A Dog and Her Boy

The other day I went to work at church.   It's what I do.   I had already dropped a suitcase laden Craig off at church earlier that morning(on his way to OFSAA), his friend Jaret B at Field Day and later, Joe and I went to District Field Day together.     I was resuming my work when the phone began to ring incessantly.

When it does this, I know someone from home is trying to reach me at church. They know that I am usually across the building, can hear the phone ring, but cannot reach it before the answering machine kicks in.   It's the family "code".

I pick up the phone:
"Hello?"
"Hi, it's Joe.  Blixie had a tick on her head."
"Oh?"  (realizing that he just said "had")
"I tried to take it off  (stomach plummets) and I think the head is still in there."
"Okay, I'll be right there."

I get home and say, "Where's the rest of it?"
"I threw it in the garbage."  (I thought it would be good to examine the body and check how much of the head I was going to need to root for.)

Queasy yet?

"Okay, find it please."   After a few minutes of tracking down the correct receptacle and my locating the tweezers tasked for tick removal...the tick was spotted fully intact, crawling on a cup by the sink.  It was immediately tweezed up,  placed in an empty applesauce jar, doused with rubbing alcohol, and had its fate sealed.

Upon hearing the whole story, I deduced that the entire parasite had indeed been successfully removed from Blixie's snout.   Joe commented that there was a white flake where the head should have been.   A good sign since ticks rarely release what their jaws have locked onto.   The skin tends to tear off with the tick when you removed it....most unpleasant for the host, but the best case scenario.

I guess Joe is not squeamish.  He takes after his momma.