They are Everywhere!

 Here is a short little story in honor of that creepy holiday, Halloween. Well, really, I just find it creepy!

    A geocache was recently released not far from my house, just a bit over a mile. Since it is a Saturday and I have no chores to do, (HA) I decided to take a short drive and find it.

    I was familiar with the area where it was hidden. I turned into a small pull-off and shut off the engine. The GPS still hadn’t found any satellites but my “geosense” was twitching. There were two obvious places where it could be hidden.

    The first one I tried was wrong. I should mention that it was the easier of the two spots, I was hoping. I easily located the cache in my second attempt, signed the log and replaced it as found. Back at the car, the GPS was still searching for its satellites. Bah, sometimes you don’t need them!

    Anyway, as I was driving down the road, I noticed a small bug crawling across my hand. I’m sure you can guess what kind of bug it was…Yup,  a tick!

I hate these bugs!

    I pulled over as quickly as I could, all the while keeping an eye on the little devil. I captured it and squished it between my fingernails. Yuk, kinda gross! Naturally, right afterwards, I started feeling things crawling all over me. I did a quick check and didn’t see any others. I still felt them though, thanks to my over-active imagination.

    One of the big things prodding my imagination was that the day before, I had visited the doctor to have two of them removed from my neck. They were far enough back that I could see them in the mirror but couldn’t remove them.

    A call to my doctors’ office got me an appointment, five hours later. So…just leave them there, sucking on my blood, holding onto my flesh with their hooks. No problem. A little creepy perhaps. The other times I’ve gotten bite by them I had always been able to remove them myself.

         

    Deer ticks are the smaller of the ticks found in Pennsylvania. The deer tick above was magnified 600 times to allow us to see the barbed mouth parts. The second photo gives an idea of how small the deer ticks are as compared to a dog tick.

    The doc spent about 15 minutes working on my neck, making sure that every bit of the bugs had been removed. She then gave me a script for some Doxycycline to tackle any bacteria that might have been left behind. (Gotta watch out for Lyme Disease)

    So it was a little bit of a shock to see another one strolling across my hand the next day. They are everywhere!

    The worst part is the psychological aspect to seeing them. I’ve picked them off my body many times, it is no big deal, part of going out in the woods. BUT, every time I’ve gotten one, I start to feel them crawling all over me. I get itches that I can’t easily scratch. I feel them under my clothes. Rarely is there anything there, but still, I just have to check!

    Now, if you’ll excuse me, I feel something on my back.