Asstick

My husband, Big Daddy, has some land up in the wilds of Oklahoma.   There's not much there in the town near it but people he's related to, a couple of people he's not, a bar, some sad-looking dogs, and deer.  Lots and lots of deer.  


Hubby's grandmother owned the land back in the day, and it's been passed on to him.    It's a couple hundred acres of water, bramble, grass, and trees.   The old homestead is still there.  Due to us living in Texas and the land being in the armpit of Oklahoma, we don't make it up there as often as we should or as often as we would like.    Thieves, dishonest relatives, and meth heads love the old homestead though.  We often get calls that someone has broken in, and we beat feet up there to put a band-aid on the pumping artery of a house.   Through the fifty gazillion break-ins, we aren't for sure what's up there anymore, what's been stolen, or what's been moved throughout the years.    It's really very sad.  

After one such rescue mission, Big Daddy came home dirty, dusty, and upset.    He stripped off his clothes in the laundry room, I did a cursory look for ticks, and off he went to the shower to wash off the day.

After he finished his shower,  we cussed and discussed the sad state of the world that thieves, relatives, and drug addicts kept taking what wasn't theirs.   After coming up with several possible solutions (game cameras, public floggings, and executions), we had dinner and moved on about our life.

A couple of days later, my husband complained of chiggers.   If you have never had the misfortune of coming across one of the little demons, count yourself lucky.  Chiggers are tiny little  bastards mites who live in tall grass.  When you go walking through the grass, they hop on you,  burrow under your skin, and cause a huge red bump that itches like Satan himself moved in.  You can claw them until they bleed, but they still will itch, because there is SOMETHING LIVING BENEATH YOUR SKIN.  Home remedies abound for the things, but none of them really work.  You have to just wait out the itch for a week or so.  They suck.

When Big Daddy whined  talked about the chiggers over the next couple of days, I made all the appropriate "poor-poor-pitiful-you' faces and said all the right words, silently thankful that I hadn't made the trip to Oklahoma that time.  

After about a week, Big Daddy was beside himself with a bite on his butt.  Actually not on his butt.   IN HIS BUTT CRACK.

A little bit TMI, I know.  

Just stick with me; this story is totally worth it.

It wouldn't quit itching, he said.   It keeps swelling up and going down, he said.   Would you please look at it, he said.  I hemmed and hawed and made a thousand excuses, because really... who wants to look at their hubby's butt crack???  

Not this girl. 

I love you, but thank you, no.

He whined and moaned and was generally hard to live with until finally I sighed the sigh of a thousand sighs and told him to go lie down on the bed.

He pulled down his pants.  I took a fortifying breath and looked.  

It was disgusting.   Not his butt crack, the bite.   It was swollen up with a funky purplish,red-colored bulls eye that had a bit of a head on it.    I did what people everywhere are prone to do when faced with something like that...

I squeezed it.

Suddenly, a tiny little seed of brown, about the size of a flea , poked out of the whelp. I stopped squeezing and then it disappeared.  I squeezed harder. 

And saw legs.

I bounded from the bed and started screaming over and over,  " OH MY GOD! YOU HAVE A TICK IN YOUR ASS.  A TICK IS IN YOUR ASS.  OH MY GOD!  I SAW ITS LEGS.  THERE'S A TICK IN YOUR ASS! OH MY GOD! I SQUEEZED AND I SAW ITS LEGS! OH MY GOD! THERE'S A TICK IN YOUR ASS!!!    A.  TICK.  IN.  YOUR.  ASS!!!!   TICK IN YOUR ASS!"   Then I jumped up and down for a good 30 seconds, alternating between flapping my hands like a demented bird and covering my mouth with my hands.

Neither of us really knew what to do. As soon as I stopped squeezing, the asstick had disappeared again. 

Now I have never pulled a tick out and am deathly afraid of them.  I remember being a tiny little girl, and I got one on my stomach.  I remember one of my parents lighting a match, touching it to the tick on my stomach, and it letting go.  

That was a tick on the surface though, not one burrowed beneath the skin. I figured a lit match was not the way to go in this sensitive area, so I scrambled to the bathroom to get the tweezers and toilet paper, the whole way still screaming about the tick IN HIS ASS.

Once I got back to the site of the carnage, I squeezed again.   I guess I had dislodged it a bit, because this time much more of it came out and I grabbed it with the tweezers.    I quickly dropped the asstick into the wad of toilet paper.   Big Daddy, of course, wanted to see it to see if I diagnosed the tick correctly. 

I did.  Oh yeah!   Bam! Take that, Dr. Gregory House! Who's the doctor now?

I was very freaked out at the thought of holding this sesame seed sized asstick in toilet paper.  If it could burrow through flesh, toilet paper was like cotton candy.  I had visions of it digging through the paper and into my palm.  I hurtled toward the bathroom and tossed it in the toilet.  Then I washed my hands about a thousand times.  Tick germs and butt germs.  Go OCD!

Public Service Announcement #341.  If you get bit in the butt crack, or anywhere for that matter, by a tick, do not flush it.   Your doctor will want to see it to examine it.   In the event that you do not have it, you will get put on a hugely expensive antibiotic to prevent Rocky Mountain Spotted Lemon Lyme Disease Fever or something like that.     Yea pharmaceuticals and scary diseases!!!

The moral of this story is this.... The next time your mate asks you, "Hey hon, will you look at this spot....."   DO IT.  

And think of me. And the asstick.


**** In case your life is like mine, here is the proper way to remove a tick, asstick or otherwise.  You're welcome.