No Joke

Clyde has a couple of strange skin tags. He's had them for several years but they were not really that noticeable. Lately, however, one in particular has been bothering him a bit and he bites at it and it swells up. I used to joke that it was another nipple coming out of his hip.

Now it looks like some kind of grub chrysalis.

Gross.

Another of Clyde's skin tags is on his belly area. 

This one looks cancerous to me. It has gotten a little bigger too, but not at the same rate as the chrysalis. Clyde has an appointment on Thursday to get them hacked off. And any others they might find while he's there. (Like maybe that other little black spot in the upper right of the picture.)

Today I did a quick exam of Clyde to see if there were any other skin tags that maybe we missed. 

Yup, there was a lump on his neck under his collar. 

Yet there was something suspiciously familiar about that particular mass. I put my glasses on and got a flashlight and ~YIKES~ it was a TICK!!!

I wasn't going to wait for his doctor appointment and gathered the materials necessary to do the tick removal procedure. Alcohol, tweezers, antibiotic ointment, flashlight, and reading glasses. Alcohol swabbed tweezers on the tick as close as possible to Clyde's skin, then pull firmly straight out. Drop the tick into a tiny container of alcohol to show the doctor, and swab the giant hole left behind with more alcohol and then the ointment. 

The operation was successful. There were no pieces left behind.

YUCK!! 

Who knows how long that thing was on him. We do have ticks around here but mostly just on the deer. We had visited our friends in Roseburg a couple weeks ago. Did he pick it up then? 

In any case, you can see how deeply it had imbedded itself. Those are not wings, that's hair that came along when I pulled the tick out by the head.

So, Thursday Clyde gets his other growths removed. Later this month Ollie will get her annual shave. This is the month of the animals I guess.