I’m a little paranoid about ticks sometimes, but apparently not often enough to prevent myself from getting bitten. Yes, it has finally happened. Without any doubt, I have been bitten by at least one tick in my life. That’s him in the picture above.
Problem is, I don’t worry as much about ticks in October. They say that nymphs are only active through August. They say that in the fall it’s only the big ticks you have to worry about. Big ticks are easy to spot.
But what they say is not entirely true. That is not a small tick. It is almost certainly a nymph. I was fortunate to have spotted it, because I wasn’t checking for ticks. I just happened to be looking at something on another part of my leg when I noticed a dark speck near the back of my knee. And when I say speck, I mean it. It was, as you can see, smaller than the individual letters of LIBERTY on the dime. My husband had to use a headlamp and magnifying glass to see it properly while removing it for me.
We had already been through a tick removal with Livia. We were calmer this time. We knew what to do. We had the right kind of tweezers. The removal went smoothly, so smoothly that the tick was alive and well after being plucked from my leg, though not for long. After the photo shoot, my husband squashed the little bastard. He says there was no blood. That makes me feel a little better.
A couple of days later, Marshall found something crawling on his hand that looked very tickish, too, only quite a bit smaller than the one in the picture above. I believe it was a larval tick, which is also something that you’re not supposed to see at this time of year. How did he get it on him? Well, he had just touched some mulch next to the walkway to our house. The idea that this part of our yard is infested with ticks is almost unthinkable for us. Sure, it’s probably just a larva, and they rarely carry disease. But still ew! And it means that there is literally no part of our property, walkway and driveway included, that we can be sure is tick-free.
Frickin’ ticks!