Eek! So much for exercise...

So, my wonderful boyfriend and I decided that we should get some exercise this weekend and opted for a walk/hike in Umstead Park. We started on the Company Mill Trail at quarter after 6 p.m. on Sunday and kept pushing on and on, thinking that we would eventually finish the whole trail. We ended up having to take a shortcut to cut off part of the trail so that we could make it back to the jeep before the park closed at 9 p.m. and so that it would still be partially light when we left. We finally made it back to the parking lot at quarter to 9, with both of us worn out after so much physical exertion. It was a beautiful day for the hike, cooler with low humidity, and the forest was gorgeous and green. We saw lizards, squirrels, a frog, fish in the river, tons of bugs, and a white tailed deer, just as we were almost to end of the trail. We made it back to his house and decided that we should check ourselves for ticks, because there had been talk of people getting them when going through the park. We looked everywhere, I combed through my hair, and then I spotted one!
It was on my ankle and looked just like a freckle, except it was an impossibly tiny tick!! I pulled it off and we put it in a ziplock bag. We decided to kill it by pouring some rubbing alcohol into the bag, and it took forever for the creepy thing to stop wagging it's evil little legs and die!
I don't know if I'll get Lyme disease or something like that, but I'm going to keep an eye on the spot that it bit me to see if it starts to look funny. When I was looking for a picture of a tick to use, I found that ticks can be found on tons of animals. There are bird ticks!

Poor little purple finch. :( There are ticks that feed on iguanas!

Look closely at this picture...the ticks look like scales, but they aren't. Who knew that reptiles could get ticks!?! I certainly didn't. And elephants! They have such thick hides, who knew they could get ticks too...

but apparently they can, poor guy.
There are lots of places that are infested with ticks according to these signs...





Well, ticks are nasty little things. I'm not sure I want to go walking in Umstead again after finding the one on my ankle, but I'm sure that I will. Unless I get Lyme disease, that would mean a definite NO.