vaseline.
See, according to my mum, if you smother a tick in vaseline it’s suffocates. So, it points it’s bum in the air enabling you to get tweezers underneath and yank the sucker out.
Vaseline was dutifully spread over the tick and I then proceeded to watch as it’s little legs wiggled and it’s bum went up. Tweezers in hand, the tick was yanked out. It hadn’t been there long. The other times I’ve discovered ticks on me it’s been because I was itchy then went to look why.
Having had ticks before I’ve developed a new method to itchy legs. I say legs specifically since I’ve found that they like to use the inside of my loose jeans (inevitably I discover ticks after I’ve been wearing these) as a ladder. So, when my legs are itchy, instead of scratching the itch, I whack it. Why? Cause if it happens to be a tick and not just nerve itches, then it flattens the sucker.
Now I have live through the next few weeks of itching. I’ve discovered, having been through this before, that if you touch where the tick was in any way the site will immediately get annoying and itchy. If you leave it alone, then it is less so. Although, I still occasionally get itchy at sites where ticks were years ago.
At least this one was little. Poor tyke. Didn’t have much of a life did it?