not enough tick hate on this website. everyone hates wasps or spiders but I rarely see issue with tiny undetectable blood sucking demons who hang out in beautiful plant-filled places and spread deadly disease with a single bite. wasps might punch you in the face occasionally but ticks will steal your lunch money and total your car and poison your food and use all the hot water and as the planet warms up these little devil suckpods are hitching rides anywhere their horrible little feet can plop themselves down and camp out for the next victim of their terrible curses.
I was a bare-foot goblin child who ran around in the woods all day, and have had ticks on me since I was a toddler. TICKS ARE HORRIBLE. Once when I was about 6 or 7 I had one on my head, under my hair, and I thought it was just a skin-tag or something but I finally noticed how BIG it had gotten. If you don’t learn to twist them off just right or use a special little tick-picking-spoon, the head of the tick stays stuck where it bit you, buries itself under your skin, and gets infected. They bite you in really sensitive and often hard-to-reach places. They travel from your pets to you, and even if you get the animals a flea/tick collar or some kind of repellent medicine, the ticks will still hitch a ride on their fur until they can crawl around and find somebody to bite
Seriously, if you have any cats, dogs, or other animals that go in and out, ask a vet what kind of collars or other kind of repellent to use (don’t use anything that might make your critter uncomfortable). Be super careful when you remove a tick, don’t just try to pull it out. Use a special tool, or twist it very slowly until it loses its grip. Don’t let them escape, these are bugs to kill (I’ve always either smashed them with a rock when they’re huge, or put them in an ashtray and burned them with a match). Also, check animals who have scabs; ticks will be drawn to the blood, and if they attach to a wound it won’t heal properly. Ticks tend to crawl around on bushes and tall grass, so this is at least one good reason to mow the lawn and trim what grows in your yard. Make sure your pets get their shots and vaccinations to avoid any of the diseases the ticks can spread, it will protect you too
Tag: ticks
TICK PSA
livebloggingmydescentintomadness:
Alright you guys, ‘tis the season again and I’ve already seen bullshit float about so here we go: what to do and what not to do when you happen to have a tick attached to yours truly.
WHAT NOT TO DO:
DON’T cover the tick in anything. Vaseline, nailpolish, whatever. Doesn’t matter. It’ll all suffocate the tick, making it panic vomit germs into your blood stream. That’s the opposite of what you want.
DON’T burn the tick. Same problem, plus the additional option of giving yourself a burn wound in the process.
DON’T squeeze the body of the tick when you try to remove it. Again this empties the tick’s digestive system into your body. Bad.
DON’T wait for the tick to detach itself. The longer it stays on you, the higher the chances it’ll transmit anything to you. Plus when ti detaches it may again vomit germs into you.
WHAT TO ACTUALLY DO
STAY CALM. A tick hanging on you is not a reason to panick. You’re not going to keel over just like that, and if you’re unsure what to do, there are many resources on the internet on how to safely remove a tick, like this one from the CDC (aka the professionals)
USE APPROPRIATE TOOLS. These can be suitable tweezers (the pointy kind, not blunt tipped ones), tick removers (there are cheap ones out there, those you can buy at the vets are totally fine for use on humans, too!). Ideally you can remove the entire tick in one go, however if that doesn’t work and the mouth part breaks off in your skin, that’s not a terribly big deal and you can totally remove it separately after you got the body remove. Again, don’t panic.
KILL THE REMOVED TICK. But not by squeezing it. Flush it down the toilet, submerse it in alcohol in a container etc. Ideally if the tick has bitten you and not your dog, keep the tick around in a sealed container in case you start having symptoms and someone needs to identify the tick species. Also IF you start getting symptoms like the tell tale Lyme disease rash, HIT A DOCTOR RIGHT AWAY AND TELL THEM ABOUT YOUR TICK BITE. Do not wait this out, ticks can transmit a whole host of diseases beside Lyme, so be mindful of that, too!
Some of those diseases you can actually get vaccinated again, such as tick born encephalitis. Check with the local authorities if you live in a risk area, and if so, get the shots to protect yourself.
Excellent post! I would like to add that ticks hide in tall grass and bushes mostly. They do not drop down from trees or jump to other people’s heads etc. Ticks aren’t designed to jump, they latch on somewhere on your leg and then crawl upwards in most cases.
So be careful with bare legs and tall grass!
I suggest tucking your pant leg into your socks while hiking or walking in fields. May not be super cute but I find it effective.
I never saw a tick, but I got infected with antibiotic-resistant Lyme Disease and it basically ruined my life, so please don’t underestimate how important this is.
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