Ticks

A week or two ago Art started complaining of a ringing in one of his ears.  He had just gotten out of the (baby)pool so I suggested that perhaps he had water in his ears.  Over the course of the week the ringing didn't go away and Art asked me to Google it.  I came home with every possibility from a brain tumor to a build up of ear wax (Art, of course, went immediately to the brain tumor).  Shortly after my Internet investigation Art said that the ringing had stopped, but a couple of days later he complained of not feeling quite right, a little nauseous, a little woozy, and just a general feeling of cloudiness. But by Monday he was feeling absolutely fine so I didn't think too much about it.  Last night, Art excitedly came upstairs after his shower and said, "I have to show you something!"  While drying his ears he felt something hard in his ear.  Using a Q-tip he dislodged what was in his ear canal: a dead, dried-up tick.  It was one of the grossest things I had ever seen, not because he had a bug in his ear, but because he had a 1/4 inch long bug in his ear for who knows how long and didn't even know it.

I looked up Deer ticks online because Art was afraid his off-feeling of last weekend could be attributed to Lyme Disease but, rest assured, Deer ticks are the size of a sesame seed. Small enough to live in a person's ear for two weeks without them noticing.  Unlike Art and his 1/4 inch tick.

So I'm going to assume that the ringing in his ears, the dizziness, the nausea, and the cloudy-brain feeling was because this very large tick had been living in his ear canal for at least two weeks.