The first time was funny.
My brother, who didn’t want to come with us on the hike in the first place, was complaining about the hights, the mushrooms, the dreaded Exercise, the fact that he could have been spending this time surfing the internet in the comfort of our basement.
But at least, he added, there weren’t any spiders.
Actually, his exact words were, “At least there aren’t any spiders ahhh argghhh getitoffame! Get it off of me!”
It was a dog tick, not a spider. But still, it was an arachnid, and it was crawling up my brother’s pants. I gallently snatched off the tick, with no thought to my own safety, and spent the rest of the hike laughing about it.
The joke was on me.
We get back into the car, and as we’re driving home, I spot another dog tick crawling across the headrest. I quickly wrapped it up in a tissue.
The next tick appeared on the back of my seat. At this point, I was starting to wonder how I’d fallen into a horror movie.
The third tick was spotting crawling across my pants.
Another tick was found on my dad’s shirt.
Anyway, I burned the little scridnit. I burned it. Burned it to ashes. But I’m still afraid. If it crawls out of the embers with revenge for its fellows in mind, I will know I’m in a horror movie. Ugh. You know that mental illness where you’re convinced there are bugs crawling all over you? Well, it’s even worse when the bugs are real.
Excuse me, I’m going off to get myself fumigated.