Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Ticked Off in Michigan

Talking to the Southeastern Michigan Geocaching Facebook Group, many of our members reported ticks (and mosquitoes the size of finches) this weekend.  We even found a tick on Fiona, the geo-wonder-pup, while doing to Metropark trails.  It’s been a bad season.  SuperJosh reports he prefers the Northern ones – our deer ticks are larger than ones in the Southern states so they are easier to spot.


You are not supposed to squeeze and kill a tick embedded in your skin for fear of them releasing all their toxins into your blood stream.  Worse yet, I heard a tale (urban legend?) about a guy that poisoned himself because he would pull ticks off his dogs and then bite off the ticks’ heads to kill them.  Oh my.


As a result of the increase, there have been many posts about Tick removal remedies. Snopes.com has disproved the “liquid dish soap method” as an old wives tale. Another post states you should use a lint roller after being outdoors to remove ticks from your clothes – I’m not sure if this works or not. Wear light clothes so you can spot them easier.

What I do trust is Ben of TheGrundalow’s CDC link about Tick removal.  The goal is to remove the tick as quickly as possible and to clean the wound.  It’s a short article, but it’s really clear about what to do and to watch out for.  It even has this nifty graphic:

SOURCE: CDC Website

As for Fiona, we used my new tick key on her, which was quite quick and quite painless.  I bought this from gxproxy.com but, after a quick Internet search, they seem to everywhere now.



Remember: Nothing is quite as fun as a tick-check with the one you love!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Sign my (b)log!