I pulled a tick out of Gamma’s head in church yesterday. Actually, she pulled it out herself. I wrote about it at Raising Hell today. In fact, I was almost relieved to find a tick in her scalp because I’d been expecting to get something bloggable from the outing, which was for Beta’s confirmation yesterday, and Gamma was being, alas, well-behaved. More or less. So when I found noticed the tick while stroking her hair, I thought, “alright! Here’s my post!”

Sad, isn’t it.

I was like, what do I do. The actual tick thing, I mean. Writing the post, no problem – all I need is a tiny hook to hang my nonsense on by now. I can make something out of nearly nothing as you know if you’ve been reading my stuff for very long. But the actual real life tick. Hrm. Pull it out? It was already slightly engorged with blood… Ticks carry diseases here, Lyme’s Disease and a couple others. You want to avoid squirting the blood back into the person in case it contains any bacteria, and you want to avoid ripping off the tick’s head for the same reason.

My mother-in-law is an expert tick remover, so we decided (in whispers so as not to alarm Gamma) that I would drive Gamma there. But then Gamma scratched her head and removed the tick by accident, head and all.

So, then, two things: a discrete tick-hunt in a crowded church (what are those people looking for? Vermin?) and a certain amount of blood on a little girl’s head. Then I realized we were in a Catholic church, where blood is at home. I mean, you know. That big statue of a guy bleeding from a variety of wounds. Drinking blood, etc. So we concentrated on the tick. But it was gone.

Dead? Squished on the floor? Climbing someone elses pantleg? We’ll never know.

[Excuse me while I scratch my head.]

Fuck I hate ticks. That’s one of the less pleasant things about living in Austria. Not only do they have a good supply of ticks, many of the ticks carry nasty diseases, only some of which you can be innoculated against.

And the pharmaceutical companies here pull out all the stops in their scare campaigns to sell their vaccines or sera or whatever. A tick is bad enough actual size. You should see what they look like enlarged one million times.