#sheep tick

[photospl]

[scottishmusicnetwork]

YOUNG KNIVES announce new album “Barbarians” | Watch the surreal and unsettling video for new single “Sheep Tick”

[cydrhos]

Sunday moan.

I want you all to know that having just spent another ten minutes with tick tweezers, swab, chlorhexidine & elastoplast I F*****G HATE THESE THINGS.

Sheep tick, Ixodes ricinus. I picked up twelve in three days in Scotland and brought at least (this) one home from the Mid-Welsh hills yesterday. If I don't stop stitting, kneeling and lying in the long grass (not going to happen) then I suppose I should go for a blood test. Still, no early symptoms yet.

Size and leg count make it a larva, of which Wikipedia says, 'The larvae that hatch do not actively seek a host, and usually feed on insectivores (orders Erinaceomorpha and Soricomorpha), although they may also find rodents, rabbits, birds, reptiles, or bats.'

And me.

The only positive aspect of being bitten by larvae is that they are younger so are less likely previously to have found an infected host.

-- My irritation has just been intensified by Bill Turnbull translating the French 'faune' of Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'une faune as fawn.