=== Tick Tac Toe ===

     Okay, so about a week ago I woke up in the morning and realized with jump that tick season is... already here. Winter lasted so long this year that I didn't really consider how close the ticks could possibly be. As it turns out, when you wake up with a tick crawling up your jaw, you suddenly see that the ticks are already here. So far we've only found one other tick in the house. The other one was found in our bed as well crawling on Carley as she was trying to have a nap. That freaked her out, but thankfully we haven't found any others. I conveniently gave both Autumn and Furgle tick treatments only a short time before these two events, and considering our backyard isn't growing much grass at this time, I'm not expecting too many more ticks any time soon.

     It's times like these that make me think back on past events and remember that only a year ago we were trying to get a tick off of Isabelle's face while she laid there as if she didn't even know there was anything there. Both Carley and I were totally freaked out and stressed, but we did manage to get the tick off without any injuries or blood or anything too crazy. If I remember correctly, we pulled something like 10 or 20 ticks off of Furgle last year... ugh... that was awful. He took it really well (and he did have long fur at that time which didn't help I'm sure). I wasn't able to do a tick treatment on him last year either because it was too late by the time I had thought about it.

     After a while you get used to having so many bugs and things around. I used to get super freaked out over ticks and other bugs, but now for the most part I don't mind having them around. I would absolutely prefer NOT to have to deal with them, but they're not as bad now as they used to be for me. I can hold most bugs in my bare hands now without freaking out ever since I spent a day killing and cleaning up mosquitoes in our old apartment. Now with my trusty tweezers by my side, I don't have any issues with ticks either.

Have a fantastic day everybody. Hopefully you aren't all feeling as creepy and crawly as me! ^_^

~ Kyle Welykholowa