Da-doowee-da-da-da-dwee-dow!

So Katherine was all dressed in her gi and ready to head to karate.

“Mommy? It feels like I have a flap of skin in my hair.”

No, honey, that’s — gah! A tick! A huge tick! 

Ah, the joys of a vacation in upstate Wisconsin …

So much for karate, and instead off to a late appointment at the local clinic to remove same.

(Though I’d noted it in passing before, all the websites I was looking at in mere seconds indicated that the old-fashioned anti-tick remedies — a just-snuffed match, vaseline, alcohol — are counter-indicated these days. Consult your physician, or Google for removing ticks.)

Katherine was initially — a bit freaked out over the the whole tick thing. Until we both told her that we’d both had ticks in our time. Not from upstate Wisconsin, mind you, but … ticks! And we survived. (Actually, this wasn’t a deer tick — the sort I’ve had in my distant past, and which carry Lyme’s Disease). That seemed to be enough to settle her down some, and, in fact, she was able to crack a joke after she’d changed back into her civvies to go to the clinic.

“I know what we should watch on TV tonight while we’re eating dinner. The Tick! Ha ha ha!”

Headed to the clinic, good NP removed the little beastie, Kitten was incredibly brave (and afterwards, after some initial trepidation, decided she wanted to see it in the jar). “It looks a lot like a beetle. Or a spider.”

So she’s on an antibiotic (who knows where the critter had been), but apparently recovered from the ordeal. And so the parenting thing goes.