Kentucky man shocked to find tick latched on to his eyeball

LEXINGTON, Kentucky -- A Kentucky man got quite the shock after a doctor discovered a deer tick latched on to his eyeball.

Chris Prater is just your natural "outdoors" type of person. He works an electric company and always sprays himself with repellent before work.

"Where ticks are so bad this year, we always try to spray down really good," he said.

But after leaving a job site in Johnson County, Kentucky, he noticed a pain in his eye.

"I really didn't think anything of it. I thought it was sawdust or something like that," he told WYMT-TV.

After multiple attempts to rinse his eye, he realized something needs to be done.

"The thing of it is, I really didn't want to go to the doctor," he said.

Thankfully, he visited an optometrist.

"When the doctor finally came in, he was looking at it. He said, 'I know what's in your eye.'," he recalled.

The moment, Prater says, he will never forget. It was tiny Deer Tick right on his eye.

"He said, 'It's a tick.' That's when I got scared a little bit," said Prater. "Once he grabbed hold of it and pulled it off, the tick made a, like a little popping sound when it come off of my eye."

It's something he never imagined possible.

"You can't spray your eyes," he said with a laugh.