Tick Hating Season!

Can I just say that I completely hate ticks! And of course here in the Northwoods there are ticks aplenty! I'm so squeamish about them! I'm fine with most spiders, bees, bugs, etc... but ticks just send my skin crawling!

My first experience with a tick was when I was at summer camp. I was eating rice crispies for breakfast and thought I had a rice crispie stuck on my chin. I tried to lick it off and when it wouldn't budge I picked it off and almost passed out when I realized I had been licking a tick!

Really, that wasn't my first experience, but it was the first one I was capable of remembering. One of my mother's favorite stories (that I've heard 10 thousand times!) is about my having a tick in my hair when I was probably a little under 2 years old. So of course I have no memory of it - Thank God!

Apparently, my mother and my aunt were quite the pair together. There are many stories about how crazy things happened when they got together. Anyway, so my mom and aunt were together when my mother discovered I had a tick in my head. They weren't quite sure what to do. So my mother says that she heard if you pour lighter fluid on the tick it will release. So they tried that. It didn't work. Then my aunt said she heard that if you touch a match to it it will let go.... unbelievably they tried this as well. Which resulted in my hair shooting up in flames and my mom and aunt patting my head madly to get the fire out. I guess I was bald for a while.

Almost 10 years ago, my x-husband and I were doing field work. One night after work in the motel room he was sitting with his back to me, crack showing of course ;) and I asked him since when did he have that big mole on his ass. It wasn't a mole, it was a tick! I wanted to go get someone to help, but it being in a sensitive area he was very insistent that I just suck it up and take care of it. I insisted on going to the store and getting a candle and some finger nail polish. Of course I tried the candle first!! Neither worked, so I ended up having to pick it out. It took me forever to work up the balls to do it.

In the 3 summers that we've lived up in the woods I've been lucky enough to have my husband around when one of the kids or myself have a tick issue. Until the other night that is.

The kids were out playing in the yard before dinner. During dinner I notice what looks like an ant in my baby girl's ear. When I got up to pick it out I discovered it was a tick! Luckily it didn't appear to have bored in yet. Of course I instantly freaked out and thought about calling my husband's brother. But it was in my baby girl's ear! And it was running around!! I totally panicked of course, but I eventually swiped it out with a kleenex and ran it outside to the fire pit! My husband has a special "tick" knife that he cuts them with, but I didn't have the guts to even open the kleenex :) the whole time I was running it to the fire pit I was hoping it didn't crawl out onto my hand! I was too panicked to get the child-proof lighter to work so I just flung it into the fire pit and ran back into the house quick!

Later when I was thinking about it, I figured that my husband's brother probably would have laughed at me and wouldn't have wanted to make the drive... it is a 15-20min drive. But I'm sure he would have done it, but then would have gossiped about it for a long time. So I thought of a better plan should I encounter a tick when my husband isn't home. I'll call the neighbors. They have 3 kids that play in their backyard (lined with woods), so I'm sure they are pretty good with the ticks :) I just really hope that it doesn't happen again!