Having grown up and lived in Manhattan my whole life, my encounters with nature have been limited. Yes, my parents shipped me off to sleep away camp in the deep woods of Maine, with no electricity for 8 weeks at the age of 8 but that is a story for a future post on traumatic life experiences.

When my son came home from his second day of day camp a few weeks ago, he was sitting on my husband’s and my bed in his pajamas after showering, chatting about his day and just hanging out. As he was talking, his shirt raised up on one side and I noticed a tiny brown speck on his skin. He noticed me stop to look and his hand immediately went to the spot and said, “I think this is a small scab.” As my husband and I moved in for a closer look, I opened my mouth to ask if it could possibly be a tick but it was too late…my husband had reached over and just picked the tiny speck off with his finger. At that moment, we realized that it was most likely a tick and we looked at it under a magnifying glass only to confirm our worst fear…it had legs! I was horrified and sensed that my son was starting to panic at the mention of a tick…he went immediately to his “go-to” question….”will I need shots?”  In an effort to not stress him out, we assured him that the whole tick had been removed and that there was no cause for concern. We told him that because his camp surroundings are wooded, there are lots of deers and that ticks are a very common occurrence. We explained that we would do a tick-check on him and on his sister every night before they showered just to be safe and off to bed he went. Ahhh, now I was alone so I could flip out in the privacy of my bedroom. As Woody Allen so beautifully put it, “I am two with nature” and any form of wildlife embedded in my child’s flesh is an invitation to panic. Like so many other life experiences, if I were more familiar with this stuff, I could shrug it off more easily. Case in point, I have never been stung by a bee and thus I am terrified of all bee-like creatures that dare to invade my air space. I get furious at my husnabd when he tells me to just stay still and the bee will fly away…yeah right!

Anyway, the bottom line is that my son is fine and no symptoms of Lyme disease have presented themselves but it was a great opportunity to hop online and check out the dos and don’ts on ticks and tick removal for dummies (or city chicks).

Here’s what I found: http://tickfacts.com/tick-removal.html

I also discovered a great product that everyone should keep on hand in summer or when traveling in case you discover one of these critters. It’s called the Tick it Away and it was developed by a pediatrician. www.TickitAway.com His website also contains very cool animated demonstrations of proper removal techniques. For those of you who have been removing ticks stress-free since childhood, I apologize for arriving late to the party but better late than never!