Seriously Icky. You've Been Warned.

Remember when I was rhapsodizing about heaven the other day? We spend a lot of time at Two Rivers and Zintel Canyon, so a couple of Sundays ago we decided to branch out a bit. Lewis looked up some hiking trails (more like walking paths) on google earth, then we drove around to find them. Cool trails wound around on the banks of a very scarily swift river. We took our faithful nanny dog Jill, and had a nice, reverent Sunday stroll. (I stuck that reverent bit in for you judgemental types) When we all piled out of the van back home, there was a tick on the carpet of the van. Eww! Lewis squished it (which is more difficult than you would think) and we thought that was the end of it. We found two more on the ground that evening, much to my dismay, so I bought a tick collar for Jill. Flash forward to this afternoon. Dainon brought Jill over to me and showed me a very disgusting sight.

At first I thought she had a hand full of nasty tumors. Have you ever seen those on old dogs? Gross. Then I realized, they were very full, very satisfied ticks.

How did I handle this? I did what any sensible, liberated woman would do. I called my husband at work.

"Honey, there are ginormous ticks on Jill" I shrieked. "What do I do?"

I've never removed a tick in my life. I've seen it done when I was a girl. My mom did something with a match. I could just picture that going wrong and Jill bolting out of the house a flaming Dog of Death. The closest thing I've done would be when I was a teenager and my dog got too close to a porcupine. Of all the luck, my parents were gone. That was an adventure.

"I don't know, just Google it and do what they say."

That sounded reasonable enough.

I always do what Google says, even when I shouldn't. (Like when I was being induced with Liam. Don't follow Google instead of your own midwife. Someday I'll tell you the story.)

He then very chivalrously offered to take care of the problem when he got home. There was no way I was going to have a dog walking around with those blood-sucking fiends hanging off her, so Dainon and I decided to git 'er done.

Google said to pull them out with tweezers. They advised against yanking, just steady pressure. They told us not to be alarmed if the head stayed in, that the dog's immune system would take care of it.

I decided that now was the time to enjoy the benefits of only having boys. I found some gloves and some pliers, and made Dainon pull them out. I held Jill, spread her fur away from the offending pustules and tried not to watch.

It was horrible. Really.

I was nauseated. He had to pull so hard, her skin would stretch way out, then those ticks would end up with a piece of her as a souvenir.

But we did it.

He took the ticks outside to kill them, and their carcasses became a neighborhood sensation.

See, I told you it was disgusting.