.tick tape

Ok, so the crew had ticks this week. I have found several in my hair, some already burrowing.

Basically, we were on a twenty cent block, when someone found one on their arm at the end of the day. They look like deep red dustmites, the size of the top of a pen or a 0 gauge earring. They burrow in, suck your blood, grow, and lay eggs. When we started to get nervous and check ourselves, our driver laughed at us.
"Hah! You guys, one tick doesn't mean we all have them."
"Aie, but Johnnee, I see one, she ees on your forehead!"
"AAAAH!"

We found fifteen in his hair, and two in his armpits that we had to get out with hot tweezers. Whenever ticks are mentioned in camp now, you see people's hands fly up to their hairlines to check. Our New Zealand planter, Justin, found one below his belly button and crawling south.

"I'm not sure I'm a big fan of all your wildlife," he told me.
The little guys are nature's equivalent of an armoured car. You cannot kill them, except with fire. I tried to squish one with all my strength, and it just waved its little red legs at me. We set up a strip of duct tape on the truck to stick them on. They flail their little legs and hang around.

Another glorious week out west. As my friend David grumbled while pulling one out of his chest hair:
"I'm sorry, leetle ticky-tick, but I don't think I'm ready to have children."