Tick City

We went for a hike yesterday to get some exercise. We had a lovely excursion. However, it amounted to precious little exercise (duh, four-year-olds don't really "hike").

J got some exercise trucking along with the big boys. I gave them some insect vials and the camelpack backpack loaded with snacks. They had a grand time.

T and I muddled along, hopping, jumping, skipping, sitting, whining, and watching bugs. We moved at a painfully slow snail pace. Honestly, I felt like a somnambulist about half-way through.

But, on the plus side, we say a garter snake (T got to pet it as it zipped away), a black racer, a black rat snake, a mama duck with babies, turtles, bees, ants (which T stomped on), spiders (we played with some), crickets, and a variety of other stuff.

I successfully kept T from playing with poison ivy, but was able to let him smell sassafras and black birch.

Then, when we got home, the great tick-finding extravaganza began and didn't finish for the rest of the night. I took about four of them off of us on the trail. I pulled one out of my hair and one from my hip right when I got home. Then changed all of my clothes and brushed through my hair. Z looked himself over when he got home as did J and B.

By dinner time, we had re-examined ourselves and all found more of them. So, in B's words - we became "naked family". Everyone but me was stripped to the skin in the kitchen... we pulled two more ticks from Z, three from B and (I think) EIGHT from little T. J went back through my hair and I looked myself over again in the bathroom.

Then - while watching late-night tv last night, I pulled another one off of my stomach that was just walking around.

Wow, early tick season here.