I needed to do a property check on a listing of mine, a cabin on a remote three-acre parcel in a neighboring, rural county. What a lovely day it was to take a drive out to the country--temperatures in the 70s, sunny with a light breeze, the smell of honeysuckle in the air. So my husband and I grabbed the camera, stopped for gas, went through a Sonic for refreshment, and off we went.
From the US highway to the state highway to the secondary road, then we finally headed down the gravel lane to the cabin tucked away in the woods. Walking across the yard, I could hear a cow mooing somewhere just out of sight, and I wondered if it is already late enough in the year that her calf had been taken away. My husband and I walked all around the cabin, taking photos from each side. An unrestrained dog scampered across the yard, no doubt coming from the house down the hill.
After we had our inside and outside photos for the property update, my husband went off to the edge of the property to take a shot of the electric meter. I noticed that a tree in the front yard was decorated with locust shells and wandered over to take a closer look and even picked one off of the tree. It brought back pleasant memories of times with our children and their glee at gathering the translucent shells. As we left, I was thinking that the rustic cabin was the embodiment of pastoral and bucolic (a word I have always loved to use, if even in my mind).
Back in the car, we were still on the gravel lane when I felt the first hair-tickling movement that jerked me back to the reality of what pastoral really means. TICKS! First one, then another. No place to pull over on that lovely gravel lane. Out to the county road, and still we had no shoulder that afforded a good pull off place. Finally, on the state road we were relieved to see a small country church where we could safely get out of the car to do a quick "tick check." Sure enough, we both had ticks in varying sizes steadily working their way up our clothes. When we were satisfied that we had done all we could, short of undressing in the gravel parking lot, we got back into the car.
For the next few minutes, every creepy, crawly itch was a false alarm, and my husband was having a great time making fun of my heebie-jeebies. Then I found the first tick on my arm. The next tick was on my thigh, and the third tick was on my husband. Several more minutes' worth of false alarmspassed before I pulled down the visor mirror to confirm that feathery feeling on my cheek was a tick crawling across my face! At that point, all I wanted were hot showers for us and a washing machine for our clothes. We did both find ticks on our stripped down bodies as soon as we arrived home. In spite of the hot showers we both took and the clean clothes now safely in the hot dryer, I still have the creepy crawlies.
Enough of the lovely drive in the country! The real meaning of bucolic is that COWS and free-spirited country dogs have ticks!
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