Tip~How to Get a Tick Off a Dog or yourself Though there are many different types of ticks, they are all are blood feeding parasites that feed off of a host. Ticks start out incredibly small and then get larger as the engorge with blood. Ticks can carry many diseases and you need to be sure you remove the whole tick and do not leave any part of the head embedded inside of the body or you may end up with an infection. Instructions Difficulty: Easy Things You’ll Need: Liquid Soap Toliet Paper Step 1 Once you have identified the location of a the tick take some liquid soap and put about a teaspoon of it on a wad of toliet paper. Step 2 Hold the toliet paper with the soap over the tick firmly for about a minute (time will vary). This smothers the tick and he backs out on his own. Step 3 Grab the tick with the toliet paper when it backs out and flush it down the toliet to be sure it isn't wandering around your house some where.
I have used fingernail polish, vaseline, and even lighter fluid (without lighting it!). They back out to get air, and some times it takes a few minutes.... Then I grab that bugger and flush them. My uncle once pulled a small, what they call a 'yearling' tick, the really tiny flat buggers, off his ankle....Well, he didn't tell anyone and almost died, until they found the head was still under the skin. Them little parasites are dangerous!
I took a bottle of rubbing alcohol and pressed the open top against said tick and then turned the bottle upside down....dropped off pretty fast and the wound was disinfected at the same time!
In that case, I think lighting the alcohol would be best.... This year I have found two ticks on me - never had the buggers in all the time I have spent out in the woods! I wonder if the recent weird weather has anything to do with it?
Last year the ticks in this area were pretty bad. This year, for some reason, we've had an EXPLOSION in the local frog population and I haven't seen them around much. That doesn't mean they're all gone though...
For the past couple years the ticks here have been overwhelming. I can stand on the porch for 5 minutes and come in with 2 or 3 clinging someplace on my cloths or hair. I'm going to try Clyde's method since I find them almost daily. Nasty little buggers.
I have used a lite cigarette, The heat from the cigarette would back the tick out. I have also used a stick from a camp-fire that had a hot ember.
In my family we always used a match. Light it, blow it out and put the hot tip on the tick. It backs out pretty quick.
Ticks breath throrugh spiracles in their legs, so anything that plugs up those spiracles will cause them to suffocate and back out. Be careful with the item used, if it kills them before they can get pulled out, they will die with their head burried. Things like ketchup work well. Water doesn't do well because there is enough saturated air that they can actually survive awhile.
Don’t you have to worry about the tick regurgitating before it backs out?<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com<img src=" /> There are plenty of diseases that ticks can pass along in their saliva, but there are still others that live in the ticks’ digestive tract. Borrelia is an example. Getting the tick out without it regurgitating is a safer option. There are tick tweezers or forceps and other implements that are designed to do this.
The smothering techniques are pretty likely to make the tick regurgitate. The technique with the tweezer/forcep is to grab near the head and slowly and steadily pull the tick out. The ends of the forceps/tweezers need to be narrow to allow grabbing it under the body as close to the skin as possible. There is also removal tool that acts as a claw removing a nail. It pries the tick out without squeezing the body. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com<img src=" />
I saw one of the tick removing tools today at the army surplus. Will they safely remove them even if they're under the surface of the skin?
