Thomas

Eno River State Park

The day before yesterday Andy took me hiking at the Eno River. We saw a bunch of different animals, including a large snake, fireflies and numerous frogs and toads. In total we spent about two hours walking the narrow trails by the river.

Yesterday I was sitting at my temporary Duke office, and found, what I thought was a bit of dirt, on my right leg. It turned out to be a tick instead. It must have been sitting on my leg since the Eno trip the day before. I raced up to Andy and got a tweezer and some antiseptics, I succesfully removed the tick, and it is now alive and well, crawling on my desk inside a water bottle. I am keeping it for now in case I caught any disease from it. It looks very much like the one in the picture, which is an American Dog Tick (Dermacentor variabilis).