** I implore you to turn around before reading whats below. If you just had breakfast, or are mildly to succinctly squeamish turn back.
I was just on the phone with my wife who is in Hartford today. I’m putting the new kitty litter toilet together (check my other thread in IMHO) and she calls. She is feeling very sqeamish this morning, and needed a slight pep talk. I ask her whats going on and she proceeds to tell me about her freind Lynn.
Lynn, had been suffering for the last few days with a horrible pain on her ass. Lynn being a large woman with grown children and a traveling husband, was home alone for a week. Her big husky dogs had taken to sleeping at the foot of her bed. Saturday morning she felt a horrible pain right on the upper part of the crack on her ass. Thinking it was a boil she took a bath in some epsome salts and did so for the last three days.
The pain just intensified and she could not take it anymore. So she went to the doctor’s last night. She lay on her belly at the walk in clinic and let the doctor do his deed in examining her.
“Oh god.” He said. " how long have you had this?"
Well it’s been painful since Saturday"
"Ma’am, you have one of the largest TICK’S embedded in your skin that I have ever seen in my 15 years of practice.
A tick! This woman had a friggin tick the size of a large glass marble taking up residence on her ass. A huge puffed up gray tick from one of her huskies, no doubt.
Folks I know your animals mean a lot to you. But I think this illustrates the efficacy of keeping them out of your bed.
My dog sleeps in the basement, and I’ll be damned if he ever sets a paw even on the stairs to go up them. He knows where his house is.
A Big Fat Puss filled Gray Tick.
BLAHH!!!
**Per my other thread. I will win the battle of having animals in my bedroom.
Actually, you don’t need to have pets to get bitten by a tick. Once a tick has fed off your dog or cat, they won’t bite you because they’ve had the blood meal they need to reproduce.
Ticks live outside and the females wait for nice juicy mammals to walk by so they can hop on and start feeding. They especially like hanging out in long grass and in pine straw. Wearing long pants and long-sleeved shirts, and applying repellant in tick-infested areas are your best bets for not being bitten. You can also buy and apply tick repellant to your pets as well.
I’ve had the displeasure of pulling full ticks off of other people’s pets, and yes, they are horrible and disgusting.
Actually, it’s filled with blood. Squish one, and you’ll see.
And you can get ticks from just walking in the woods. I went geocaching with my brother and sister last summer in the middle of Tick Country, USA, apparently. We all picked something like 15 or 20 (nonembedded) ticks off EACH of us when we got back home! No sleeping with pets was required.
(In the interests of full disclosure, in cool weather we have as many as 3 dogs on the bed with us.)
Well, I’m prepared to make this thread a little more disgusting. About a week ago a co-worker of mine told me that for the previous three days or so his SCROTUM was painful and itchy. He was dating a new girlfriend and all pissed off, thinking that he had caught some sort of vd from her. I slowly backed away from him as that conversation occurred.
Next morning he comes in, calmly tells me that he finally figured out what it was - yup, you guessed it, a tick. He’d had it on his sack for the entire time. I told him I didn’t want to hear any more. I didn’t want to know how big it was, what he had done to get rid of it, OR if he’d had sex with the girlfriend in the last few days.
Rather than banishing your dog to the basement, why not try treating him monthly with Frontline Plus and checking him over for ticks if after walking in areas with tall grass? I do this with both of my dogs, and I’ve never had a problem with ticks in the house or on my butt.
Signundex reminded me of an interesting tick fact:
Ticks tend to prefer darker, warmer, less exposed areas of the body; thus they often gravitate toward the… erm… nether regions.
Makes tick-checks a little more challenging, though, because a quick scan of the arms and legs really isn’t enough.
Just thought you all might want to keep that in mind, next time you go hiking in Lyme disease territory.
Thank god I do not live in an area with ticks or Lyme’s Disease. My cat is an indoor one. She will occasionally sunbath on the brick patio, but that’s pretty much it. If a tick enters the house, chances are, it will have been me who brought in the @)$*^!.
::Veb puts her head between knees and hypervenilates::
Omigod. Ticks are nothing less than vampire spiders. Nobody can convince on the “sanctity of all living things” when it comes to ticks or tapeworms. An embedded tick, the size of a marble…ulp.
That said, I treat my dog every month with Frontline and check out her fur every time we come in from a walk. She’s never had a tick yet or flea yet. But let me tell ya, right now I’m less than enthusiastic about crouching down outside to weed the garden.
Screw it. I can buy tomatoes at the farmers’ market.
Veb
[sub]I also have a bad case of psycomsomatic itching.[/sub]
Do NOT do this, ever (not that I really think anyone would want to, mind you, but just in case). Ticks carry diseases that can be fatal, and squashing them can expose you to the disease organisms.
People always worry about Lyme disease, but there are other tick-borne diseases that are actually much more dangerous, such as Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, ehrlichiosis and babesiosis. They are treatable, but only if they are diagnosed in time. A student at the university where I work recently died from RMSF after being misdiagnosed while at school. She returned home to Florida after the semester ended and died there:
Keeping the dogs out of your bed won’t keep ticks off you. If they’re crawling off the dogs over to you, they’ll crawl across the floors, furniture, or any other surface to you. They can come up stairs, walls, or across the ceiling, so even locking them in the basement won’t keep you safe. Using Frontline and keeping an eye out for ticks is much more effective.
I read this story, and I don’t think “Eeeewww, a tick! How gross!” I think “Eeeewww, doesn’t this woman ever wash her ass? How gross!” I’ve never had a boil, but I’d think a boil would feel distinctly different than a tick. If nothing else, a boil should have a much greater area of attachment.
Never mind the dogs, the lesson here is pay more attention to one’s personal hygiene.
I don’t see what the dogs have to do with this either.
From your description, the tick was engorged–it had been there awhile. It didn’t just hop off of one of the dogs in the middle of the night and land between her cheeks.
CrazyCatLady, I’m wondering about that woman’s bathing habits too. A tick, whether freshly embedded or engorged, feels much different than a boil; specifically, the presence of legs and a hard, elongated body would be a big indicator that it’s not a boil.
I’ve removed embedded ticks from people and dogs (and had at least one removed from me), and yes, a tick has a very distinctive feel. I don’t know how you could mistake it for anything else.
(BTW, how is a boil different from a pimple???)
As far as squashing ticks: I really do know better. But it’s so satisfying to drop something heavy on one of the little bloodsuckers. But I put them inside plastic bags for squashing now. They’re damned hard to kill otherwise.
Frontline is a great product for those of us who live in a tick infested part of the world. It also seems to me like there have been unusual numbers of ticks in the woods the last couple of years. It’s worse a little south of me in Georgia, where my dad lives.
But hey, the gnat line and the armadillo line are both moving north. Probably the tick line is too.
I get more ticks than my dogs. My cats are indoors, so they don’t get them, but I spend more time in long grass (horse pasture) than my dogs do. Plus the dogs get Frontline.
I check myself very well after being out in the pasture, and always get them before they bite. I burn the ticks - mean, I know, but it’s fast and easy.
But I’ll second Miabella - it’s pretty easy to keep your pets tick and flea-free these days.
I’ve had my cats for 13 years and my dog for 9 years, and I’ve never once had a flea or tick in the house. We live in a low flea/tick area, my dog is walked on-leash in mowed areas only, and my cats are only taken outside in carriers, so we don’t even use Frontline.
I have to say, if I detected an unexplained excrescence on my arsal region, my first instinct would be to check it out in a mirror or prevail upon a friend to do it for me. Acute tick would not go undiagnosed for long.
