Scratching myself to sleep
So today after dinner I spent my time pulling ticks out of my legs. That was fun. Most of them are dark brown or black and relatively easy to see but some of them are really really tiny and close to the colour of the human skin and those are almost impossible to spot before the area around their bite becomes somewhat inflamed.
My host's wife asked me to throw the ticks I pulled out into the grass outside and not kill them, most of them were probably alive after I pulled them out. She told me that there were billions of them here at this time of the year anyway so killing this dozen of those little guys was not going to help with not getting them in the future anyway and it would be pointless to kill them. Instead, they just would educate me how no to get them in the future. Ok, I saw her point and I did release those little bastards back into their natural habitat. I did not feed them but I did not kill them either.
The locals apparently do not get them because they know where to walk and where not to walk (the lower road from the northern side of the forest, etc) and at what time (like just before sunset, after the rain, etc). We have now sat through the lecture on how to avoid getting them here in the future too. I was told that almost all of them here are harmless, particularly if you pull them out within the first 36 hours after getting them.
Now every 5 minutes I get itchy somewhere I cannot see, like the back of my neck and get convinced that I can definitely feel a tick there and I keep asking everyone to check if it is indeed there. It never is.
My host's wife asked me to throw the ticks I pulled out into the grass outside and not kill them, most of them were probably alive after I pulled them out. She told me that there were billions of them here at this time of the year anyway so killing this dozen of those little guys was not going to help with not getting them in the future anyway and it would be pointless to kill them. Instead, they just would educate me how no to get them in the future. Ok, I saw her point and I did release those little bastards back into their natural habitat. I did not feed them but I did not kill them either.
The locals apparently do not get them because they know where to walk and where not to walk (the lower road from the northern side of the forest, etc) and at what time (like just before sunset, after the rain, etc). We have now sat through the lecture on how to avoid getting them here in the future too. I was told that almost all of them here are harmless, particularly if you pull them out within the first 36 hours after getting them.
Now every 5 minutes I get itchy somewhere I cannot see, like the back of my neck and get convinced that I can definitely feel a tick there and I keep asking everyone to check if it is indeed there. It never is.
