Sunday 25 March 2007

That really TICKS me off....

Nope, this isn't a rant. Last night, we had a new Canadian experience - finding a TICK in S's hair! When we went out on Wednesday, S must have picked up a tick on his clothes. He had a bath that night, so I'm assuming it crawled in afterwards - maybe he left his clothes on his bed, I don't know!

Late last night, we were relaxing in the family room - we'd been watching Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest (Cap'n Jack Sparrow and Will Turner are so...well, you know....um, I digress) and the embers of the fire were dying down and S was draped across my lap (you know how you get to the stage when you're tired but getting ready for bed is too much work). He was running his fingers through my hair, which I love, and I was doing the same to him - when I suddenly felt a bump, right on the top of his head. Eeeeek, it was a tick, very much alive and very much attached.

K ran upstairs for tweezers while I did a quick search on the 'net - the Internet does have its uses - and Googled "how to remove a tick". Perfect, a site that showed exactly what to do. I used the tweezers to grab the tick right next to the scalp and pulled it out (along with a couple of S's hairs) then swabbed the site with alcohol. I put the tick into a small amount of alcohol as the site recommended keeping it in case you need to show it to a doctor. The tick took quite a long time to keel over and die - though I'm sure it died happy, falling down drunk!

3 comments:

Katherine said...

Ohhh, tick season has begun then. Unfortunately, I'm well acquainted with finding these icky little critters. I think my oldest son holds the family record of 5 ticks being found on his person (not all we're attached and feeding -thankfully) at one time. The boys have even put the ticks in jars in times past to see how long they would survive... you really don't want to know how long a tick can live without food... believe me.
I guess this episode of bringing an unsavoury aspect of nature home with you should have us all checking over our clothes and bodies to make sure we haven't brought home any of the unwanted ticks indoors.

Samantha said...

How scary! We watched a show on ticks a couple of years ago and every since L rarely leaves the house without a hat on!

Anonymous said...

Z pulled one off our cat 2 nights ago - yuck! I've lived in the okanagan most of my life and have never even seen one. We are being very diligent now in checking clothes and body for these awful little creatures!