I noticed it before my girlfriend even stepped through the door.
Something strange was clinging to our dog's fur.
At first, I couldn't quite make out what I was looking at.
It was translucent.
Curved.
A little shiny under the kitchen light.
And, unfortunately, it was attached to our dog in just the right way to make my imagination immediately jump to the worst possible conclusion.
You know how it goes.
You see something unusual on your pet and suddenly your brain becomes an expert in every horrifying possibility you've ever read about online.
Tick?
Parasite?
Some strange insect that absolutely should not be in our apartment?
Within seconds, our perfectly ordinary evening had turned into a miniature investigation.
And our dog?
He couldn't have cared less.
The Walk Had Seemed Completely Normal
My girlfriend had taken the dog out for his usual walk.
Nothing unusual.
No dramatic encounter with another animal.
No obvious signs that he'd gotten into anything strange.
It had simply been a damp evening, and the dog came home with the usual evidence of being outside—slightly messy fur, a few bits of debris, and that unmistakable look dogs get when they're ready to settle down after a walk.
Then we noticed the thing.
It was caught in his fur.
And because it didn't immediately look like something we'd recognize, we started staring at it.
That's when the guessing began.
Our Imaginations Went Into Overdrive
Fear has a funny way of filling in blanks.
The less we knew about the object, the more possibilities our minds seemed to invent.
Maybe it was a tick.
Maybe it was something he'd picked up from the grass.
Maybe it was a parasite.
Maybe it was some bizarre insect we'd never seen before.
Every possibility seemed worse than the one before it.
We crouched beside the dog and started examining his fur.
He looked back at us.
Completely calm.
Completely confused.
His tail wagged.
He sniffed the floor.
Then he went back to being a dog.
Meanwhile, we were conducting what felt like a full forensic investigation.
The More We Looked, the Stranger It Seemed
Under the kitchen light, the object had a peculiar appearance.
It wasn't obviously furry.
It wasn't obviously a leaf.
