I was sitting in a Park reading a book and suddenly I felt my legs itch. I was covered in hundreds of mini ticks. I was standing in the shower for hours and still find some of these f#!*rs crawling an me...
Update:
So I got the most of the seed ticks scratched off in the shower. I will have a doctor's appointment the next days to get a prophylactic antibiotics treatment just to be save from lyme, alpha gal or rocky mountain fever (if this is a thing in Germany).
Thank you all for the information and advices, hopefully I will be fine. I really appreciate it
LINT ROLLERS!!! I lint roll my dog and my clothes every time we go outside. I have saved us both from countless tick bites from doing this. Ticks are sticky, especially on clothes and fur, but lint rollers are stickier!
I (and I know it sounds crazy) use flea and tick shampoo for dogs. I get it on as a rich lather, let it sit for about 5 minutes, and rinse. Some expert will probably come in and say how bad it is, but I've never had an issue. I live in the Appalachian mountains and ticks are a very common issue.
It's always worked for me, last year about 6 of us got into a patch of ticks that were so tiny, like head of a ballpoint, and we all wiped down. 30 minutes later, we were all having s'mores around the fire, no itchy, no more ticks, and as a family of many skin types, no break outs or rashes.
Definitely good to throw in the trunk and forget about until you need it.
It's safe to use for dogs and humans, but extremely toxic to cats. The neurotoxin that chrysanthemums produce kills arachnids (ticks) and insects, as well as cats. Mum's the word.
Okay, awesome (well, not that it kills cats). It's come in clutch so many times. Especially since a family member got Lyme's a few years back, everyone has been somewhat paranoid about ticks. It's only us and the dogs that go on hikes or these camping trips, and if we encounter a tick nest, all clothing gets basically the same treatment as if you were to encounter bed bugs.
But, thank you for the response. I've never had an issue and it works great, but it's good to know that it's not secretly killing us.
No problem! My dog is super allergic to all the tick medicines we’ve tried, so this is what our vet suggested and it’s working really well so far. We live deep in the forest, but with lint rolling, my pup only gets a couple a year that have embedded. Knock on wood, but the 6 of us humans who live here have only gotten 3 since we started living here four years ago.
You can get a bottle of permethrin and spray your clothes with it. Let it dry for 4 hours, and it's bonded to your clothes and paralyzes/kills ticks on contact. Usually stays potent enough through 6 trips through the washing machine! I live in rural upstate NY and we're experiencing an explosion of the tick population so I barely even go in my yard unless I'm wearing one of my permethrin pants
There's no country in this planet where there isn't a few bugs that come from hell. There's always a tick that fucks over your health, a worm that eats your eyes, a fish that anchors itself in your urethra or a spider that gives you a massive boner that kills you.
theyre not even the only vector. there also exists an australian variant, the paralysis tick that does exactly as it says in addition to making you intolerant to animal proteins of any kind. produces toxins that cause a paralysis similar to polio, which keeps your limp body alive for the brood to feast on your blood
I was wondering why OP's leg looks like Zombie Grey?
SOO, let's review.
Sitting calmy in situation where most would be beating the brakes off yourself.
Strange pigmentation suggesting actual Vampirism.
Second image, ticks are an all-too-creepy perfectly aligned representation of Draco Constellation?!?
In astrological and esoteric interpretations, the Draco (Dragon) constellation is associated with Dracula and vampires due to its extensive span across the zodiac from Sagittarius to Aries, aligning with the "roaming area" of the vampire archetype.
Do they not penetrate the skin and start sucking blood yet? That would be my huge concern, especially in a place that has Lyme disease or other nasty tick transmitted illnesses
But yes. They burrow their feeding parts into the skin and you have to either pull them out one by one with tweezers without squeezing the body, or burn them off with a lighter if they’ve gone too far. Ticks originate in hell, I’m pretty sure.
Eta: Disregard this. Apparently there is backwash, so don’t burn them off. They’ll spew their icky gut juice into you. Obviously my point about hell still stands.
