Apparently, it’s time to put more Bio Spot on the cat and the dogs.
Today, sitting on the couch, surfing the SDMB, I’ve pulled:
1 - off the dog
1 - on my neck
1 - off my arm
1 - off my laptop monitor (apparently, it was interested in the SDMB, too).
Since it’s been a slightly chilly day, I’ve had the woodstove going off and on. It’s three feet away from me as I type. So, I pick up the ticks and place them on top of the woodstove. Satisfying. There are four dessicated tick corpses lying on top of the woodstove as we speak. I should make little tick stencils and paint the little corpses on the side of stove.
There are very few bugs I loathe, but ticks hit the top of my list.
Blecch. I’d get chickens again, but I’m afraid the cat would … De - chicken them. Time to mow the lawn/ spray the edge of the woods.
I know the feeling, friggin’ ticks, they must be destroyed utterly (maybe we can get Fabulous Creature to make a “Tick-Terminator” to go with his mosquito-killing-machine) I say kill 'em all, who’d miss the filthy things anyway?
my preferred method of killing ticks involves either open flame (yoink the tick off our cat, wrap the tick in a fragment of paper towel, take it outside and light the mummified tick with my Zippo lighter (Fire GOOD!), or my more high-tech approach…
Yoink the tick, grab Mag Instrument MagCharger flashlight, focus beam to intense spot a half inch from the head, and let loose with 170 lumens of FURY!
within minutes, the tick has blackened, shriveled, and is beginning to smoke…
and this is with the stock MagCharger bulb, imagine how effective it’d be with a more powerful bulb (Welch-Allyn 1160, pushes output into the 240+ lumen range)
Maybe 15 or so years ago, we suddenly started getting lots of deer ticks in this area. I don’t know if there were any of them here before that, but I never heard of them before, only wood ticks. But some recent years we have seen many deer ticks and nowhere near as many wood ticks.
Damn things.
I got Lyme disease a few years ago, probably from a tick I picked up mountain biking. Had the classic and very vivid (and itchy-sore) bullseye rash. I felt crummy for weeks. A friend of a friend got Lyme a few years ago and was permanantly disabled after it spread into his spinal cord in some weird way. He was in a wheelchair for months and still needs two canes to walk.
I just saw an ad here in Bloomington. Someone at IU is doing tick-related research, and is in need of fat, blood-filled, healthy ticks. They’ll pay $1 each.
Start saving yours today!
Carve a little tick rubberstamp out of a pencil eraser! I despise ticks* too. Ten or fifteen years ago, we had a tick invasion (I still blame the tomcat we adopted, I was forever pulling ticks off of him) and had to bugbomb the house repeatedly.
I used to put live ticks in a small bottle of rubbing alcohol. It killed them quickly and I didn’t have to worry about half-dead ticks crawling out of the trash, trying to attach again.
I’ve heard that guinea fowl are the bane of ticks. I haven’t ever had any sort of fowl, though, except budgies, and I don’t think they qualify.
*And just about every other kind of bloodsucker I can think of, too.
Please don’t use that Bio-Spot crap. Get Frontline for fleas and ticks. I’ve seen too many cats seizuring non-stop because people used that on them or on their dogs and then the cats rubbed up against the dogs. I know they changed the formula for the cat stuff but I still wouldn’t trust it since it’s still a pyrethroid insecticide which Frontline is not.
Yes Guinea fowl work very well at getting rid of ticks, but they are loud and the cat would take the guinea out of them too. Bantams will eat anything small and moving, and ducks will eat slugs. I’ve used both Bantams and ducks here at the house before, but back then we had an inside only cat.
Unfortunately, we also have fishers here in the neighborhood, so it’s tough keeping free range animals around. Even if you herd them back inside their pen or enclosed structure, the fishers always find a way to get in, and then, no more ducks/Bantams sigh
Bantams were fun because of their size and friendliness, and they laid small eggs that were quite tasty. Also, because of their size, I was never temped to add the Bantams to the dinner table - too much work.
My ducks produced huge eggs and they were tasty too. Never got a chance to eat the ducks as the fishers got to them first. But they were prolific egg layers - 2-3 eggs/day from 2 females on average, and they were larger than regular jumbo chicken eggs.
I just use the woodstove They pop like popcorn kernels
As far as removing them, the most effective way to remove them when they have become attached is with a pair of large toenail clippers. You slide the clippers over the body, firmly grasping (but not cutting) the area right below their body or onto their head. Pull, and the whole tick is held by the clippers. This way, you are not squeezing them with tweezers, which forces their fluids into the host animal / person (which allows a much greater chance of disease being transmitted).
In the summer, we put them on the porch and hit them with a squirt of lighter fluid, and then light it with the zippo - FWUMP! Sizzling ticks, anyone?
Frelling parasites, kill 'em all!
three ticks today…
one crawling on my cheek - it was ground into the pavement when I discovered it
and I saw two ticks on individual blades of grass in the field while I was watering my box gardens, the ticks were just waiting for some mammal to attach to, needless to say, they had to die, time for a pre-emptive strike, “Shock-And-Awe”, tick-style…
the MagCharger was in the house, and only works on engorged ticks, there was too much dry grass around to make Zippo-ing them safe, so I grabbed my old reliable standby, my Leatherman Surge multitool, deployed the massively overbuilt plier jaws, centered the tick between them, and CRUSHED the life out of them, I mean, these ticks were paper thin by the time I was through with them, I actually had to pick pieces of Tick Corpses out of the serrations in the plier jaws
I then sanitized the Leatherman with 91% Isopropyl alcohol, and repocketed it
whomever invented ticks should be FIRED, out of a cannon, into the Sun!
You’re not making a dent in them, although I know it feels good. I just toss live ones I pick off outside. It’s not worth the effort to kill them. Unless, of course I’m close to the Sarracenia I have planted outside. Zone 7 if you want to try some. I can almost hear them…help me! help me! on the way down.
I’m thinking about getting some keets if I can arrange some housing.
slight hijack. Had a guy tell me the other day that he gets the little buggers drunk if they are firmly attached. Hard liquor is too strong and will kill them in place so he pours beer on them.
My girlfriend had one so deeply embedded in her thigh that just the legs were sticking out. And wiggling. There just isn’t enough :::shudder::: to express how horrible it was. I took one look and almost hit the deck. It took the ER doctor 15 minutes to dig all of it out. Done with the whole “hiking thing” now! :eek:
We’ve had a lot of ticks here too this spring. And Frontline doesn’t work on them any more. I’ll be spraying the bushes, under the porch and along the fenceline tomorrow.
They pop like popcorn kernels