TICK tock on the clock...

This nasty thing is what we found on our sweet little Charlie a couple of weeks ago after taking a trip with Courtney and Justin to McKinney Falls to hike. Here's the story:

G's been working non-stop on a project that had an April 1 deadline, no joke. That was the same day that my best friend Kelsey was getting married, not kidding. So a couple weeks ago (I know it's been a while since an update) Court, Justin and I went to McKinney Falls to hike. One, I never knew how close it was to our house and two, it was beautiful and I can't believe it's located on the east side of 35....

Anyways, we had a great time hiking and Charlie just absolutely loves it. He loves being in the lead and actually pulls on the leash non-stop and cries his little heart out if he's not the one leading the entire pack while hiking. I'll post some pictures later but my laptop monitor has a short in it I think so the light doesn't work which means I can't see the screen...point being, it's beautiful out there.

These pictures are from good ol' google images, but I thought I'd give you an idea of where we went. So we decided to go off the beaten path while hiking because we're pretty hardcore and we went through this field area that had REALLY tall grass and a tiny, narrow trail going through it. There were some bluebonnets here and there too which I'm loving right now in Austin! Anyways, this is where I KNOW Charlie got his Lone Star Tick - see the above picture. So, Saturday we had gone hiking. Sunday nigth around 7pm I got a text from Courtney letting me know that she had just pulled a TICK off of her HEAD. At first I wanted to puke, and then I proceeded to start feelign every inch of my head as I sat in the living room. Thank GOD I didn't find anything on me. However, Garett remembered that he'd felt a weird little bump on Charlie in the car the evening before and thought it had just been a scab. Sick. We all know where this story is going - turns out that "scab" was a nasty tick that was sucking the blood out of my sweet Charlie :( Living in Texas and being outside all the time, I have actually never seen a tick so it disgusted me....I quickly googled how to get a tick off and read that you're not supposed to use vaseline or a hot match or needle anymore. Instead you're supposed to get a good pair of tweezers, grab the tick down by the skin so that you get as close to it's head/pinchers as possible and pull it out in the same motion and direction that it attached itself to the dog/person/whatever you're pulling it out of. This tick was wiggling it's little back legs as I latched onto it with the tweezers. I got a good grip and pulled really hard and it popped out of Charlie and continued to wiggle while I held it in the tweezer grip...SICK. Since it was still alive and I'd never experienced a tick before and I was standing there imagining me loosening my grip and having the damn thing fly or sprint at me and start sucking my blood I did the most reasonable thing I could think of and grabbed a lighter and killed it with the flame while still holding it with my favorite pair or tweezers....

Horrible experience but I'm so glad we got it off of Charlie as early as we did. Point is, we had booked a campsite to go back to McKinney in May because the sites were secluded and beautiful...but I quickly called Inks Lake and changed our reservation for there :) That and Lexie (Court's dog) was super sick after hiking and we think it was water-related.

The End!