Ivy says:
I took the kids and one of my dogs for a walk on the greeway earlier today, and we came back with a few hitchhikers. Ticks. I found, like, 5 on my daughter and one on my dog. Strange that she’d rack up more ticks than my dog, but whatever. I immediately thought back to a friend who had posted on Facebook that her son had a tick on him, and she was worried about pulling it out the regular tweezer way.
One of her other friends suggested putting liquid soap on the tick, then just swiping it away with a paper towel. My friend tried it and it worked like a charm. I had not seen this method before. Keep in mind that the ways our parents and grandparents have used to remove ticks may be dangerous, such as holding a match to the tick (possibility of burns), covering the tick in petroleum jelly or nail polish (causes the tick to spit bacteria back into the wound- ick).
If the liquid soap method doesn’t work, just use a pair of tweezers to gently pull the tick off the person. If tick mouth pieces remain, wash the area with soap and water and put a little alcohol on the area to disinfect.
If you’re concerned about whether you had the kind of ticks that carry Lyme disease (deer ticks), here’s a handy set of pictures to compare. In my case, it was the right sort of ticks, so we’ll be watching carefully to see if any symptoms develop.
Ugh, ticks. I feel all creepy-crawly just thinking about it. Anybody else have bug-hypochondria with me? (Where if any sorts of bugs that are creepy-crawly are even MENTIONED, you get itchy and your skin starts to crawl…I say, scratching my ankle.)
We get ticks a bit where we live, in the mountains of southern California, but not often. I do get all creeped out thinking about swarms of anything. Once we went on a hike and hit a swarm of ladybugs. Until that time, I thought they were cute, but thousands of anything is creepy. I can hardly think about cockroaches from some bad experiences...and ants used not to bother me, but since we have had some swarms, I hate seeing them at all. And don't get me started on anything that stings. It has taken my whole life to just sit still when they come around. I don't hate bugs in general, just those I've had yucky experiences with. However, I only get the creepy crawly feeling over roaches....ick ick ick.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
Like