Rabbit Hunt: A Real-Life Horror Story

Today was the Big Day for my new friend Claire. She's a UC Davis wildlife biology student who's learning to hunt, and I offered to take her rabbit hunting. We did some target practice yesterday (she's awesome, especially for having done just one weekend of shooting this January), and today we went out to my spot.

We saw nearly a dozen rabbits, but got none. I took two long shots and realized belatedly that I should've switched out the open choke I'd left in the gun. Oopsie. Claire didn't take any shots, but she learned a lot about rabbit hunting: where rabbits tend to be, how quickly they move, how quickly she needs to shoot.

But that's not what this post is about. This post is about possibly the most horrifying thing that has ever happened to me on a hunt. Read more...
It started nearly at the end of the hunt. We were walking in some open space between the woods and the levee when I felt a spiderweb blow up against my cheek. No big deal, happens all the time. I went to swipe it away when I felt the unmistakable squirmy bump. It was a tick walking on my cheek.

No biggie - I expected that. I picked up four ticks when I went out on the opener last week.

Back at my car we put away our guns and took off our vests and I decided it was time for a cursory tick check. Two on my neck. On a hunch, I lifted up my shirt and saw one crawling up my belly. Slipped my hand under the waistband of my pants and found another on my hip.

Claire did a quick check and I brushed a couple off of her, and we were on our way.

At a stop sign, something possessed me to pull out the top of my shirt and reach into my sport bra. Yep, one on my left breast. Nice.

Now I had the heebie jeebies, bigtime, so I was compulsively sticking my hand into any opening of my shirt and sport bra I could find - yes, while driving - and coming out with a tick nearly every place I looked. Dear God!

Claire seemed alarmed. I secretly worried that in my effort to help her get a bunny I'd delivered her unto Lyme disease.

"This must've happened when we were bushwhacking," I said.

There was this point in the hunt when we'd walked along the river long enough - we were getting out of cottontail habitat - so I said we needed to cut across the woods to the levee, a trek of no more than 200 yards, but without the benefit of a trail.

I went first, scanning for deer trails (and yes, we spooked a doe), and looking for openings between bushes and trees. We pushed through blackberry brambles, past wild roses and through deep grass, all under a canopy of oaks, the favored launchpad of ticks. That must've been how I got so many of them on me. And maybe I had so many because I'd gone first, and all the eager little bastards dropped onto me.

At least that's what I hoped.

Poor Claire. Her first hunt was, frankly, a dream: Prominent waterfowl philanthropists Paul and Sandi Bonderson hosted a group of wildlife biology students at their Bird Haven Ranch in the Butte Sink, which is probably one of the hottest waterfowl regions in the entire country - take that, Stuttgart.

There, with the help of California Waterfowl, the students got instruction in shooting, completed their hunter education courses, bought licenses on the spot and then went duck hunting. Claire bagged a limit on her very first hunt. (If you click on that link above, you'll see her in the back row, second from the right.) She said the ducks just kept coming. They didn't even have to be stealthy - they'd be sitting there chatting in normal tones and ducks would come in.

So, for Claire's second hunt, I take her out for a glorious goose-egg and potentially send her home infested with one of the foulest creatures on earth, blood-sucking little bastards that bloat to disgusting proportions if they feast on your blood long enough without you noticing.

For the love of Pete, just the thought of them makes me want to scream, or vomit, or both. I don't like seeing my blood, uh, ever, and I really don't like seeing it fattening some disgusting pimple of an insect.

By the time I dropped Claire off at her car at the IHOP where we'd met, I had visions of her looking in her mirror at home and seeing a tick infestation so bad it'd look like leprosy. Nice work, Hol. But I bade her a cheery farewell and hoped for the best.

Over the remainder of my drive home, I pulled off more than a dozen ticks. I must've been quite a sight to other motorists, reaching into my shirt, grimacing, rolling down my window and flicking things outside the car. I was driving faster and faster because I was dying to get home and remove all my clothes to finish the inspection, and driving more and more erratically as I went digging for ticks whereever I could reach.

I had visions of getting pulled over by the cops:

I roll down the window.

"Ma'am, do you know how fast you were going?"

Secretly, I think, "Eighty." Then my face contorts as I feel another tick crawling on my belly. I reach under my shirt to grab it.

The cop, sure that I am an armed crazy woman, pulls out his gun and shoots me in the head.

During the autopsy, all the coroner finds is ticks. Ticks everywhere. They have to shut down the lab to decontaminate it.

But I made it to my house without dying in an unarmed conflict with the police.

I jumped out of my car and started taking off my clothing.

Yes, in my garage, thank you.

I turned my shirt inside out and found two ticks in it.

What do do with them? They're unsquishable, and I don't want them running around in my garage. I see the orange lid/measuring cup for a bottle of Clorox II, and some Pine-Sol.

Yeah, that'll do it. I'll send 'em for a swim in a cup of Pine-Sol.

In they go! More on my sport bra. More on my underwear. More on my jeans. About ten in all.

Finally, I walked into the house, naked of clothing and ticks. Until I got to the bathroom and find two more in my hair. Quick! I ran to the garage and brought in the Pine-Sol swimming pool, and dropped them in.

I gave it a swirl, and noticed that their legs were still moving, and some were trying to wrestle with others. Durable little buggers. But the Pine-Sol sapped them of their will to escape.

Having bagged an estimated three dozen ticks, I jumped in the shower, and finally started feeling better. I put on fresh clothes, brushed my hair and smiled.

Then I remembered that I hadn't unloaded my car, so I went back out to the garage.

Oh. My. God!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I looked at the heap of clothing on the floor, backlit by the dim light coming through the garage-door windows, and saw a swarm of ticks crawling on them. Yes, a swarm. I didn't know ticks swarmed either, but now I do.

I didn't know whether to scream or cry, so I rushed back inside to retrieve my Pine-Sol swimming pool and a pair of tweezers and began plucking ticks off my clothes and dropping them into the drink.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. ...

Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. ...

Thirty-six. Thirty-seven. Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine. ...

They seemed to run out at 42, so I ran in the house, got my phone, and dialed Phillip to share my horror. (Boyfriend was busy fishing for sturgeon and wasn't responding to my frantic texts.)

Phillip laughed at me. "They're just bugs! Just leave your stuff in the garage and they'll bail when they realize they're not on something warm anymore."

Aaaaack! I shrieked in his ear. "Forty-three! Forty-four! Forty-five!"

"What are you doing this weekend?" he asked.

I opened the back of my car where Claire and I had stashed our vests. "Forty-six! Forty-seven!"

"Yeah, Josh and I are going hunting at Hedgepeth..."

I opened the driver-side door and looked at the seat I'd have to get into soon to go to lunch to see off my good friend, who was leaving for Cairo.

"Forty-eight! Aaaaaaack! Forty-nine!"

"We'll probably get a shot at some pigs, maybe some deer."

"Fifty! Dude, I gotta go. This is freaking me out."

"All right, have a nice weekend!"

"Thanks!"

I picked two more ticks off the garage floor and called it a day. Estimated total that hitched a ride with me? Ninety-plus.

Epilogue

I emailed Claire to tell her what the count was.

She responded. "I think you're going to hate me for this, but I didn't find any more after the ones you brushed off of me! So, way to take one for the team?"

"I definitely hate you for that!!!"

But really, I don't. She's a great kid who really has her head on straight. Check out the before-and-after essays she wrote about that hunter education camp she went to in January - it's here on page 34.

I just hope she'll actually want to hunt with me again.

© Holly A. Heyser 2010