ticks

Those wretched little creatures are everywhere outside. Last night I woke up to feel a crawling sensation on my thigh. In the winter, I would just scratch, but his time of year I jump up, turn on the light, and study the body part for a brown dot crawling around. I found two on me in the night- one stuck, and one crawling. Yeech. As grossed out as I am by them, I don't have near the typical reaction that one finds in the general city dwelling populace. My trusty tweezers are always at the ready! Sometimes you need a mirror too when the ticks are in "difficult" locations. Around here the most common tick seems to be the Lone Star tick, but the most horrible are the "seed" ticks. They are really nymph ticks that latch on by the hundreds when you disturb the nursery. They are so tiny- about the size of the period at the end of the sentence. The itchy bump that they will leave is not tiny at all however. They are REALLY hard to see, but not hard to feel the little army of bugs. If these seed ticks ever get on you, the only thing to do is to strip all of your clothes off, throw them in the washer, put yourself in the shower, and scrub hard with a washcloth and soap. Hopefully you will dislodge all of the ticks. My favorite treatment is to pour alcohol on a cloth first and scrub, then the shower technique. The next crucial step is to NEVER go back to that location again until winter, or until you have blasted the area with insecticide. I don't care how "green" you are, if you have thousands of seed ticks speeding up your body, you would use DDT if you had any. When we were about to build this house, I took a giant pump spray bottle of bug poison to spray in front of me, and then when I stopped I would spray a large circle around me. Ticks do carry some pretty nasty diseases around here like erlichiosis, Lyne disease, and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. After my big adventure having West Nile Fever, I want to avoid all bug borne diseases. But, as I said, I just pull those ticks off and make a mental note so that if I come down with something, I'll think Tick disease.

Now here is an interesting fact about the ticks that get on me and latch on. They die. That is right. When I find one actually attached to my body, it is always dead. My husband is my witness to this., I wonder if my blood is toxic to them. Could it be all those vitamins? Or could it be the antidepressant? Or is it just me? Whatever it is it makes them easy to remove. If you should have a live tick attached to you, get some alcohol, a cotton ball, and tweezers. Swab the area, then carefully lift the body of the tick. Pull slowly but steadily trying not to leave the mouthpiece in you. Then wipe the whole area with alcohol again. (this is my technique, not endorsed by anybody that I know of) Discard tick down the drain or toilet. From now on check yourself regularly- including hidden areas. I think that I will go do that right now.