(CNN) Kentucky electrical worker Chris Prater douses himself in insect repellent every day to beat the bugs he encounters on the job.

But all his spraying couldn't spare him from a pernicious tick that found in the one spot he couldn't swat — his eyeball.

"You can't spray your eyes," he told CNN affiliate WYMT

The teeny parasite fought its way into Prater's eye some time during a July tree-cutting job in Johnson County, he explained.

Prater didn't originally think anything of the irritation before the diagnosis. It must've been the sawdust that got caught in his eyeball, he thought, and he could easily flush it out later.

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