Mission exterminating buggers

One of the downsides of having a dog in the house is the guests that it unwittingly invites into our house. Specifically, I'm referring to ticks.

Over the years, we have, while rubbing our furkid's belly, came across ticks happily sucking away her blood a handful of times. Initially, I was appalled and totally grossed out. In order to extract the bugger, I would put on gloves (if any in the house),use a pair of tweezers and to kill it, I would use a lighter to flame it up. Later, when the killing was done, i would scrub my hands with soap for a good five minutes. All these done while the Husband rolled his eyes. After all, having growing up in a kampung with packs of dogs, he was used to coming into contact ticks.

I have since desensitized when it comes to being sterile in tick-killing. Too much hassle.

Gone are the tweezers, gloves and lighter. In replacement are bare hands, a tissue paper that I use to wrap up the bugger before my nails dig into it. Too much info? My apologies. The religious routine of scrubbing my hands thoroughly is, however, observed up till this day.

Recently, the tick situation at my little household has taken a worsening. The bloodsuckers have found their way into our beds. The first one was hunted down underneath my blanket at 3am in the morning after it went on a supper buffet with the courtesy of the Husband and I. Given that we were roused from our sleep the wee hours, itchy as hell; you can imagine that the bugger did not die pretty.

Then on one fateful night where Arielle caught the sniffles, my entire little household (less off the dog) crammed ourselves into the girls' bedroom as Arielle is always a handful on the first night of falling sick. Up till 2am, Arielle was waking up every hour, crying for a good ten minutes before falling back asleep, only to wake up 45minutes - 1 hour later. In between, the Husband complained that his feet was itchy but we were both too exhausted to care. The next few days, we found several red spots on Arielle's thighs, abdomen and arm. That broke the straw. How dare they mess with my babies! I went into my killer mode once again, stripping the mattress off its beddings that Arielle uses for nap (same mattress that the Husband slept on the night we crammed into the girls' room) and pored over every surface of the bedclothes and mattress until I tracked down that bugger.

At the rate that I am killing ticks, I might just consider joining the pest control industry should I decide to go back to the workforce one day.