Gah!
It is tick season in Ohio. The little suckers are everywhere. I live on a 10 acre farm, most of it wild.
Every time my dogs go outside they come back in with a tick on them.
Every time I work in the yard, I come back in with a tick on me.
Every time a loose hair falls down my back, a thread dangles or I have an itch, I think I have a tick on me—again.
Ticks! I hate them.
I’ve only had a tick on me once, but boy, it was scary. Had been camping in a remote coastal area, and suddenly my arm started to hurt. Then I couldn’t move it. Turned out the little bastard had gotten onto the back of my neck (didn’t feel him at first, but having a scratch discovered this little lump).
Took ages for the arm to stop aching, and you’ve got no idea how hard it is to drive a car along a three-foot wide goat-track for about forty kms to get to the chemist. Thank goodness I met no other cars that day!
Now we do regular tick-checks whenever we’re camping.
I grew up with lots of summer visits to my grandmother’s farm… and, being a young lad, I got ticks. LOTS of ticks. We’re talking dozens at a time, occasionally. Every night I had to do a tick check. One time I got into a patch of seed ticks- we’re talking over fifty bites. I looked like I had measles.
I actually, as a kid, thought they were kind of cool- well, except for the itching part, afterwards. Okay, I was a fairly strange kid.
Then I found out they’re closely related to spiders. :eek:
THEN I found out that, yes, people have DIED from them! :eek: :eek:
Sometimes it’s amazing I survived my childhood.
I took the Ryskid on a hike last summer through some knee high grass alongside the Mississippi River in Wisconsin. It was nice out, so we were both wearing shorts.
We held our own Tick Pickin’ Party (band name!) that night by campfirelight. Seems the kid ain’t all that keen on having an embedded bug yanked off.
I think the armpit ones are the worst, but scrotum ticks bleed more.
Wait a minute…Aussie ticks hurt? Merkin ticks don’t.
the one i got in my armpit last month hurt like a sonuvabitch.
Hm. I’ve had lots and lots of ticks on me, and none of them hurt while they were sucking the red, red krovvy. Sure, it hurts when you yank 'em off, but not while they’re there.
Thank God you started this thread. Considering the last (only) one I started was about my child’s experience with headlice, I didn’t want to start another about ticks and get everyone thinking of me as that bug lady.
We live in New Mexico. It’s hot and dry and not at all tick country. However, ever since the electric company came out and cut the trees that were growing under their lines, we’ve been finding wood ticks on the dog. It was a few at first, but I was concerned enough to ask the vet to prescribe something, so he gave me Frontline. I applied it to the dog and figured our problems were over. Until I discovered that, if I looked closely at his skin whenever he scratched, I’d find a tick or two every time. Some of them didn’t look like very healthy ticks, certainly, but they sure weren’t dead. I picked 20 (count 'em, 20) off the poor animal in one day last week. I’m not finding many now, maybe one every other day or so, but I still leap on the dog every time he scratches. He’s taken to skulking around the corner whenever he feels an itch.
I’m assuming, since my experiences with small bugs in the past year has led me to become a pessimist, that many of these dying ticks left a last gift in the carpet and that thousands of baby ticks will be hatching sometime in the summer, when the children are home lounging about on the floor.
I’ll be sure to keep you all updated. So far, though, I far prefer ticks to lice.
I’ve found that soaking a cotton ball (cotton wool to you Brits) in rubbing alcohol and then applying the cotton to a tick will give better results than the old “apply a lit cigarette to the butt of the tick” method. The alcohol kills the tick, which can then be gently removed. Usually the tick lets go of the host when it dies, though not always.
My husband hunts and fishes and camps, so I have to do “bug checks” on him each time he comes home.
A good home remedy is to soak in a nice warm bath, with about a half a cup of bleach in it. Yep, bleach. It kills or at least seriously inconveniences all sorts of bloodsuckers, including chiggers/redbugs, which I consider to be the very worst of the lot. Chiggers are something like ticks, only very small, and they burrow INTO your skin. ::shudder::
Ticks everywhere where i live. They are in the trees, in the grass, in the shrubs, EVERYWHERE!!! When i was younger, the principal of my elementary school once debated on wether i should be alowed to attend one year becasue all the tick bites i had made me look like i had some strange disease.
The best thing to kill the bastards with is a cigarette lighter.
weird things i learned about ticks.
-they are blind
-they can live underwater (for several days, at least)
-they have been known to crouch on a twig or blade of grass for up to two years, waiting for a potential meal. (they are paitent little suckers)
if at all possible, remove them before they bite you. It doesnt hurt, but their jaws are strong, and if you pull them off after they bite, there is a good chance that their head will break off, and their jaws will stay embeded in your skin, causing irritation.
Okay, I’m totally frigging disgusted by this thread but since my friend just had to remove one from the hair of her 15 month old child, I’m interested in exact directions for removal…just in case.
Sue.
Out in California with few ticks but lots of bad spiders.
I can tell you how NOT to remove a tick. My friends once tried heating a knife on a gas stove and pressing it to the burrowed tick on my forearm. I think the idea was to frighten it into coming out. (A very foolish idea in hindsight, but (1) we were camping alone on the beach with no first aid supplies, (2) we were 17, and (3) there was drinking involved. :rolleyes: )
It didn’t work. The tick kicked about a bit, but didn’t dislodge from my skin. The burn mark lasted for weeks.
As usual the lovely Ms Bodoni is right on the money about the best way to remove them.
I never felt comfortable trying to apply heat to the bugger to get it to release its grip. First I try to see if it is still crawling. If that’s the case I just catch it with my fingernails. If it is embedded, I cover it with an alcohol wipe for a few seconds and then use a pair of tweezers to gently pull it off. Look to see if any peices are left in the skin and give the wound a few wipes with the alcohol wipe afterwards.
Do not under any circumstances I repeat do not attempt to repeat the actions of some dumbass I read about in a hunting journal vet column. It seems pup had a tick that was really stuck. First Mr DA tried to get Mr Tick to let loose with a little alcohol–whiskey if I remember correctly. When that didn’t work, he tried to apply a little heat with a lit cigarette. You guessed it, poor pooch went up in flames and took off running. By the time they caught up with the poor guy he had major burns over most of his body and required extensive vet care.
Hot dogs anyone?
I have a mental image of poor Internet Legends’s pooch skulking around trying not to let her see him scratch…
Everyone please, if you find that the tick you just got removed is a deer tick, get tested for Lyme Disease. Though treatable, believe me, Lyme’s no picnic at grandma’s. If you’ve been bit by a deer tick, get yourself and/or the tick tested.
And now everything you ever wanted to know about ticks including some very useful information about how to tell them apart