Things you don’t want to hear at the grocery store
By Gina Spadafori
July 12, 2009
Checkout Person: “Um, ma’am … uh … there’s a tick on your neck.”
Me: “What?”
CP: “Sorry … a tick. Crawling up your neck. Sorry.”
Me: “Ick.”
Person Behind Me: “Ick!”
CP: “Really sorry.”
Me: “May I have a plastic bag?”
CP: “A plastic bag?”
Me: “A plastic bag.”
Ten seconds later ...
CP and PBM: ” Ick!!!!!”
***
Seriously, did they think I was going to take the tick home with me?
Yes, I removed the tick from my neck and squished it inside a plastic grocery bag right in the middle of the check-out line, and handed the body bag back to the clerk for disposal. I can never return to that store again, not ever, since I am probably known as Tick Woman there for all time. And now, I am off to take the longest, hottest shower in the history of civilization.
I hate ticks.
And of course, after our two-hour dawn jaunt along the river parkway this morning — me, McKenzie and Woody — I checked the dogs for ticks and removed a couple from them. But I honestly didn’t feel the one that was walking on me.
Ick.
I feel your pain. Tick Woman. HAHAHAHAHA
Comment by Janet Boss — July 12, 2009 @ 11:05 am
Elitist tick hater.
Comment by Christie Keith — July 12, 2009 @ 11:20 am
I HATE ticks!!!
Comment by Heather — July 12, 2009 @ 11:28 am
I had one on the back of my neck once.
I didn’t know about it until I feel the tingle there.
Oh, my gosh, my neck is feeling strange just thinking about that little bugger.
I had trouble seeing the back of my neck, but I wasn’t planning on leaving there. It took a mirror in front, one in back, and a special tick remover. Was it a pain, to say the least!
Comment by Colorado Transplant — July 12, 2009 @ 11:41 am
Tick incidents are par for the course for those of us in wilderness search-and-rescue.
Let’s see, my most recent tick encounters:
7 days ago: Removed tick that had just bit into my forearm.
4 days ago: Removed tick I felt crawling up my leg.
Unfortunately, I have developed an increasingly sensitive allergy to tick bites, and that bite 7 days ago led to a required course in prednisone to reduce the swelling and regain the use of my right hand. Now I carry an EpiPen as a precaution against severe anaphylaxis.
On the bright side, I start itching almost immediately when a tick bites me, so they are unlikely to be there long enough to transmit Lyme or some other nasty disease.
Comment by LauraS — July 12, 2009 @ 12:19 pm
ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew…..
I HATE TICKS.
Comment by Cait — July 12, 2009 @ 12:25 pm
I pray for the extinction of ticks. Screw mother nature. If she really loved us she would never have allowed something that vile to foul the face of the earth.
When I was in Geology Field Camp my senior year in college I had to have one cut out of my scalp. For 36 hours I knew the horrific thing was there - and wasn’t able to do anything about it. The fiendish thing had burrowed deep into my skin - then died. I did not sleep a wink that night (though I drank heavily).
It even gave the country doctor who cut it out of me the heebie-jeebies. [shudders]
I HATE ticks.
Comment by Janeen — July 12, 2009 @ 12:45 pm
Only a dog lover would appreciate the humor in this - thanks for posting it :-))
Comment by Mary — July 12, 2009 @ 1:14 pm
About 9 Novembers ago, I got invaded by a deer tick. It chose to snack on the tissue on the underside of my right breast. Trying to see it in the bathroom mirror, keep my glasses on my face, my breast up and out of the way and remove the cussed thing was a challenge. lol. It left a nice, large bullet mark. The next day found me at the nearest Dr’s office with tick in pill bottle and bullet mark and leaving with a prescription for antibiotics. When you mention ticks, I can still feel the damn thing almost a decade later!
I share everyone else’s hatred for the damnedable beasties and a mild perverse enjoyment of Gina having on on her neck while at the checkout. :)
Comment by Anne T — July 12, 2009 @ 2:28 pm
ewwwwww
how do you find black ticks on black dogs, anyway??
inquiring mind NEEDS to know (inquiring mind in a body that owns a black dog..)
