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The world is full of animals and those closest to you tend to become nothing more than background. For example, do I really notice sparrows? No, not so much. But here, in a totally different area of the world…I’m noticing the animals all right! Particularly the bugs.

The no-seeums in particular. My daughter is like some sort of scrum-diddily-umptious treat for those nasty little beasts. She has 33 bites on her head alone! And it isn’t like I rubbed her in bug yum-yum and left her in the bushes. Really, I didn’t. I’ve been dousing her in kids bug spray which seems to work on everything but no-seeums. So she is now going to have three headed babies when she grows up because I have been using deet stuff on her. It’s either that or have a bloody, bleeding kid. Ouch. Hang on, she is already bloody and bleeding from all the bites…33 to be exact. They seem to like her hair. Anyway, we cut her hair, shoved a hat on her, gave her head a good scrub, doused her in bug spray and well, she is mostly left alone now. Sorta. She’s probably pretty tired of her mother hanging over her inspecting her and yanking bugs out of her hair. That and whipping out the After Bite stuff as soon as I spot her scratching. I feel like some sort of combat medic with my pockets full of creams and sprays, ready to defeat the sneaky enemy. The drugstore said they can barely keep bug bite anti-itch stuff on the shelves and had to get us a tube from their just-in shipment. It’s all the rage, boys and girls. Go get bitten.

Anyway, enough about bugs. Well, except ticks. I got a tick when we were geocaching in some wet bushes. It didn’t bite me though. I discovered it walking around on my toes afterwards and was pretty much imagining ticks all over me for the next few hours whenever an itch came up. And let me tell you, plenty of itches came up. We even pulled off road for a family inspection. No other ticks. Evidently it’s a great year for picking up Lyme Disease. (It’s all the rage too!)

I have, however, seen some interesting bugs in my adventures. A really cool iridescent green one with yellow legs. That was cool. And plenty of others.

Baby Swallows

Anyway, on our adventures we have also seen a bear, a moose, ducks, loons, spiders, what we think may have been a wolverine, squirrels, chipmunks, seagulls, chickadees, nut hatches, baby swallows, and the world’s friendliest gophers. Seriously. Check it out:

I liked those Cheerios, what else do you have?

What about cameras? Are they edible?

If I run and jump, can I get to the cooler?

And there we have it, animals thus far and what I now declare, the year of the bug.

Tags: life //