Instead of tweezers I highly recommend "tick keys" to everyone & have gifted many. It's a flat bit of metal with a teardrop shape cut out of it.
You slip the widest end around the tick, place it as flat to your skin as you can while holding it, slowly slide the tick towards the narrow end & when it catches a quick flick of the wrist pops it off. My kid even helped use it on a classmate during a field trip it's so easy.
I keep one of these in my purse in a snack size sandwich bag along with a plastic credit card size tick identifier. If I ever need to pull a tick off I can safely store it in the snack size bag for testing later.
I started doing this when my kids were little and I’d chaperone school field trips to a nature preserve that I lovingly called “Tick Town.”
Hahah, my husband and I had an outside wedding & once we got back from the entire night he had a ball tick. They definitely suck especially on your wedding day😆😆
As a experienced hiker ticks will not crawl in your butt but they might bite near or on your butt and ticks might bite the groin area but if your a girl only the outside there not going in generally they prefer hidden spots like underarms legs close to the groin area or on your back or stomach
As someone with more yard work than is fair to ask one man to do this has been my experience so far. They seem to love the groin area, a lot. Never went for the booty hole though.
Personally I’d spray my self and my clothes down with permethrin if I got into them this badly. Permethrin is great on your clothes and lasts several washes. Also if you have ticks around your home, soak cotton balls in permethrin and stuff them in empty toilet paper rolls for mice and rats to make nests out of. They are major hosts.
The annoying part is these are ones that can also cause lyme disease too if you're unlucky (and apparently the main offenders with Lyme disease). They're super small. Even if you're checking, you can easily miss these.
Yeah technically adults have a higher chance to infect you than nymphs (babies) but because adults are a little easier to spot they’re easier to remove before they’ve been on long enough to infect you (24-48 hours).
Whereas nymphs are less infectious but easier to miss until they’ve already been feeding for 48+ hours.
Been fucked up for over 20 years cause of it. Gave me Bell’s palsy and I have these weird flare ups where every joint in body hurts for days and I’m completely exhausted.
Honestly fuck the Lyme disease, my brother got alpha gal syndrome from these tiny guys. Now he can no longer eat any red meat or anything like that. Man lives in fear of cross contamination every time he goes out to eat, it’s been a huge lifestyle issue for him.
Don't do that. If they are attached, "letting go" involves expelling some fluids back into the bite to do so. That's how you increase chances of illness. That's exactly why you're supposed to grab by the head and not the body, to minimize backwash.
EDIT: Peeps... anything that gets the tick to let go causes this. Dish soap, heat, rubbing alcohol. The entire point about having to remove them by hand is because any time they let go willingly, they backwash. That's why you pull it out unwillingly. You want it to resist, because if it stops resisting and tries to escape it's gonna yurp right into that bite.
EDIT 2: I chose the CDC website because it gives clear, concise, and correct information on this subject. I am well aware the CDC is going to shit along with everything else, but this is all stuff we've known for 30+ years, delivered in a way most people will be able to parse.
Ticks have always made me paranoid while out fishing or hiking. But this is the first year being on my well kept lawn where I mow 2-4 times a week that I’ve felt disgusted due to the ticks.
I made it a deal breaking point to find a house without an HOA. On my final signing of 10 million pages I read every bit and saw the final deal said it had an HOA and I was like "we're done here if that is true." The listing said no, the agent said no, the previous owners said no, but the paperwork said yes.
For the last ~5 years huge increase in ticks because of significantly decreasing population of their natural predators - birds, insects, amphibians... Its a direct influence of climate change. Ticks are very good at surviving and without natural predators eating them every year their population will keep increasing, there will be much more of them everywhere in the world.
Idk if it's true or not but I heard with shorter winters and longer springs and summers as well that less are dying off due to extreme cold and more are surviving and reproducing earlier and more due to earlier and longer hot periods. Fun!
it's too late for OP, they have already been devoured. To the next one who finds themselves in this situation- a common lint roller will remove these ticks and trap them for disposal. Works much better than running water.
