A Tip For Ticks

[Tom M King]

I've lived in the woods with ticks most of my entire life. I never use insect repellant but live in shorts in hot weather. I can feel them crawling on me, but more importantly I never walk in tall grass during insect weather. We've talked about grass several times lately. Ticks don't like short grass. We have Bermuda here, and if kept cut short I've never seen a tick on short Bermuda grass.

I have had several hundred one me over those years, but if one does get seized I just pull it off gently with my fingers. Fortunately, we don't have much Lyme around here.

I do keep a bottle of rubbing alcohol in my truck and handy at the house. If I do happen to brush up against something that has the tiny ticks called "seed ticks" around here, and get a hundred of them crawling up my leg, I wash them off with the alcohol. They fall right off as the alcohol runs down a leg. I have been known to leave a pair of socks beside the road though.

[Curt Harms]

Agree that Lyme disease is no joke. My wife got it on our honeymoon 40 years ago. We went to an ER on Kawaii, and showed the doctor her classic target lesion. I told him, I know this sounds crazy, but I remember that lesion from a book in medical school, and asked him if it could be Lyme disease. He blew me off as a medical student that thinks they have every rare ailment, so no treatment. She went years without antibiotics, and now has MULTIPLE autoimmune diseases. Are they related? We'll never know, and I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I believe the Lyme disease was the cause.

The really stupid part of the doctor story, was that he trained at Yale. New Haven, Connecticut. 30 miles from LYME, Connecticut.

On the other hand, regarding my wonderful wife, "The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all".

I don't know if diagnosis of Lyme disease has improved but my wife probably had it a few decades ago and the tests available then said she did not have it. They finally gave her tetracycline, probably just to shut her up and what do you know, her symptoms went away. The effects did not go away entirely.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

Those nests of tiny ones are horrible. I will pick up a few big bottles of rubbing alcohol today! The lavender oil mix: As much lavender oil as you want (20 drops) in a cup of 90% isopropyl, mix well, add 2 cups of water. I keep a spray bottle of the mix in the car. I have a nasty sore spot in the middle of my back that I can't reach. One got dug in there, Ms. was out of town, I finally did some contortions with long tweezers and got the tick off. It is supposed to take 20 hours for them to transfer disease. That one was on for 12 hours or so, Darn It!

-Maurice
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[Alan Rutherford]

... Our method is tweezers ....

Sometimes you can't find the tweezers.
RightToolForTheJob.jpg

[Larry Edgerton]

Permethrin works really well but does need to be reapplied to clothes after a few washes.

That is my solution, and it works. I put it in the washing machine about every ten loads, have a spray bottle on the porch for my boots, spray a perimeter around the yard in the spring. its also approved for organic gardening so I spray my fruit trees in the spring after the leaves but before the fruit. I use it on my beans in the same manner. It is a synthetic recreation of an insecticide that comes from chrysanthemums.

Ticks are a means of diseases that affect animals to be morphed into diseases that affect humans. They are concerned that Chronic Wasting Disease will transfer from deer in Wisconsin to humans through ticks.

[Larry Edgerton]

I've lived in the woods with ticks most of my entire life. I never use insect repellant but live in shorts in hot weather. I can feel them crawling on me, but more importantly I never walk in tall grass during insect weather. We've talked about grass several times lately. Ticks don't like short grass. We have Bermuda here, and if kept cut short I've never seen a tick on short Bermuda grass.

I have had several hundred one me over those years, but if one does get seized I just pull it off gently with my fingers. Fortunately, we don't have much Lyme around here.

I do keep a bottle of rubbing alcohol in my truck and handy at the house. If I do happen to brush up against something that has the tiny ticks called "seed ticks" around here, and get a hundred of them crawling up my leg, I wash them off with the alcohol. They fall right off as the alcohol runs down a leg. I have been known to leave a pair of socks beside the road though.

I use 28 year old Glenlivet from the inside, doesn't work very well but it is a lot more enjoyable!

Funny, have a conversation about Ticks, and no matter where you are you will feel something crawling on you.

