Ticked Off

As I was getting ready for bed last night,
I happened to find one of these beauties attached to my chest.

Eww. Seriously?
How did it get there? Let me recap my day for you:
1) Lots of tummy time, flash cards, dancing, and playing
with Dorothy in our non-woodland home.
2) A walk out on the paved walkway around our complex,
free of shrubbery and overhanging trees.
3) Making dinner inside.

The only other thing we did was drop Dorothy
off at her Grandma's so we could go visit my
sister-in-law at the hospital.
However, they do have a lot of greenery leading up
to their front door.
That must be where I picked up my parasitic friend.
Once again, Ewww.

I took a class on entymology in college titled:
Humans, Insects, and Diseases
We covered a wide range of vector borne diseases,
including those caused by ticks.
It was terrifying.
I spent the entire summer following that semester
paranoid that an Asian Tiger Mosquito was going to end my life.
Last night,
all the nasty things about ticks that I learned came
flooding back to me.
Sentences describing the cutting mandibles and
feeding tube of a tick swirled in my head.
The list of diseases, including
lyme disease, rocky mountain spotted fever, and babesiosis
scrolled through my thoughts.

Once I got over feeling extremely violated,
I quickly tweezed the offender out of my body,
flushed it,
and sanitized the site of the attack.
Things are looking good this morning.

Let's hope it stays that way.

1. tweezers
2. alcohol wipes
3. no ticks on Dorothy