Ticked Right Off!

Well it was bound to happen.

For the last 6 months I have been warned about the spring demons of Bear River.

Not the Black Flies (they haven’t come out yet.) Not the mosquitos (ditto). No, the eight-legged variety, the ticks.

They are a little bigger than a matchhead and hang out in the grass, waiting for a host to brush past so that they can leap and look for a warm hunk of flesh to attach to and to start sucking blood…like a vampire. Today we went for a walk through a field and hours later, at home innocently eating lunch, I felt a little tickle. To my horror, I pulled a tick off my back….under my clothes! A second one skittered down my pant leg and before you could say “Tick-Tack-Toe” I was shrieking in the middle of kitchen and tearing off all of my clothes and demanding that Larry “Check my head!! Check my hair!!

And of course there was a tick in my hair and suddenly I felt like shaving my head, just in case! I guess you could say that this means that there is FINALLY something that I hate about Nova Scotia. The locals say that it’s a good thing we have ticks and Black Flies…..otherwise, they say, we’d be overrun with people from everywheres who have come to their senses and realized that Nova Scotia is about as close to paradise as you can get.

The good news is that the ticks are a bit laid-back and slow and it takes them a while to get the bite happening…..but with my luck that probably just means they are just waking up. Anyway, I have to go now. …I see Larry running his fingers through his hair. I think I’d better check him out too!