Too Much of a Bad Ass for Bears, Too Revolting for Ticks: Part II

Being bear aware isn't the only area in which I dominated our canine companion. I also kicked its ass at hiking, but probably mostly because I had shoes and wasn't built kind of like a Welsh corgi. Our second day on the trail involved traversing the Hickory Ridge Trail and the Panther Creek Trail, both of which should probably include the word "cliff" in their names to better advertise their terrain. Lets just say that they're often quite steep and leave it at that. Anyway, after a full day of this terrain, the poor dog was limping and so tired that it actually lost its appetite. I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone manage to outlast a dog in any endurance challenge before, but I managed to do it. I was tired that night, but I ate hardily and had no complaints with my legs or feet.

The dog did wake the next morning fully refreshed the next morning and I finally found an area in which he surpassed me: being tasty to ticks. Apparently I'm not good enough for ticks. Even though the dog had gotten his dose of flea and tick prevention the previous day and I was gloriously unprotected, he had several already dug into his ear by the time the sun came up on our temporary shelter the second morning. I, on the other hand, had not a single blood-sucker attached to me, and it wasn't just that the ticks preferred dog blood. Daniel found a couple feeding lustily on him while we drove home Sunday. Apparently he was good enough, but I was no better than a tree to these parasitic arachnids. The low-rent mosquitoes will gladly bypass my wife to bite me, but every tick I came across on my body during this weekend (and I think I lost count around 30) was simply using me to get to something better. They'd climb their way up my leg and then raise their front two legs and wait patiently to grab hold of whatever warm-blooded organism crossed my path. I crushed them all to cover my feelings of rejection.

To be continued...