Ixodes
I discovered that the backs of my legs were covered in ticks and probably had been for quite some time. The ticks looked like small raised black bumps in the flesh covered by a thin layer of skin, and to take them off you had to peel back the skin and then try to really quickly swipe the tick out of the hole it had made. Each one left behind tiny gouges that I was worried would never heal. I managed to kill most of the ticks I removed, but at least one flew away, because in my dream ticks had wings.
I couldn’t figure out how I would have picked up the ticks, because I hadn’t been walking around in tall grass or anything, so I asked my father, and he said I probably got them in the Victorian Room at work. I don’t know why it was called the Victorian Room, because what he was talking about was the mini-kitchen in my office. Anyway, he said that people I worked with had been throwing away tree bark in the trashcan and then when I ran my bedsheets through the trash, which is something I was doing, they were picking up ticks from the bark.
There was another part of the dream at some point where I was explaining to someone—I don’t remember who, and it might have been someone who doesn’t exist in real life—what ticks are, because she didn’t know. I said they were insects that “drill” into your skin and suck your blood, and she thought that was really disgusting. I agreed.
