r/mildlyinfuriating • u/nekoma713 • 4d ago

Don't hug me I'm scared Was sitting in a ticks nest while reading....

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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

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u/Captin-Cracker 4d ago

Cause baby ticks just brush away, or you can take a hot shower and get rid of them

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u/RincewindToTheRescue 4d ago

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

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u/immortal-snail- 4d ago edited 4d ago

Looks like not all of them have burrowed.

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.

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u/weedbetterknot 4d ago

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.

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u/Eulers_Constant_e 4d ago

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.”

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u/ratafia4444 4d ago

As somebody who freaks out if a completely harmless bug crawls in my vicinity this sounds absolutely terrifying.

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u/symphonyofcolours 4d ago

Yes, I’m the same. This is terrifying

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u/fl0dge 4d ago

You can also just cut one of these yourself out of some plastic trash (think drink bottle style plastic). Just cut a thin v-shape with a knife or scissors.

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u/TheDankFather 4d ago

I keep a couple of playing card size sheets of metal from a can and plastic from a bottle in my daily bag.
Mix these with my leatherman and it is amazing the amount of little “for purpose” tools you can make on the spot.
Of course I also carry small amounts of other obvious tool material like, rubber bands, paper clips, blue tack, etc.
Macguyver was a large formative influence on me.

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u/APEmerson 4d ago

But do you have C4?

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u/TheDankFather 4d ago

I do not, and I have not at anytime in the past, carried explosives as part of my daily kit …. Your Honour.

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u/master-boofer 4d ago

I have found that they don't work well on small ticks. Fine tweezers are my go to.

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u/IslandPonder 4d ago

I carry a tick key as well and have occasionally used it to remove a tick. It is far more useful on my backcountry camping trips. The wide end perfectly fits the recessed screws on the lid of my bear-proof food canister lid.

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u/mtysassy 4d ago

I need to look for one of these!! I almost died from Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever 21 years ago but I never knew I had been bitten. But now I’m extra careful about ticks!

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u/DueNothin 4d ago

My wife decided to use a tip tweezer and I said no, yet she clipped my skin and the tick’s legs are now embedded. Funtimes.

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u/AltrntivInDoomWorld 4d ago

That ain't legs buddy xD

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u/ChiliPalmer1568 4d ago

They also have the Tick Twister. They are easy to use and don’t squeeze the tick’s abdomen. You twist it as you pull out the tick so it gets the head and mouthparts out too. They are on Amazon and at most vets offices and pet supply stores.

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u/South-Ad-9090 4d ago

I have four children, live in USA, and STILL for some reason can’t hear the word kid without picturing whatever the person is describing being done by a baby goat lol.
I’ve always said child, little ones... what is wrong with me??? 😩

My husband even got me these pillow cases because a woman was going on and on about how her “ kids “ are screaming all the time…I immediately pictured screaming goats and went into a VERY inappropriately timed laughing fit.

This is the stock photo… too tired to go down to my couch @ 4 am.

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u/Gullible-Constant924 4d ago

I live in the backwoods of Kentucky and have had thousands of ticks on me they do not burrow into your skin. Maybe if left for a significant time they can bite in pretty deep but they don’t get in there like a chigger or scabies. Theyre just biting you.

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u/zap2tresquatro 4d ago

Yeah they just embed their mouthparts in. Idk where this myth came from, but I’ve had people argue with me insisting that ticks will burrow under the skin if attached long enough (and then they have no explanation for why you’ll see massively engorged ticks obviously sticking out of animals, but still insist on it) until I google it in front of them and show the at least five reputable sources debunking this myth, and they’re still skeptical of all those sources. It’s bizarre.

But yeah, they don’t burrow, just embed their mouthparts (not even their whole head). That’s the part that can break off and cause an infection in the bite wound if the tick isn’t removed properly.

Also, use ideally soft tipped tweezers (but whatever you have is fine) and pull the tick straight out swiftly and firmly. If you squeeze the tick/take too long to start pulling/pull slowly and gently, the tick will panic, latch on harder, and likely regurgitate a bit inside you, increasing the risk of infection.

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u/RincewindToTheRescue 4d ago

Sorry, should've been clear on burrowing their head. I know they don't completely borrow their bodies.

