Yikes! We've got ticks!!

Well, we've all had them.  Yuck.  Al was the first.  He had what looked like a big, blood-filled skin hanging thing attached to what looked like a cut on his shoulder.  He gets cuts all the time and he never knows how so, of course this time he didn't know how he got it.  Upon further examination, it was a tick-heartily sucking away at Al's blood.  Ticks attached themselves firmly and this one wouldn't budge.  It had to be cut off with scissors.  Again, yuck.  Al is still walking around with a piece of the tick in his shoulder.
Next, Kim saw one on her leg.  She was creeped out.  Fortunately this one didn't have time to attach itself and she was able to fling it off.



Yikes


Poor Sid.  He's had three.  We had him on the operating table this morning (our cement picnic table).
He had one under his chin and two on his ears. We used tweezers to pull these gross suckers off him.
Here's the information about ticks.  They cling to long grasses using their back feet, waiting for some unsuspecting passerby (dogs are their favourite).  They latch on and find a nice, juicy site to start feeding.  They are flat, tiny little discs until they begin to feed.  Then they swell up, filled with blood.  They become huge.  Sid doesn't like to do his daily business out in the open.  He prefers to hid in the long grass.  He'll have to become less shy!



Operating table

 In the first picture-look just below the tweezers.  That tick just came off his neck.  In the second picture, Al is tweezing the tick off Sid.


Sid back in the swim of things