Pseudo-Tick

Late last night, Sheila noticed something tiny latched onto her inner leg just above the ankle.  It looked like a tick with its head buried into her skin so I grabbed the magnifying glass from my desk and a flashlight to get a closer look.  I would need the magnifying glass to remove this tiny thing anyway.  

Looking at it under the magnifying glass wasn't much better than looking at it with my bare eyes.  It was too small to lightly grasp with my fingers so I retrieved a pair of tweezers.  I carefully grasped the tiny thing with the tweezers and pulled.  It easily unlatched from Sheila's leg.  

Whatever this tiny thing was, it sort of resembled a tick that had been accidentally partially brushed off or unknowingly scratched because it appeared to be crushed.  When I lightly grasped it with the tweezers, it pulled off so easily that I was thinking to myself that this came off far easier than the bloated tick I had embedded in my skin last spring.  The tick on my abdomen didn't unlatch at all.  Some tissue actually tore off with the tick!  And the tick that was latched onto me was bloated and rather large.  Whatever this was on Sheila's leg was pretty small (but ticks can be very, very small) but appeared to be crushed and it pulled off fairly easily with the tweezers.  

I placed it on some white paper on my desk figuring that the black object would be easier to identify on a white background.  I looked at it through the magnifying glass but I still could not identify what it was.  My eyesight isn't great late at night and this thing was too small to positively identify.  

I then mentioned that it was a good thing I have a good microscope on hand.  Sometimes my toys come in handy! 

I had my microscope set up in the living room within about two minutes.  I retrieved a clean slide and carefully placed whatever this was on the slide and placed the slide on the microscope.  

The first thing I noticed was that this was not an insect of any kind.  I saw hairs but no cellular structure that I should see with any sort of lifeform...  I saw no exoskeleton...  I saw no remnants of any insect body parts.  It was just a dark blob with tiny hairs or fibers mixed into it.  I could not positively identify this thing even when using my microscope.  What I could say positively is that this was not any sort of lifeform.

Sheila then asked if it looked like glue...  

Yes, it looked like it could be glue.  

I knew it wasn't anything that was alive at any time.  Sheila explained that it could be glue from removing old fingernails.  Then we spent a little bit of time looking at this tiny specimen at different magnifications but it definitely was not a tick so that was good news!

This morning, i mounted a camera on the microscope and captured a photo...