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| The Mika in her element H 2 0! |
It was not too difficult. First, you soak the tic in rubbing alcohol. Then you take a pair of tweezers and pull the tic straight out. You have to be careful to remove the head because if it is left in the dog, there can be dire consquences for the animal.
Our daughter has since returned to Scotland, and since her dog, The Mika, loves to roam the bush around our home, we have become more vigilant in the tic department. In fact, yesterday we noticed what looked like a "skin tag" on Mika's head. And today, we saw that the area at the base of said skin tag was bleeding. I peeked at it and had a flashback from my childhood...
Sometime during the summer of 1966, after camping with the family, my younger sister developed a small grey sac on the back of her neck, under her hair. My mother took a look and somehow discovered that this blood sucking tic had been on her body for several weeks. It was so fat, it's body was transparent...ugh!
As I peered at the skin tag, it reminded me of that tic that had embedded itself on my little sister so many years ago. "I think it's a tic," I said confidently. "We have to pull it out." So, out came the rubbing alcohol, a few paper towels, and the tweezers. The problem was that I couldn't find the tweezers. My brave husband grabbed the little bug by the body with his fingertips and pulled it straight out.
"That's not a tic," he said. However, upon closer observation and the use of our bifocals we realized that yes, it was a tic. We saw little legs and a little head and a little swollen body full of Mika's tasty blood.
In addition to the poison ivy, black flies in June, mosquitoes in July, wasps in August, we are now officially adding tics in October to the list of hazards here around the lake.
