Creepy Crawlies

This was DOB's weekend to encounter nasty bugs. First he was wrapping up his work at the office on Saturday afternoon--where he was valiantly laboring even though the air conditioning doesn't operate on the weekends--when he suddenly saw termites galore crawling all over the floor and furniture. He promptly decided that he could finish everything else later, and put the extra shirt he had shed in the heat and left lying in the path of the termites into a plastic bag for me to deal with later. It stayed in his trunk until Sunday night, when . . .

He was sitting at the computer working and felt something crawling on his chest. He looked down and it was a tick. From Abbey's room I heard his very urgent whispers and came running. Now, I'd never seen a tick before in my life (I don't think they have them where I grew up) and was at a loss what to do. Fortunately it was still crawling around, so we were able to remove it and flush it without any trouble. All the rest of his clothes promptly went into the washing machine with the termite shirt and they have all been washed now, so we can hope that all such loathsome devices are vanished.

DOB was surprised that I was panicked by the tick, when I always retain my cool in the face of household spiders. But as I pointed out, spiders are relatively indifferent to human beings, while ticks regard them as their natural prey. If I must freak out, I prefer to freak out for rational reasons.