I headed to the Franklin recycling center first this morning to drop off two full bags of yard waste I've collected this past week - weeds, branches, clippings, etc.. I planned it so that I'd be in line and one of the first in when they opened the gate at 9:00AM.
In anticipation, and even though I had already had a cup of coffee earlier, I swung into Honey Dew Donuts on my way to grab another to enjoy while queued up.
While in line at the drive thru I noticed the below grey squirrel. He caught my attention immediately because of the HUGE lump on his neck -
That is clearly a lump and not his cheeks full of goodies.
In the picture below, as he turned towards me, you can see a black spot in the lump -
This reminded me of an episode I saw on "The Incredible Dr. Pol", where a cat was brought in for treatment on a similar lump.
Turned out the cat had a parasite known as a Warbles, otherwise known as a wolf worm or botfly, growing under it's skin. Seems the name Warbles is term given to a lump or swelling under the skin caused by botfly larvae.
I found this reference on the Google machine - "A small hole can be seen in the center and within it contains a maggot-like botfly larva.", which I what I am guessing the black spot in the second pic is. The article went on to say, "they are super common around late summer and fall.", which is about where we are today being it's the last day of August.
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