[Alan Rutherford]

Some interesting information from the AMA about Lyme disease, including the claim that transmission of the disease takes 36 to 48 hours, so don't panic if you found it earlier.

https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-...t-lyme-disease

They suggest suffocating a tick by wrapping it in tape to kill it after you remove it, which seems like a lot of trouble. If you removed the tick with tweezers, it's probably already dead and if not, you have the perfect tick-killing device in your hand. If the tick was running free or you don't have the tweezers, then capturing it with tape as Maurice suggests and entombing it in the tape makes sense.

A lot of tweezers are not up to SMC's standards for excellence if you look at how poorly the working ends mate. I usually use a small surgical clamp from Harbor Freight that I ground the locking part off of.

Ticks climb upwards looking for a spot they like. If you picked up the tick in grass it's not likely to be above the elastic in your underwear. If it's running free on your arm and you're having trouble catching it, hold your arm up and watch the tick reverse direction and give you a clear shot to pluck it off your hand.

[Tom M King]

I just pull them off gently with my fingers. They will turn loose before losing their head. Just a steady light pull, not a hard all of a sudden one. It’s a tug of war.

[Warren Lake]

depends on the tic.

First one off easy, think he died on there from my sarcasm. Last years guy was in the MMA. He took a chunk out with him in his front paws. 10 trys would not let go, then rip him out. I get now it was hurting with him on there as he was eating me. only reason I found him my hands were giving me pain. I didnt even know he was on for over a day and fattening up.

Took months to heal and I normally heal faster than the silver guy in the Terminator movie. Pretty sure hes a wood tik which is suitable for a cabinetmaker.


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[Mike Soaper]

Ouch!!!

I've always been surprised at how difficult it's been to remove some ticks for how small they are, it seems besides biting/digging into the skin, ticks also secrete a "cement" to help attach themselves to the hosts. While looking for root dip for bare rooted tree seedings at a forestry website I came across a product called "Tick Release" which is supposed to soften the "cement", and is based on citrus oil. I've not tried "Tick Release" yet, but I've tried using a bit of a lemon on the recently attached tick and it did seem to help a bit in removing it, but I'm suspect that a bit of confirmation bias was coming onto play.

Tick Release™ (forestry-suppliers.com)

I had never heard of ticks excreting a "cement" and was a bit suspect of the product, but given this paper it seems they do.

More info on tick cements that you'll probably ever want to know
Tick attachment cement – reviewing the mysteries of a biological skin plug system - PMC (nih.gov)

[Maurice Mcmurry]

Ouch indeed! That looks bad. Darling got home and got the head and mouth parts out of the red bump on my back. Alcohol, Neosporin and a Band-aid, feeling fine now. Step mom in law got one between her toes once. It had dug in clear out of sight. I tried to dig it out, after one poke she was off to the E.R.

[Warren Lake]

I was working on a job with a deadline and that was likely 3:00 am or so. I didnt take time to research removal, once I thought something is going on my hands are sore just happen to see that odd thing is both hands were hurting same time?

You can figure just how hard he was able to hold on to rip that flesh out and it did hurt thats why I backed off so many times before getting really ticked off with him.

Even after throwing him on the floor he just kept walking around and didnt seem to care, might have lost the ends of a few legs in me as well. I put him in a jar and in the freezer and was supposed to send him to a tick registry place. Dont always get everything done. I seem to be okay though sure a few friends would dispute that.

[Alan Rutherford]

Tick Release? Note that the ad says "Combining Tick Release with a tick removal implement like Tick Nipper...".

Get a decent set of tweezers and just pull them out.

[Mike Soaper]

We have mostly deer ticks around here, ranging from the nymphs about the size of a poppy seed to the adults about the size of sesame seeds 3/16" ish. We typically either pull them off or use tweezers, but every once in a while we get a stubborn one which is why the interest in the Tick Release/citrus oil. My take is that it's probably a form of Limonene which as i understand it has been used as a solvent and a natural pesticide. Here's hoping the pesticide aspect will also help the little buggers loosen their grip

[Patty Hann]

Don't know if anyone else saw this....

Lee ValleyTick removal tool