The big excitement this evening was Mom discovering Charles’ first tick. She some how noticed it hanging out behind his ear, under the flap. Tick removal being a job for a man, Mom handed Charles off to me with instructions to remove the tick without her having to observe the procedure. She also told me to not waste time with a picture so I don’t have one for you.
Charles was not the least bothered by this, even though he knew he had an insect clinging to him. He was upbeat and cooperative the entire time.
I wanted to have Charles lay down on a couch while I worked on him, but I had to wander most of the house to find one that wasn’t already in heavy use by temporary storage for laundry folding or a mysterious Charles construction. Luckily the basement couch could be cleared in a minute or two, giving me a work area.
I set Charles down and tried using the match technique. This was ineffective even after two applications so I got a pair of tweezers and grabbed the tick carefully and slowly pulled it out. That seemed to work well (a later Internet search indicates that this is in fact the preferred method). I showed it to Charles afterwards and his only reaction was to ask if it was a spider while he held up a book about spiders (which, I must admit, had a picture on the cover that looked a lot like a tick). We immediately checked the other children but didn’t find anything. I suspect that Charles picked it up on the way home from the park today, as it didn’t look very full.
Another day, another milestone in a boy’s life.