the state bird of virginia

Today we went to Shenandoah National Park which is only a little over one hour away. It was 63 degrees. Everyone at work is always going on about how many ticks there are here and how last year everyone got lyme disease and how on the first warm day you can literally see the foliage writhing with ticks. Anyways we just did a little hike and halfway through I looked down at Oscar and there was a big giant tick sitting right in the middle of his head. Then in the car I saw a little tiny one running across his white stripe on his head. Then we went home and I gave him a bath and there were ticks floating in the water. Then he sat next to me on the couch and there was a tick on his neck! There are so many ticks! And you can only see Oscar's ticks when they are in his white parts and he is 80% made up of black parts! It is so vile. I guess they are living in the carpets now. Do people just get used to this or what?

the sea and the tick

It was freakishly windy today so we went to look at the lake because that is what you do in Buffalo when there is weather. It was pretty cool because the water was crashing up over the breakwall.

In the car I found a giant tick on Oscar. I don't know where he got it but it confirms the one thing I knew about Virginia before I moved there, which is that it is completely crawling with disgusting ticks.

I got a little plastic thing at the pet store that works really well for extracting them, though.