… and all I got were these two lousy wood ticks.
I’m doing a story for our newspaper about local native prairie sites, and this afternoon I spent over an hour taking close-up pictures of prairie flowers. It was such a gorgous day - not too hot, not too cold, slight breeze, just enough poofy clouds for the sun to duck under every now and then, and the most gorgeous blue sky. Some days I love my job. Today was one of those days. Idiot that I am, I walked through all that tall grass and other growy stuff (I’m no botanist - is that even the right word? - okay?) wearing a white shirt, tan capri pants and white sandals. I figured I’d end up with poison ivy and/or poison oak. I totally forgot about wood ticks. Oh joy! I just love a good surprise!
Tonight I went out for dinner with my grandma and as we were sitting there eating our ice cream she started freaking out. I don’t like it when 86-year-old ladies do that. She was so shocked she had a hard time getting the words out, but I did catch “bug” and “neck.” So then I started freaking out. I brushed at my neck a few times and pretty soon a wood tick fell onto the front of my shirt. It was soon on the floor. Pretty soon we both felt like we were crawling with them. If you’ve ever had one, you know this feeling. We both declared that we were going to go home and do good, thorough a strip search of ourselves. Sure enough, when I got home, took off all of my clothes and turned them all inside-out, there was another one clinging to the inside of my shirt. He got flushed.
So today I proudly share that I have officially had my first and second wood tick of the summer, both in the same day. Not to mention that I also got my first mosquito bite of the season as well.
Ah, summer in Minnesota. Ain’t it grand?
Oh shoot, I was going to put a TMI on this just in case. I apologize to anyone who may have not wanted to read this and now feels like they’re crawling with wood ticks.
One of my distant cousins donated their old family farm for a prairie preserve in your area a couple a years ago. My gg-grandmother spent the last years of her life there.
Now I know what to look forward to when I visit it.