I’d like to dedicate this post to my friend who has found many ticks on her and her babies this summer.  She reads the blog, and says we need to discuss this very important topic. Sandra, honey, this is for you babe.  And if our traffic tanks because of this, I’m totally coming after you.

One fourth of July, DH and I decided to take our son out to a park and have a family BBQ.  We roasted the meat, the marshmallows, rolled around in the grass, wore our then 2 year old son out, and returned to the homestead tired and happy.  We put our child down for the night, and I hopped in the shower to get rid of the campfire, smokey, sweaty ickiness that accompanies summers in the south.

As I was getting dressed, I noticed a piece of dirt that wouldn’t come off.  So I brushed it off.  It still didn’t come off.  That’s weird, I thought, and I took a closer look.

It was a piece of dirt with legs. 

I freaked.  Totally.  I pulled the little sucker off of my skin while yelping, then flushed it down the toilet because I didn’t know what else to do with it.  Then I looked at my leg, saw that there was a red mark where the little ticky-poo had been sucking, and picked up the phone, seriously debating if I should call 911 for an ambulance to come or if I should just take myself to the ER because surely, surely, I was dying of Lyme disease.

I didn’t dial 911. I dialed my mother.

“MOM!  THERE WAS A TICK ON ME!  WHAT SHOULD I DO?”

“Pull it off, dear”, she calmly replied.

“I did!  But now what do I do?”

“Check J for ticks.  Check your husband for ticks.  Then pull them out, and get rid of them.”

I woke up my sleeping child, and checked him all over, grateful for once for his incredibly white skin.  Every freckle, mole, etc, stands out, and thankfully, no ticks.  He was safe.

I then walked into our bedroom, where DH was already asleep, even though the light was on.

“Wake up,” I said.  “I need to check you for ticks.”

“Wha?  Huh?” he mumbled.

I shook him. “Wake up.  Take your clothes off.”

He rolled over, squinted at me, and said, “This isn’t going to end the way I want it to, is it.”

I ignored him as I checked him for ticks, all the while with him protesting that he didn’t have any ticks and would I stop obsessing about these things and would I please let him go back to sleep already.

I found 4.

Quatro.

As in FOUR. As in YOU HAD FOUR BLOOD SUCKING PARSITES FEEDING ON YOUR LIFE FORCE, AND AREN’T YOU GLAD I WAS OBSESSING ABOUT THIS?

Dh hates it when I’m right.

But you can imagine that my discoveries did nothing to alleviate my fears about tick infested parks.  I spent half the day the next day googling and researching ticks, and basically my research findings can be summed up thus:

Ticks are nasty. 

And they will be standing after the nuclear holocaust, right next to the cockroaches and Cher.

So, to sum up, we welcome any and all visitors to our part of the world. The summers are especially lovely.  We can offer such things as historical sites, beautiful beaches, fresh bluberry picking, and fireflies that make even adults squeal with delight.

Just check for ticks when you leave.