You know that funny, itchy feeling when something is crawling around or worse, lodged where it doesn’t belong?

The moment I felt it last week I realized I was doomed.

My worst fears were soon confirmed: A deer tick had made its way up my pants leg and taken up residence in my thigh.

I quickly plucked it out, flushed it down the toilet, and waited for the rash. Sure enough, the trademark pinkish bullseye appeared the next morning.

By now I know the drill all too well: Call the doctor, who graciously phoned in a prescription without insisting on an office visit, and start taking the antibiotic doxycycline.

I’ve lost track over the years, but I think this is my sixth or seventh bout with Lyme Disease – at least I caught it early enough so I avoided the high fever, chills, lethargy and aches that marked my first experience with the affliction.

I try to guard against ticks by wearing long pants and a long shirt, socks and shoes while working in the garden, but if you live in the woods in southeastern Connecticut, the Lyme Disease capital of the world, and enjoy active outdoor recreation, chances are one day you’ll find yourself scratching and wondering what’s going on down there.

This year, state health authorities just reported, your odds of contracting Lyme are higher than ever. A few years ago they tested ticks and found about a quarter carry the bacteria that causes Lyme; this year doctors say the percentage has grown to about a third.

Lucky me.

Most people heed the advice to avoid tall grass where ticks typically hang out, but the little buggers can also drop from trees.

I guess the only solution is to stay indoors from early spring to late fall, and to don a haz-mat suit when you venture outside.

Now when I go out to water the garden I wear a hat that my son got my for Father’s Day, and sometimes I remember to put it on when I continue my never-ending chore of hauling firewood from the driveway up to the woodsheds – but the other afternoon I not only wasn’t wearing headgear I also had on sports sandals.

Anyway, I was on my last load of the day when I felt a slight discomfort on the instep of my left foot. A second later a similarly unpleasant sensation, somewhat sharper, stabbed my right.

They say the distance from a dinosaur’s tail to its brain was so great it would take quite a while – I forget how long, but probably 10 seconds or so – to react if something bit the tip.

In my case it was more like two or three seconds. The pain intensified exponentially before I realized wasps had gotten between sandal straps and bare flesh and were savagely stinging to beat the band.

“Gosh, that hurts,” I said – or words to that effect.

It took another couple seconds to drop the logs and tear off my sandals, while the wasps chased me into the house. Unlike honeybees, which considerately expire after stinging you, wasps will keep on injecting their venom for as long as you let them.

Within a minute my feet swelled up like Frankenstein’s monster’s and felt as if I had dipped them in hydrochloric acid.

By morning the swelling and pain had subsided enough so I could lope for a 3-mile jog, but the wasps continued to circle near steps to the front door that I march up and down a dozen times a day.

So I slipped on a rubber raincoat, heavy pants, boots and gloves and crawled under the deck with a flashlight.

Bingo: A nest the size of a cantaloupe.

I hate using any kind of poison, but the wasps left me no choice. As instructed on the can I waited for dark, when they would be asleep, and … well, no need to describe the gory details. Suffice it to say I won’t have to worry about wasp bites any time soon.

Now I just have to concentrate on deer ticks.