“Tick” may be a four-letter word, but it is not the one I uttered when I found this thing crawling on me.
I hate finding ticks. At the same time, I’m grateful when I find them, because it’s not the tick you find that’s the problem, but the tick you don’t. Plus, there is a first tick every year, just as there is a first daffodil and a first violet. It’s almost a relief to have found it, because now I can get to work on accepting the inescapable reality that there are ticks everywhere at this time of year. But, I hope that this was really the first tick, the only one that there has been to find on any of us this year.