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Doing dumb shit training in the woods for the Army. My platoon finds an area, sets up perimeter, and I post up to my spot pulling security staring out into the woods. I start digging a fox hole to chill in. It's about 105⁰, 100% humidity and tornado season.
God Bless America.
I spend a bit over an hour digging my shallow-as-shit hole before noticing there is a lot of ticks in it. Like a lot more than I've ever seen. I'm so God damn tired I about knock out anyway, fuck the ticks.
Some dickhead tells me that ticks hate sulfur.
"If you rub a bunch of sulfur on your body they won't eat you." ??? Okay you backwoods Hick bastard, you better not be lying to me. I spend the last of my energy putting a tarp above my hole, covering the tick ground with a towel, eating some matches, praying the ticks fuck off from my sulfury sweat, and waiting for it to get dark.
It starts thunderstorming.
Maybe it's just because I grew up in the north, but there is something viscerally WRONG about it being a hundred degrees out and having this much rain coming down. Hot air and cold rain at the same time. I go to sleep in my foxhole, expecting to be woken up in a couple hours for fireguard and having contracted Lyme disease for Uncle Sam.
Just kidding. Big ole ugly Platoon Sarge sees my genius tarp protecting me from the rain and gets jealous of my galactic brain. Just cuts the corners off the tarp with his ten dollar PX Gerber knife and smokes me for showing the "enemy" where my foxhole is. Gonna love the fist fight I'll have with CIF later when they ask where my tarp is. I go to sleep.
That stupid red tinted Vietnam-era flashlight hits me in the eyes.
"Hey, wake up, you're on fire guard." Wake up, it's pitch black, and my hole is flooded with rain water. I've never felt colder and closer to death. Whole body was permanently tensed and shivering. I feel numb. Extra numb in my back though. I pull out my light and check. My back is COVERED in ticks. Dozens. Maybe even a hundreds.
They're having a king-sized FEAST from my left ass cheek to center-back.
I forget that I'm frozen solid, full fucking sprint to the least wet ground, stop drop and roll, sprint to the other guy on fireguard, and tell this man in the loudest whisper possible to just SMASH everything on my back. I guess that spot is about where your kidneys are, huh. My retarded 19 year old self didn't really know what a kidney punch felt like, but then the fireguard homie saw the ticks and bashed my shit in with the stock of his M4.
I couldn't even make a sound. The pain was crazy. It was probably about 2am in a forest, I am about one degree from my brain freezing solid, missing half of my blood and back flesh to this God damn tick egg colony, might have just lost one of my kidneys, and didn't even have live ammunition to blow my brains out and end it all. And this fucking guy I barely knew was just slapping away at my bare back with his hands like I was some whore he picked up at the bar.
Anyways, turns out whatever the hell super soldier serum they shoot in your ass when you join was good enough to keep me alive that night. Definitely didn't guard any fires like I was supposed to. I pissed blood for a bit and have a huge ugly scar on my back, but amazingly didn't get any diseases. Even got to keep the kidney, woo.
Eating the matchstick didn't help, -1/10 do not recommend. Kinda feel bad for giving the kid that bashed me some tick-PTSD too.
Copypasta of the week?
and yet, my bro does a full commitment in the wilds of Ontario - Canuck troopies would guess it in one - no tick bites. Goes camping with his 6yo kid once, BAM, lyme disease and clots. Warfarin fo' lyfe, and the super-serum didn't do shit.
The universe has a sick sense of humour. Glad you survived hyperthermic tick hell, but one can't but feel like you bogarted everyone's luck that day :-D
Holy shit, this was a wild read. Glad you didn't get lyme disease