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!
Apparently a sharp increase in ticks and tick related illness is expected this season. Good information!
So important!!
reptiles can get ticks too!!
Some people get the Lyme rash, but many who have Lyme disease do not! The rash can show up in hard to see places like your scalp as well. So PLEASE get checked out if you are sick but don’t see a rash!
Having grown up in tick-borne disease central (aka southern new england), tick safety was basically beaten into me from birth. It’s important to be proactive to prevent the ticks from even biting in the first place: when outside in a potentially tick-y area, tuck your pants into your socks and your shirt into your pants- don’t let them get in! When you come inside, remove all your clothes (yes, even underwear) and put them straight in the wash, and do a thorough tick-check, including hair and genitals. Use a mirror or get a buddy to check your back and hair! If your dog was outside with you, give it a visual check (or a brush for breeds with long/thick or dark fur), and don’t let it up on furniture. Do all this ASAP!
Ticks ‘hunt’ by sitting on blades of grass or shrubbery and waving their forelegs in the air, seeking your heat or carbon dioxide. When you brush by them, they hop on, and unlike, say, a mosquito, ticks don’t bite the first piece of you they land on; they wander around your body for a bit, trying to find a nice sheltered place where the host wont be able to easily brush them off (that’s why you’ll often find them behind a dog’s ear, or in its dense neck fur). This is good news for you, as it gives you time to find and remove them before they take a bite!
It’s often recommended that you take a shower as soon as possible after coming in from the outdoors, as this can wash away ticks that haven’t bitten yet.
Also, in the vein of preventative measures, I know it’s fashionable to hate on them these days, but DEET-containing bug repellents are a major boon to repelling ticks. Not much else will do this. All those products with menthol and clove oil and grapefruit oil only last for around 15 minutes before their effectiveness begins to wear off.
ALSO, there’s a chemical called permethrin, which you spray on your clothes and shoes: NOT on yourself. You treat a set of clothes (and shoes, don’t forget those!) and let them dry, and then after that you can wear those when you go outdoors and the chemical will kill ticks on contact. It lasts for a few trips through the washing machine before you’ll need to reapply it.
If you’re having trouble with ticks in your yard, you can also buy permethrin tubes. These are little tubes stuffed with permethrin-treated cotton, which appeals to mice and other small animals that often are the culprits for transporting ticks into your yard. They use this nice soft stuff to line their nests, and then it just hangs out there and kills ticks whenever the little critters go home to take a nap.
Ticks need humidity to live. Piles of leaves, dense underbrush, places that stay damp and warm are their favored locations. A stretch of gravel, sand or short grass is Death Valley to them. They don’t like to cross it or live there. So you can keep that in mind when it comes to landscaping, to form barriers against them and keep your yard groomed and unpleasant to them.
Pets can also carry ticks into your home, so along with you and your roommates and kids, you may want to tick-check your dogs and cats after they’ve gone out to romp. They can get tick-borne diseases too!
Different species of ticks can carry different diseases. So if possible, stash any ticks you pull off in a little jar or something and take them along with you when you go to the doctor.
And if it’s at all possible for you, DO go to the doctor! It might not seem like much, but early intervention can mean the difference between minor inconvenience vs. a life of arthritis or major organ failure! My dad died of heart complications from Lyme, where if we had known what was going on, his life could’ve been saved by a simple course of antibiotics.
Interestingly, ticks seem to be more of a problem in populated areas. From talking with scientists and stewards, I’ve heard that large wilderness areas aren’t experiencing much of a tick population explosion, whereas they’re becoming a plague in suburban and semi-rural areas, state parks and campgrounds and places like that.
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