Comment by EmilyS — July 12, 2009 @ 4:15 pm
Fortunately. the local ticks are pretty large, so you can feel them when you go over the dog.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — July 12, 2009 @ 4:37 pm
Then there are deer ticks (the ones that carry Lyme Disease). Here’s a photo of an adult and of a nymph, both on a human finger for scale (not to mention “Ew!” factor!):
http://www.minnpost.com/client.....ick452.jpg
Comment by The OTHER Pat — July 12, 2009 @ 5:15 pm
A forum acquaintance is climbing about the mountains of British Columbia, picking up ticks for a government study. Science has just begun to tap tick borne illnesses in North America. My local PBS station has run two different news bites about the increase of tick borne illnesses in my state. Here are 2 links worthy of note.
http://www.autoimmunityresearch.org/lyme-disease/
http://veterinarymedicine.dvm3.....ail/506867
Comment by Anne T — July 12, 2009 @ 5:36 pm
I pulled one off the back of my neck last month. It was the middle of the night and I was lying in bed and reached back to scratch my neck and felt it. That’ll get a girl out of bed in a hurry! I did not have good dreams the rest of that night, I assure you!
Comment by katie — July 12, 2009 @ 7:04 pm
Came to California and went to SAR training with LauraS and her husband. Place called Half-Moon Bay, maybe ya’ll know it. Very brushy.
To a nice Thai restaurant afterwards — white tablecloth place. Had a fish called sandab for the first time, excellent.
And there we are, having a terribly civilized meal and stimulating conversation, and casually, without a hitch in a sentence, poker-faced, picking the ticks off our necks, hairlines, clothing, arms and squishing them in a paper towel that I’d liberated from the restroom and flushed at the end of the meal. No other patron or staff could have suspected what was going on, for no normal person would ever allow their imaginations to go there.
Only SAR handlers …
The dogs all got Frontline that day — after we picked 40-50 ticks off each of them. No Frontline for Peoples.
I’m just glad we had the English shepherds, and no German shepherds, with us on that outing. Much more difficult to find the ticks in the denser GSD coats.
Comment by H. Houlahan — July 12, 2009 @ 7:48 pm
Sheesh Heather, and I bitch about tick picking off my almost but not quite hairless dogs?
I can just picture you guy going about your meal and your conversation, quietly removing ticks from each other and squishing them! :)I hope none of the ticks embedded their mouth parts in any of you or your dogs!
Comment by Anne T — July 12, 2009 @ 7:58 pm
Ewwwwww….LOL Enjoyed the description. Don’t have many in my area but remember when I hiked in the midwest and all the chiggers…yuck.
Will just call you TG for short…tick girl.
:-)
Comment by Ark Lady — July 12, 2009 @ 8:36 pm
Yerrg, come to inland Mendocino! Ticks AND chiggers!
Gina, I feel for you. I found one in my cleavage once. I’d been pruning grapes all day. Pants tucked into socks? Check. Long sleeve shirt? Check.
But a v-neck…. whoops! Blech! And YES on the long hot shower too.
The chiggers were a surprise, in California my whole life and had no clue they were here. Poor dogs got it far worse than I did, thankfully they are kept at bay by any anti-tick regiment.
Still, I prefer them to icksy-nasty ticks, any day.
Comment by JenniferJ — July 12, 2009 @ 9:44 pm
Scenes from an Oklahoma childhood: getting thoroughly checked for ticks after playing outside. Getting swabbed with calamine lotion for itchy chigger bites. The upside: not knowing anything about tick-borne diseases.
Comment by Kim Thornton — July 12, 2009 @ 9:44 pm
Lily Pons from spring to late summer is a haven for ticks. As is about every inch of my property (why I LOVE my chickens)
Walk through the brush or under the treeline at your own peril.
Last year I took my son to the Pons every day while training dogs and every evening we would pick ticks like chimps in a zoo for about an hour; combing through hair, looking down backs, checking ears.
The dogs were not exempt. I figured we spent as much time picking ticks as we did training dogs.
Ticks are the reasons I do not eat raisins. Too many similarities.
Comment by Linda Kaim — July 13, 2009 @ 7:09 am
Comment by Phyllis DeGioia — July 13, 2009 @ 9:02 am
SNORT
Comment by Phyllis DeGioia — July 13, 2009 @ 9:02 am