Ticks

My son just found a tick crawling on him. He said it was a dog tick and that it did not bite him because it was not attached. I checked our dog and he is fine. We went hiking yesterday, could we have brought a tick home and it latched onto the clothing of the kid that did not go on the hike? I know that ticks are bad and they can make you real sick. Rocky Mountain fever and lyme disease are mainly what I am finding. I know that fleas attach to dogs and get all over the house but what about ticks?

I need a good resource on ticks and what to do.

 

I would suggest you research Permethrin for any out door activities.

 

Here is some tick information:
This site has great info on ticks. This is the top ten list about ticks

TickEncounter Resource Center

 

Symptoms of tick bites:
What are the symptoms of a tick bite?


Tick bites are usually harmless and may produce no symptoms. However, if you’re allergic to tick bites, you may experience:

• pain or swelling at the bite site
• a rash
• a burning sensation at the bite site
• blisters
• difficulty breathing

Some ticks carry diseases, which can be passed on when they bite. Tick-borne diseases can cause a variety of symptoms and usually develop within the first few weeks after a tick bite. Potential symptoms of tick-borne diseases include:

• a red spot or rash near the bite site
• a full body rash
• neck stiffness
• a headache
• nausea
• weakness
• muscle or joint pain or achiness
• a fever
• chills
• swollen lymph nodes

Be sure to seek medical attention immediately if a tick bite results in serious symptoms.

Tick Bites: Symptoms and Treatments

Sounds like a tick bite has symptoms like the common flu.

 

When I lived in Virginia fleas and ticks were bad.
What I would do is vacuum almost daily, some times twice a day.
Fleas like the vibration and light on the vacuum so they want to go for a ride on what's making all that light and sound stimulation.
Ticks get suckered up just cause they are slow and happen to be crawling on the floor when you go over them.

To keep them off me I use deet on my clothes and deet and permethrin on boots. When the dogs get a tick I spray the tick with permethrin.
I use the military issue 0.5% stuff in a can.

 

Tick populations have been booming lately, and no one appears to quite know why.

Tick-borne diseases have boomed right along with them.

Ticks can infest houses--usually ones with several live-in pets and very negligent owners--and sometimes the infestation can be mind-boggling.

I saw a house once where ticks were lined up in every seam of every piece of upholstered furniture like bedbugs. Side-by-side-by-side--by the hundreds, literally.

Insecticides are useful, but if you don't want to go the neuro-toxic chemistry route, powdered yellow sulfur will do the trick.

Ticks purely hate it, so if you just dust the clothes with it, they'll hop on and hop right back off.

Pay special attention to the socks, cuffs, and waistband. Fluffing a little into the hair is also good.

People that drink natural sulfur-water--and those that eat a lot of eggs--usually have little or no problems with ticks because of the high percentage of sulfur in their perspiration and/or blood.

Pets can be safely dusted with sulfur as well. It doesn't take much.

In addition to Lyme Disease--which can be a very bad long-term infection--ticks can carry Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and Tularemia, among other diseases.

Tularemia can be fatal if left untreated (requires antibiotics), and is especially bad for pregnant women.

People bopping around in the Great Outdoors should do so by twos and do a full skin search on each other daily.

The best way to get rid of an attached tick is with needle-point tweezers. Grab them flush with the skin and pull them straight out, fairly slowly.

If you put tweezers on the abdomen of the tick, you can force the contents of their gut to be regurgitated into your body. Not a good thing, that.

It usually takes ticks at least 12 hours to pass on a pathogen, so the idea is to get rid of them fast.

Slathering the little blighters with tobacco juice (or extract) can paralyze them and make them easier to pull out. That also helps prevent them from leaving mouth parts behind when evicted.

 

We generally try to burn off sections of our land during the spring/summer, This seems to help keep the ticks ,redbugs down!

