I don't want you to rip my body off

This was what was being yelled in the bathtub earlier this week.

I gave the kids a bath, and when I was drying off Q's hair, I noticed a black something in the hair at the back of his neck. Upon closer inspection, it was a tick. Lovely. I hate ticks.

So, I yelled for The Husband, because I forgot what we're supposed to use to get a tick out, since they breathe through their butt or something like that. He said that on camping trips they would use gasoline or turpentine or something. I told him that I was not putting something flamable on my sons head. I thought that you could use nail polish to suffocate it so it would back out and go away. So, we did what everybody does, called our parents. His actually.

So, all Q hears is his Dad's side of the conversation, which is:

"So I pull the body straight out. What about his head?"

"I've got tweezers, so I just pull, right?"

"What about Vaseline?"

"Okay, we'll let you know what happens"

Q's response: "I don't want you to pull my body apart. Leave my head alone, I don't want you to rip it away."

So we had to explain how ticks work at a level that a five year old could understand, and The Husband managed to pull the body out, and I guess the head does something, I'm not sure what. I do know that once you pull a tick out of a person, their body keeps moving for a while, even if they don't have a head. Sort of like a chicken with it's head cut off theory.

The tick is currently in a small jar in the kitchen, floating in some alcohol, just in case Q ends up with a rash or a fever, or blows up like a puffer fish, I know what kind of tick it was.

And, because we put some oil on Q's head before we attempted to pull the tick out, I get to clean the bathtub of a dirty oil slick. You've gotta love sand and oil in the tub.

I will note, thought, that The Husband just straight out poured the oil on the back his neck, where I would have done it in a more controlled and not so messy fashion ... I don't know if it would have reduced the oil slick in the tub or not, but man it made a mess. Q ended up with his 2nd bath of the night after that.

The boy is clean and so is the tub.
The tick is floating.
I'm itchy just thinking about it.