With the weather here finally presenting a few good days we are trying to get outside a bit more and enjoy some nature. Contrary to popular belief, California isn’t all palm trees and ocean breezes. Northern California boasts a lot of rain and winds that can knock you off your feet. It is also the Allergen Capitol of the World (my source being me) and when you mix those winds with all the pollen and mold and dander. . .ACHOO! Anyway, we went outside!

We have this lovely pond on base with a park and a walking/jogging trail that we like to follow. There are ducks and geese and turtles and fish, all enjoying their mostly peaceable kingdom and glutting themselves on a steady diet of bread delivered by the Air Force base’s children. However, as I’m sure you are all aware, occasionally when you try to enjoy nature you get more than you bargained for.

I was trying to shoot a cute photo of my daughter, so I reached up to brush the hair off of her face when I felt a lump just above her widow’s peak. As soon as my finger landed on it a warning bell began to sound in my brain. Wood tick. WOOD TICK. WOOD TICK! Lyme disease spreading, rocky mountain spotted fever carrying, blood sucking vermin with a serious gag-factor.

I parted her pretty blond hair and to my disgust located a nasty, engorged tick that had burrowed quite comfortably into her scalp. This tick had clearly been hanging out there for awhile, and had not been picked up on this trip. It was fat and distended and had left several little drops of tick-poo on her head.

Now, I had washed her hair that morning. I had also brushed it and put it into pig tails and then taken them out and re-brushed them later on in the day before we went to the park. The trouble is, her hair is so thick and ticks are so small, that without landing directly on the little bugger, you just weren’t going to find him! I wanted to gag. I wanted to knock it off her head as quickly as possible and go retch in the bushes. Ticks gross me out.

That being said, the tick was located on the scalp of a four year old girl who can go absolutely insane at the drop of a hat, and so I remained calm and let the kids know that it was now time to go home as we had a tick removal to attend to.

Jonas thought this was wonderful. “Maggie! You have a tick! And it’s sucking your bloooooood like a VAMPIRE! It’s going to suck out all of your BLOOOOOOOOOD!” What a big brother.

I told him to shut up about the tick and it’s vampire like qualities, so he launched into a discourse on all of the other blood sucking creatures he has learned about. Vampire bats! Head lice! Mosquitoes that suck blood until they explode! Ew. Ew. EW! I expected Maggie to go completely off her nut, but she was as cool as a cucumber throughout the entire conversation.

I speed dialed my husband and told him that I’d be bringing a tick home. He met us at the garage door armed with tweezers, rubbing alcohol and a fire starter. Maggie calmly sat down as we discussed how might be the best method for removing this parasite.

I have always been taught that you need to light a match near the tick’s head so he backs himself out. If I had done that, my daughter would have a quarter sized bald spot right in the front of her head. Vanity won out, so Chris torched the tips of the tweezers and I grabbed the little bug as near to her scalp as I could and yanked him off. It took two tries, as he was holding on tight. Once he was off, we torched him until he made a grotesque popping sound and flipped six inches away from the flame. Then I took my fingernail and, still resisting the urge to gag, dug out the bite area to make darn sure there were no tick bits left in her scalp.

Through all this, Maggie, my moody drama queen, my emo-bomb waiting to happen, my screams-because-she-likes-to-hear-herself-yell child, sat placidly, stoically even, in her seat. She did not cry. She did not fuss. She didn’t even say “ow”. She allowed us to remove bits of her flesh and douse her head with rubbing alcohol with mild interest, and then ran off to play.

Chris, Jonas and I were completely grossed out and concerned, and she didn’t care one whit.

Figures.