The Bad Kind of Parasite

Think about ticks. Not the things you would put next to a correct exam answer (because over here those are called "checks"), the things that burrow into your skin and drink your blood while releasing a toxin that causes paralysis. The bad kind of tick.

You can usually tell if you've got one because the site where they bite you tends to itch and tingle. Plus you'll have a tick hanging off you somewhere, which can be a bit of a giveaway. But mostly they bite you in awkward, hard to see places like your armpits, scalp or groin.

Feeling itchy? Because here in Penticton, I'm slowly being driven mad by imaginary ticks. Real ticks are not a big deal. Even if they do paralyse you, you usually lose control of your legs first, so you have plenty of time to work out that somethings wrong and find and remove the little bugger. Besides,the whole paralysis thing takes ages, so it very rarely even happens, and even if it does the effect disappears once the tick is gone. The ticks here don't even give you Lymes Disease, so you can stop worrying about that too.

But imaginary ticks are a different story. Firstly, you can't remove an imaginary tick. You can't even find it. Second, you get bitten by them all the time. Every time I talk about - or even think about - ticks, some part of me gets the tell-tale tingle that suggests I'm sharing my bloodstream with a new organism. Every time. Writing this post is exquisite imaginary tick torture. The CIA should just give up on waterboarding and put their captives in long dry grass with a detailed description of how a tick will burrow its head into your flesh. I wake in the middle of the night and my head is itchy. I am the king of dandruff, and yet I still think every bump on my misshapen head is a parasite. Don't even get me started on having an itchy butt.

The fact that the last tick I got didn't actually itch at all doesn't seem to help. In fact, it only makes the imaginary ticks more insidious. If only the imaginary ticks didn't itch so much, then I wouldn't even notice them.

On a positive note, I did hear a neat way of getting a tick to let go of you before you try to pull it out. I had heard that heat usually causes them to back out of their little burrow, and I spent several awkward and dangerous moments trying to hold a lighter in between my shoulderblades for the one and only tick I've had out here. Try it folks, it's like yoga for the dirty and dishevelled. Anyway, the trick is to use the lighter to heat something up (like a sewing needle) and then use that to poke the tick in its bum. Like most living things, the tick will respond poorly to a hot poke in the bum, and extract itself from your flesh with all due haste. I have considered rolling around in a fire to remove imaginary ticks, but as yet I have not resorted to such desperate measures.