Living in the country, it was nigh inevitable that I would have to remove a tick from one of my children someday. This spring, a warm and wet spring, I’ve killed a number on my person before they could get a good latch. So I was unsurprised to see one on my son one morning while he was dressing.
As I might have mentioned, this was my first tickendectomy. I didn’t really have time to get to eHow to find out how the Internet does it. I had to rely on the experiences of my youth to know how to remove it.
First, you put a lit cigarette to your child. At least, I think that’s what my parents did to kill the tick. Or maybe my parents just liked to put a lit cigarette to me. I dunno.
Barring that, I did get a pair of tweezers, sterilized them with an open flame, exploded the little sucker, and pulled it straight up to remove the sucking parts. It looked pretty well removed when I finished, so I salved the wound and put on a bandage and watched for infection.
I am Daddy, dammit, and I’m supposed to know immediately how to do these things. I think I did. But I’ll get better, I suppose, as this recurs. This Daddy thing and this adult man thing really have a lot in common. You’re supposed to know how to do something or handle something, you think you kinda know how, and you do it and succeed at it without knowing exactly how you knew.
However, it is a good excuse to post Brad Paisley’s “I’d Like To Check You For Ticks”, which my beautiful wife, who doesn’t listen to country music even though she grew up in the Ozarks, has never heard.
