I’m sitting in my house folding laundry. CLEAN clothes. When out of the pile comes a tick that starts crawling up my leg. I grab it and try and smash it in a tissue. This thing is like a tank, it won’t crush no matter what I do. Had to take it outside, and then burn my house down.
Do ticks in America not carry encephalitis (like they do in central/eastern Europe)?Because that’s way more dangerous than Lyme disease. I find it weird that it isn’t mentioned at all, nor the vaccination against it.
There are several diseases commonly carried by ticks, depending on region. However these days you probably need to look more locally - many state have programs to monitor and try to react:
At least where I live, encephalitis is more of a problem with mosquitoes
I’m up to 9 so far this year
Keep in mind that even after checking yourself after being in the out doors they may still be on your clothes or in your hair. Check yourself again the next day. It takes them awhile to burrow in
Also, if you have pets that go outside, such as a dog you take for walks, you need to check them even if they are on flea and tick prevention. Ticks are more than glad to hitchhike indoors on pets and then later decide to rehome themselves onto a human.
Also highly recommend spraying your dogs thoroughly with Permethrin in addition to whatever else they’re on. Permethrin is an insecticide and when ticks come into contact with it they immediately want to get away from it and will hop off as quickly as they can. My dog and I go hiking a lot and I almost never see ticks on him anymore. This applies even if you only walk your dog on paved paths - the ticks sit on the tips of leaves and grass blades waiting for something to come near.
I would add that it’s probably best to bathe your dog as soon as you get home to avoid getting permethrin all over your house and absorbing it through your skin.
You definitely do not need to bathe them and it wouldn’t matter if you did. Permethrin is meant to be a long term treatment (up to 6 weeks) so you spray it on your dog and let it dry days before your hike. Once dry permethrin is safe for humans and even cats. In fact treating your own clothing with permethrin (NOT while wearing them) is a safe and effective way to keep mosquitoes and ticks off you as well. Like dogs, permethrin treated clothes are effective for about 6 weeks (or 6 washes).
Oh! I was under the impression that getting it on bare skin was toxic.
When it’s wet you should avoid getting it on bare skin, but once it’s dried it’s inert and you’re completely fine. The instructions say when you spray your dog or your clothes you should use gloves, but it dries pretty quickly. Usually about an hour for my dog (he’s double coated so it just takes a while for the undercoat to dry), but with most of my clothing I’ve sprayed it’s usually 30-60 minutes depending on the fabric.
With all that said, permethrin has long been approved for and used in lice shampoos, so it’s fine even against the skin, it’s just that it doesn’t work once it’s dry on the skin. All studies on permethrin show it to be entirely safe at the concentrations we use it at. It has to bind to fibers, but on skin it will break down quickly and be ineffective. It bonds to fibers really well though and is why it’s a longer term solution lasting weeks versus spraying harsh smelling deet that wears off in hours. For ticks it’s really the best solution.
I would make a “The Tick” joke but this is serious
Don’t try to remove them with spoons?
They make spoons specifically for removing ticks.
These work well even on tiny ticks. I got some when I was having trouble removing ticks around my cats’ eyelids. I didn’t want anything sharp or metal near their eyes.
Not trying to be funny, but would a plastic spoon also suffice? I’ve never had a tick before.
Had a friend tell me about using dental floss to wrap around as close to the skin as possible, tighten, and pull the tick off. Haven’t tried it, but seems like it might work
Won’t that just cut off its head and leave the parts behind? I thought that was the general problem with using tweezers.
Luckily we don’t generally get ticks but the last time I tried to remove one I completely screwed it up, so I always take my kids to urgent care to have it done. It wouldn’t take much for that to become ruinously expensive
I think the idea is to get the floss just tight enough to not slip over the body.
I have this mental image of you as a govt agent choking someone out with a wire and then years later as a civilian trying to remove ticks off kids. “Dang it, cut it in half again. Why does this keep happening to me?”
Pick up some of those plastic tick spoons. I ordered a three-pack real cheap and keep one in the truck and one in the kitchen.