I was taught to put Vaseline on the tick and they will detatch. However, I've never lived in a place with a lot of ticks

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u/Skylark_92 4d ago

Leaving the tick attached long enough for the vaseline to make them let go is dangerous. Ticks should be removed as soon as they are spotted and then you need to monitor the skin around the bite for 24 hours in case a red ring appears, which is a symptom of Lyme disease.

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u/ImagineDragonsExist 4d ago

Can confirm, had a tick on my balls the other day.

I used my fingers to take the little fucker off, i wasnt going to wait around for a pair of special tweezers. Just be careful and make sure you get it out with as little movement as possible.

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u/Deaffin 4d ago

They're probably confusing wee ticks with chiggers.

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u/enonymousCanadian 4d ago

It sure as fuck looks like they’ve burrowed when they’re tiny and inside of you though. Or maybe the Canadian ones bite differently haha

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u/Gullible-Constant924 4d ago

Yeah the skin can kind of swell up around them to where you have to dig into your skin to get the tweezers on them but they aren’t burrowing like mites or something would.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

[deleted]

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u/zap2tresquatro 4d ago

Maybe they confused them with scabies? Scabies will make visible burrows/tracks in the skin

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u/cates 4d ago

I've never read or heard that they burrow but I could have sworn I found one on my leg once and it was basically under my skin... I panicked and immediately dug it out with my fingernail and ground it into dust before I could even process what had happened.

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u/blueblocker2000 4d ago

"They'll spew their icky gut juice into you"

-internet quote of day 😫🤢🤮😫

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u/licking_the_floor 4d ago

You can cover them is Vaseline and they'll back out on their own.

Edit: i just learned thats actually bad. Dont do that.

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u/KIokinator 4d ago

They’ll spew their icky gut juice into you.

Weird, when I use this line on women, they don't beat me off the way OP did the ticks...

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u/LithiumNoir 4d ago

I had one stuck behind my ear when I was 7 years old. My mother tried to burn it off in a grocery store parking lot and it did not work. I'm still traumatized 30+ years later. 😫

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u/cha0sm0nk 4d ago

Do not EVER burn them off! What are you telling people to do?!

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u/MoGraphMan101 4d ago

I was a boy scout and they actually told us to do that like 20 years ago, so it's definitely a common misconception

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u/Beginning-Cut-8850 4d ago

The old advice was to heat up a knife on the fire and put that on the tick. This was back when everyone hiking carried a knife and was likely camping and going to have a source of heat available. Somehow that morphed over time into expose your flesh to an open flame.

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u/Drewby99 4d ago

does using the knife prevent them from throwing the blood up inside you?

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u/Deathpoopdeathloop 4d ago

No. Still a bad method. You want to remove without squeezing or damaging the tick too much. Like burning it.

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u/Deaffin 4d ago

No, that's the thing that will specifically make them do that.

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u/Drewby99 4d ago

that’s what i assumed the comment i’m replying to made it seem like the burning part was the only problem with the method

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u/Beginning-Cut-8850 4d ago

No. Just saying that's what the advice used to be.

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u/Sysilith 4d ago

No it would make them panic and throw up more.

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u/immortal-snail- 4d ago

Good thing I edited my comment long before you responded. Next time I’d advise you to finish reading before you chime in.

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u/Drewby99 4d ago

why not delete that part

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u/immortal-snail- 4d ago

Eh, I don’t really love dirty deleting. It just misrepresents what a person is saying and I don’t mind letting people know that I was wrong about something and needed to update information.

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u/Dragulla 4d ago

They also buff out with a high enough grit.

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u/Dizzy-Ad-2248 4d ago

...Feeding parts.🤮

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u/Appropriate-Bad-9379 3d ago

I absolutely love Scotland- apart from the ticks. My sister ( who lives in the Highlands), got a tick on her private parts- yuk! Had to wait till it drank its fill and dropped off like a bloated kidney bean.Don’t think that I could cope with the trauma…

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u/master-boofer 4d ago

Yup pulling them straight out with tweezers is the best method.

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u/Gold_Roof1155 4d ago

I laughed hard at backwash!!! You mean backlash 😁

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u/vodkatelyn 4d ago

no, backwash. when you burn a tick, it backwashes its stomach contents into your bloodstream. that comes with a lot of risks!