 

I get ticks on me all the time after they are removed the spot will itch for weeks

 

we don't get ticks up here all that often, it's the frickin flees that really infest every thing. I find a blend of Ceder oils with Cloves and Mint mixed with water sprayed on every thing keeps them off the dogs and out of the house. We do get ticks if we go hiking out in the woods, but I found the Spray mix keeps them off! Any one know the best way to remove a dug in tick? I have heard all kinds of advice on this, and every thing I have tried did more damage then it fixed. In the A.F. we used iodine soap, but I don't remember it working all that well!

 

Ticks can live on tree branches. I was fishing along a creek one-time brushed up against a tree branch and got over a hundred a newly hatched ticks on my arm. we always used oil apply with a Q-tip on the tick body because the ticks breathe through their body when they're embedded in your skin and they will withdraw cuz I can't breathe covered in oil, that way you don't leave the head embeded in your skin.

Sulphur as mentioned above works great. For preventive measures.

Chickens and guinea fowl are great foragers to keep tick populations down.

 

There can be an upside to ticks...

 

I always heard smothering them with Vaseline makes them back out, as you said, they breathe thru their skin. I found one yesterday on my arm out in the yard. If I don't have a lighter on me to burn them with, I'll just cut them in half with my knife.

 

Love Brad P, and this is one of my all time faves of his!
Definitely an upside. I'm gonna have to explain this concept to my Bride and play her that song!

 

My wife and I had to undergo treatment for Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever several years ago; the amount of blood taken for tests was unbelievable! Both of us had a very small tick attached to our side about belt high. When I say small, I mean the size of the tip of a ball-point pen. Our answer to keep the tick population down was guineas. They are a lot of work, but better than the alternative.

 

While on a Sur-D02 diving project near Elberton, Ga. years ago, we found the ruins of a water-powered factory complex deep in the woods. According to locals, it had been destroyed during the War of Northern Aggression. The mill-race was stone and ran for over a mile with quite a drop in elevation to facilitate the water's flowing energy. There were many standing stone walls, a very interesting place to spend a Spring afternoon hiking to and exploring. A Brit diver from the North Sea was on this project with us and when we talked about the old factory complex, he expressed a desire to visit it. It was one of those early spring days where everything seems to be coming back to life. We walked down a narrow trail alongside the Savannah River and Andy kept asking about dangerous animals, particularly bears and snakes. I told him there were probably black bears about but we probably wouldn't be lucky enough to actually get to see one, then I explained about the four venomous snake of North America, saw a speckled king snake crossing our path and picked it up to show him. He was quite impressed until Brad whispered to him that I had lied and it was actually a black and white speckled mamba and if it bit him, he would die gasping for breath, in a matter of seconds. He literally threw the snake into the bush and we continued our hike. Soon, we came across a pair of copperheads entwined in a mating embrace alongside our trail. "These are venomous." I told him then I drew a 1911 from behind my back and dispatched both reptiles with head shots. He literally screamed, "Jesus Christ! Is that a real gun?" It never occurred to me that he might never have seen a firearm up close, and certainly never had been in a location where someone would casually draw one and dispatch a pair of poisonous vipers. Now Andy was really getting nervous and asking more questions about dangerous wildlife so I explained that tick were probably the most dangerous thing we would likely encounter. "What, pray tell, is a freaking tick?" he asked. I gave him a complete cameo of ticks in my best Marlin Perkins, a blood sucking bug that hid in the grass and trees until they sensed a warm-blooded animal passing beneath it by body heat or carbon dioxide and would attach itself and suck your blood until it expanded to about a hundred times it's original size and would then drop off until it needed to feed again. The problem, I told him, was that ticks carry all sorts of nasty diseases such as Lymes, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and pretty much any other blood-borne pathogen it's dinner might have had. I didn't hear him ask just how large these ticks were, nor did I hear Brad tell him that they were generally smaller than house cats. Now Andy was looking in all directions, avoiding overhanging branches as much as was possible, when a cicada started screeching from a nearby tree top. Brad ducked, covered his head with both arms and screamed "Oh my God, TICKS!".....We didn't see Andy again for a few hours, apparently he ran all the ways back to our vehicle and was locked inside when we returned from our hike near dark.

 

Now that's funny.