My house is being taken over by TICKS!

Gross.

I don't think I can stress how disgusting a matter this is. I love in the boonies, with fields and woods aplenty. I'm used to ticks and have often taken them off my dogs, but in just one weekend, I have been the discoverer of 4 out of the 5 ticks we have found.

The thing that puts me off guard is that they are just crawling around. Usually they are just fat ugly creatures attached to the dogs or cat, but the other day, the first tick of the season was on...

ME!

Just crawling around my thumb. I was laying in bed just watching TV. I looked at my hand and thought there was a tiny spider and I was about to freak out when I saw the tear drop shaped belly. Interesting though, I have been doing muchos research on these foul things and have come to learn that they are related to the spider family.

I didn't flip out when I found out it was a tick because I didn't want to fling it somewhere unknown in my bed, so I just grabbed a tissue and squashed it. It wouldn't die though because it was a flat belly, remember, it never attached to me.

So I went to tell my rents I found a tick, even though it was the middle of the night. I thought they might be somewhat concerned seeing how ticks can carry Lyme disease and other repulsive infectious bacteria. Nope... more fascinated by sleep.

That's okay though because it wasn't a huge deal, we've just never had them crawling around before and I wanted to warn them that it was now officially tick season. Which until this weekend I thought only occurred in the summer/fall. But I get mixed up pretty easily with time and seasons and when certain events happen.

MUCH freakier the next day (today - Wednesday [I'm still up so I consider this Wednesday night even though it's technically Thursday].

I wake up to get ready for school and my mom tells me that my DAD had a tick. What? A tick? On my dad? We've never had ticks before. Ever. Not on us, not on the impenetrable perfect human flesh that surrounds our very being. Gross.

Apparently it was on his thigh and was dead yet still attached. I've never even heard of that. And still after my hours of research, I have not heard a similar story.

THEN, I'm petting my doogle and find a bump. Yay! Another one! First thing in the morning, no WAY I'm dealing with it. I want to eat my breakfast without vomiting, thank you very much. My mommy takes care of it and all is well. My dad is out at a meeting so it seems that he's alright and his leg can be checked out later.

Later that morning, after showering, beautifying myself and all that jazz, I again go see miss Frankie, the wonderfully cute but not so smart dog with the under bite. I see something shimmying around on her thigh and look closer. It was like the thing I had on my hand the other night!

"Wait here Frankie, don't move an inch."

Of course she moves in the less than 5-second time span it took for me to run to the bathroom and get a tissue. She had her head on her leg, but luckily, she didn't lose the little sucker. It just went to her cheek. Flushed it down and warned the cleaning lady that I found another tick, so she would be on the lookout.

Here's the fun part of the story: I come home from school and thank the lord my dad is home. He shows me the bite which I then inspected for a bullseye. It wasn't at all what I expected. There was like this black crater surrounded by red. The red could have been a ring, or maybe inflammation. I have never seen anything black like that, though. So I am immediately freaked out, tell him to go to the doctor. He tells me he's going to go chainsawing, so I GOOGLE tick bites to compare the marks to see if he will get weak and pass out in a short amount of time.

The information we found led him to call the doctor's office. Nobody was there. Why would nobody be at the doctor's? That is THE stupidest thing I have heard of in a looong time.
It's just like, hey I'm having a seizure, but I'll wait until tomorrow when you return. Oh, I guess I'm not that allergic to bee stings... maybe the venom won't flow until you return tomorrow. This severe food poisoning? I should be able to hold out until tomorrow...

Anyway, my dad hasn't gone to the doctor and I am super paranoid that he is going to have paralysis or something severe. The closest resemblance I found on the internet is:


Minus the little red bump at the top. But, uh, the name of this kind of worries me: African Tick Bite Fever.

I don't know if that's what my dad has, necessarily, but I'm thinking the worst so I can't be surprised if it turns out to be something REALLY bad. And this picture = pretty much what is on my daddy's leg. Although, I would like another look, especially after all the pictures and different bullseyes I've seen since I first saw it.

The story doesn't stop there, oh no, that would be too convenient for this house. My cat, of course had one HUGE tick that I found right before I was planning on going to bed. I of course never ended up falling asleep because I had to take care of the situation and had the curiosity to do more searching on GOOGLE. I got to try a different removal technique. I didn't know that they let go on their own, but that website helped with this advice:

"To remove a tick from your skin, the proper way is as follows:
First, using tweezers, grasp the tick as close to its head as possible. Gently lift the tick away from your skin until your skin puckers.Hold the tick in this position until the tick lets go. This may take a few seconds to one minute."

There are products that help one to remove a tick without squashing it. If you do squash the tick's belly, it will release its contents back into the bitten animal which puts the pet (or person) at higher risk of infection. Another thing I learned, although I never tried any of these methods, is that contrary to popular belief, one should NEVER use alcohol, nail polish, nail polish remover,a lit match, a just blown out match, etc. with a tick. What happens is the tick senses something is trying to attack it and as a result, it regurgitates back into the animal. Again, putting the animal at higher risk...

This website, although having many bad suggestions, has insightful ones also. I did not know that you can tell you got the whole tick when you see something that looks like a "long white tube" coming from its head. When I pulled the tick from my cat, I looked for that, and sure enough, I got it out correctly.

I love learning new things via the internet, but also love hearing real testimonials of what is actually good advice or a bad product. So the last little tidbit I am going to add is that this final website was consistently the most knowledgeable one and although I had the misfortune to find it AFTER my last tick removal of the day, it is still an interesting read and I now know that flushing ticks does not kill them.

I can't wait to see where this great tick adventure will take me tomorrow.

Oh, wait. Yes I can.