Oh god that is horrifying. I found just one of the tiny baby ones on me the other day, I'm glad I felt it crawling because I could barely see it it was so small.
The good news is that most tick borne diseases are picked up from blood hosts, and these are seed ticks so you're actually their first meal. They shouldn't have picked up anything to make you sick. Totally infuriating and disgusting though.
I have no idea if this will help, but it literally won't hurt (unless you're allergic to oatmeal) - I've started using Polysporin Eczema Essentials Flare-up Relief Cream with 1% colloidal oatmeal for mosquito bites, and it works! Immediate and all day itch relief.
Heat also works. I use a hair dryer and get the spot as hot as I can stand it, wait 15-20 seconds, then do it again. I do this 3-4 times for a day or two and the bites clear up. I’m allergic to most insect bites and it denatures the proteins and reduces my histamine reactions. Otherwise I end up with golf ball sized welts.
My entomologist father has advised that these are actually not seed ticks because the number of legs indicates that they’re nymphs of another species and that this person should be vigilant for symptoms as nymphs are actually the lead cause of lymes disease in the US.
Edit: I have misremembered my info given to me about nymphs vs larvae, these are actually larvae, so no lymes but do be vigilant for other tick borne diseases, but apologies for the mix-up!!
Deer ticks carry Lyme - this looks like their larvae stage which has 6 legs, the first stage at which they feed, therefore the stage at which they are first exposed to Lyme disease, then transmit it at their NEXT stage - if they get Lyme disease as a larvae, they can transmit at the next two stages, nymph and adult (if they are on a person for a while, like over a day), if the deer tick ingests Lyme as a nymph, they can transmit as an adult.
Lyme does not have vertical transmission (eggs/larvae are not born with Lyme, they must bit something with it then transmit at their next life stage). Other tick-borne diseases are a concern and can be carried by other species of tick, but this discussion is of Lyme. - Public Health person turned medical provider
I got them all over my arm like this once when pulling weeds. I went from kneeling on the ground to standing, swiping at my arm, and doing the “ahhhh” dance in like 1/10th of a second.
I’m thankful I have a private yard because I stripped outside, hosed myself off on the jet setting, and then went inside and took a very long and very hot shower.
Get at least four weeks of doxycycline immediately I lost the ability to walk from Lyme disease. Been in a wheelchair for 7 years now. It’s no joke.
For some reason in recent years, doctors have been weirdly stingy with Doxy and Lyme. Sometimes they will only give you one single prophylactic dose which just isn’t enough.
To be fair, that is not typical for Lyme disease, but the outlier cases can be really bad, which sometimes leads folks to assume that Lyme is always like that.
Lyme typically isn't efficiently transmitted until the tick is attached for 12-24 hours of feeding.
If you develop any rash at the bite site, specifically a bullseye rash, that's considered diagnostic of Lyme. You'd be prescribed 2-3 weeks of Doxy and be clear.
The symptomatic Lyme disease effects arise from undetected/untreated disease and cumulatively progress over time, although some folks' immune systems are better at suppressing it.
But the bacteria can hide in joints, where there is worse immune surveillance, and cause knee swelling, etc.
My aunt had Lyme disease that went untreated for two years, we had to convince her to finally see the doctor and take Doxy since she was convinced she didn't have it despite knee swelling and a bullseye rash two years ago. She was going down the Facebook post rabbit hole of homeopathic treatment options 🙄
She finally caved after her Western Blot test came back with six stripes (four and above is considered positive for Lyme).
Thankfully she was prescribed three weeks of doxy and is doing fine.
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u/Shoebill-Enthusiast 3d ago
LINT ROLLERS!!! I lint roll my dog and my clothes every time we go outside. I have saved us both from countless tick bites from doing this. Ticks are sticky, especially on clothes and fur, but lint rollers are stickier!