Sitting in a Medexpress doctor’s office after the obligatory two-hour wait. From the single, tiny tree photo quadruple-matted in the middle of a way too-large frame, to the mint green walls, I believe this room was designed to cause disorientation and induce nausea. In my neck of the woods, I suspect they pump a lot of stomachs. Might as well let the room itself give you a head start.

Speaking of my neck of the woods, I’m here because I finally got nailed by a deer tick (Ixodes fukinverminbuga dammitall). Say, does this look infected?

Caught well within 24-hours, but worse than my usual “immediately,” my little friend attached herself behind my knee–not the easiest place to reach for safe and tidy extraction. Did it, though. Even the doctor commented on the quality of the extraction. I’m a pro. If you’re wondering, never go the hillbilly “burn it with a match” or anything route. The bacteria what causes (we say “what causes” here in The Sticks) Lyme disease sits dormant in a tick’s gut. It takes warm blood to fire up the bacteria, which then makes its way to the tick’s saliva, which is where you enter the picture. The only safe way to remove a tick is to grasp it as near it’s mouth as possible with tweezers or a tick removal tool (like a little metal bar that narrows to catch under the tick) and very gently pull it away from you. Never just crush it or grab it further back on its body, because our objective here is to keep the contents of its stomach inside its stomach.

Yeah, nasty. Better still, consider investing in one of these:

The scuba suit, I mean, though I suppose you could have an attractive scuba suit model run through the woods ahead of you, collecting disease-carrying ticks, if you had enough money to make magic like that happen.

At any rate, here’s my girl.

This tiny creature cost me a lot of worry and two hours in the local MedExpress, which–in case you don’t know–is eerily like this.

Off to take some anti-biotics.