Ouch

Just got back from a week in Les Forges, near Poitiers, in France.

It was a week of excellent tranquility with one exception. After an evening spent exploring meadows, petrified forests, pastures, woods, lakes and the like, I settled down to watch a James Bond film only to suddenly feel a very painful concentrated pinch to the base my erm... "chap". It was enough to make me jump. I feared a pube entanglement until a repeat occurrence sent me scurrying to the loo to check inside my shorts.

Good job I did because one of these was clamped onto my groin:



I had no fucking clue what it was and immediately dissolved into a liquid-like mess of panic based around the quite reasonable assumption that this spider/scorpion thing had just laid it's eggs in my penis. This panic was enhanced by the discovery that not only had whatever it was bitten me, it was hanging on for dear life too. It took me about 3 goes to detach it from my flesh and then throw it down the sink like a big girl before whimpering at the sight of two freshly bleeding teeth marks in my youknowwhat.

Turns out it was a Tick; an external parasite that lives off the blood of mammals. They like woodland areas, especially those with deer and human track areas. They like humid, slightly damp conditions and they basically hang around waiting for something nice and living to be a host for them. The warmth emitted from my flowing short leg was enough to convince this one that my genitals were prime Tick real estate. I'm flattered.

The bad news is they carry all kinds of fucking hideous diseases (mainly Lyme Disease) and there are horror stories online of people being paralysed or going mad as a result of an untreated bite.
The good news is they can sometimes hang about on you for over a day without you noticing and can be next-to-impossible to detach after getting this comfy so good job it chose a particularly sensitive spot to sink itself in and I managed to get rid of it within a few minutes.

Pleased to report no side effects, temperature, swelling or mentalism as yet. Will update with any breaking developments.