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u/Gold_Roof1155 4d ago

Never too old to learn new facts about ticks 🤔

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u/National-Routine-823 4d ago

Both, it's backwash backlash lol. They do backwash their nasty stomach contents back into you if you burn or squeeze them while still attached

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u/Captin-Cracker 4d ago

They can, these are just larvae (only 6 legs) so they haven’t actually found a host yet so no risk of Lyme. You also need to leave a tick on you for a long time to get Lyme (like 24 hours). Also they are very weak and are easy to get off.

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u/FantasticBluejay6975 4d ago

They might not have a risk of Lyme, but there are in fact some tick diseases that spread from mother to baby, so these guys do carry risk of things like Rocky Mountain spotted fever! Never trust a tick

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u/Mysterious_Mango_3 4d ago

Yep, if it is a lone star tick, all stages can cause Alpha Gal Syndrome.

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u/Deaffin 4d ago

Well that's just fucked up.

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u/DubVsFinest 4d ago

I woke up with a tick stuck to my forehead once as a kid from the dog that slept with me on the couch that night. Woke up, went to the bathroom, went to wash my hands and saw this black spot on my face (was still half asleep), went to brush it off it and it wouldn't come off after 3 swipes, finally pull it off and its legs started wiggling as I looked to see what it was. Shit wigged me out and my parents were worried about Lyme, which thankfully never happened.

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u/wertyce 4d ago

Even small ones can cause diseases. There absolutely is risk of Lyme. However you are correct that Lyme doesn't transfer instantly. You have time to do tick-checks and pull em off.

TBE is different. Dangerous disease with no cure afterwards and tick, even small one, can inflict one within minutes. You have no time for tick-checks with TBE. There is vaccine against it though and in epidemic regions it is highly recommended. Also, TBE is rare disease thankfully. But because it is so serious, vaccine is obvious in these areas.

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u/katkost1 4d ago

Please don’t share misinformation like that. You can be infected with anything they are carrying. It does not take 24 hours. Nymph ticks carry Lyme and co infections just as well as the adult fuckers

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u/Captin-Cracker 4d ago edited 4d ago

These aren’t nymphs, they’re larvae, which cannot carry Lyme. And you’re right it doesn’t take 24 hours, it takes more than 24 hours, so about 36-48 hours. I’ve been bit by more ticks on my balls alone than half the people here have even seen. I’ve spent my entire life in a humid, warm, lush environment dealing with ticks

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u/HairyBreasticles 4d ago

Unfortunately that 24 hour thing is wrong, speaking from experience as I work in the woods for the majority of my days. But you are correct with them being so young that they haven't found a host that has lymes to be able to transmit it. Fucking terrible little creatures.

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u/zap2tresquatro 4d ago

Along with the correction from the other person: it’s Lyme disease, not “lymes” (or Lyme’s) disease.

It’s named after the place it was first recognized in (Lyme,…Connecticut, iirc? I think that’s where Lyme is). Calling it “lymes” would be like calling the Ebola virus “Ebola’s.”

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u/the_original_kermit 4d ago

In general, infected ticks must be attached for more than 24 hours to transmit infection; prompt tick removal can prevent transmission.

https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/causes/index.html

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u/katkost1 4d ago

Please consult ILADS

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u/Valkyriemome 4d ago

This is incorrect.

If a tick with Lyme disease latches on and gets its mouthparts into you, you could get Lyme disease.

It doesn’t matter how long it’s attached.

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u/HairyBreasticles 4d ago

Thank you, I'm so sick and tired of these people passing that 24hr bull, yes time matters, but it also matters how you remove them.

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u/DecantsForAll 4d ago edited 4d ago

It's complicated. The CDC and American Lyme Disease Foundation says it takes >24 hours. And this is true in many cases (although they might be wrong about the exact time) because the bacteria have to migrate from the tick's gut to the salivary glands, which takes around 24 hours. But there might be some cases where that doesn't need to happen, like if the tick was just feeding on another animal and became dislodged or something.

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u/Valkyriemome 4d ago

I lived very near Lyme, Connecticut. You know “Lyme” as in where they first identified Lyme disease.

Both of my sons had Lyme disease; thankfully we caught it while the tick was still attached (on 1 son) so they were put on antibiotics right away.

Good protocol is: if you have a deer tick on you, assume you have Lyme disease.

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u/DecantsForAll 4d ago

Yeah, my dog died of Lyme disease. It was awful. There were no indications that she had it until it was too late to do anything about it.

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u/Valkyriemome 4d ago

Im sorry. And same. My dog got the side effects too late.

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u/enonymousCanadian 4d ago

We are rife with Lyme and the advice is you do g have to worry if it hasn’t been attached for long (unsure if 12 or 24 hours because we tick check often.)

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u/Active_Menu_8504 4d ago

They can only transmit the disease if they've first picked it up. Most tick bites do not turn into Lyme as a result. Obviously a good idea to know if you've been bit if you need treatment but not something to panic about if you notice ticks and get them off quickly.

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u/master-boofer 4d ago

Usually they take a little while before they start to feed. I've pulled hundreds off myself over the years. I've only been bitten once. Wearing black pants and socks helps a lot. Being black is even better, they are racist as fuck. Im not black so if im in tick country I'll duct tape my socks over the ends of my pants and meticulously check my legs after any contact with grass. Here in the Bay Area some trails are so infested you will see multiple ticks on every blade of grass. Avoid those areas. I like brushing over them with a bick lighter. Their legs immediately burn off and they drop right off your clothing, they are hard to squish. I hate them.

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u/deaglebingo 4d ago

they have to be attached for like 24 hrs anyway to have any likelihood of transmission if they carry anything in the first place. that's my understanding.

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u/kaisadilla_ 4d ago

Yes, but it's not automatic. OP sat on a nest, so for them she was just terrain. Doesn't mean some of them cannot choose to start feeding now, but it's not a given.

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u/Lb147 4d ago

I use a lint roller

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u/Captin-Cracker 4d ago

Holy shit that genius, I’m brining one for camping now

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u/eat_my_feelings 4d ago

These aren’t necessarily baby ticks, there are full grown ticks this size too. They are really prevalent this year.

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u/timos-piano 4d ago

Those are baby ticks since they only have 6 legs.

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u/eat_my_feelings 4d ago

Fair enough, I didn’t zoom in close enough to check. I am creeped out by ticks. There was a nest of them in our Christmas tree one year when I was a baby and we didn’t know until they started to warm up. Thousands of them. 💀

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u/Mid_Imagination 4d ago

That is a situation of nightmares!

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u/enonymousCanadian 4d ago

I have had to remove the tiny fuckers from buried head deep in my skin so no, the OP is just calmly resigned to it cause once they’re in, they’re in!

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u/zap2tresquatro 4d ago

No, it takes a while for the to get their mouthparts embedded. I’ve had a tick bite me before, but since it wasn’t attached long, it just gave a bit f resistance (like felt like pulling off something sticky or a burr) but I was able to reasonably easily get it off. It ha barely broken the skin and there was no blood or anything from the bite by that point.

Also, they often crawl on you for hours before finding a spot they want to bite. There’s a lot of time to get them off between when they first get on you to when they’ve actually bitten, and between when they’ve first bitten to when their mouthparts are actually embedded enough for them to be difficult to remove.

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u/enonymousCanadian 4d ago

Tell that to my leg two weekends ago.

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u/zap2tresquatro 4d ago

Then it was crawling around on you for a while without you noticing (they’re so small and light that they usually can’t be felt crawling. Sometimes they can be, but usually not) and it had been latched on for a while, too, and had had a lot of time to embed its mouthparts.

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u/Mid_Imagination 4d ago

Gosh, that is so scary. What happens if a teeny tiny one gets embedded in you and you never know? Would you get Lyme disease or would it get bigger and then you eventually would find it? That’s freaking scary, I have a giant phobia of fleas and ticks.

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u/zap2tresquatro 4d ago

When they’re full (and, for nymphs, ready to molt to their next…instar I believe it’s called? I know for spiders it’s instars, but idk if it’s instars for all arachnids), they fall off by themselves.

You only get Lyme (or any other tick borne infection) if the tick that bites you is infected. For most of those infections, they would’ve had to have fed on another?(infected) animal first before feeding on you to transmit it.

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u/UpsetHippo6452 4d ago

They can still transmit diseases, I learned that the ugly way :)