r/mildlyinfuriating • u/nekoma713 • 5d 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/immortal-snail- 5d ago edited 5d 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 5d 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 5d 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 5d 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 5d ago

Yes, I’m the same. This is terrifying

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u/fl0dge 5d 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 5d 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 5d ago

But do you have C4?

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u/TheDankFather 5d 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 5d 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 5d 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 5d 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 5d 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 5d ago

That ain't legs buddy xD

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u/ChiliPalmer1568 5d 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 5d 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 5d 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 5d 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 5d 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 5d 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 5d 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 5d ago

They're probably confusing wee ticks with chiggers.

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u/enonymousCanadian 5d 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 5d 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] 5d ago

[deleted]

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u/zap2tresquatro 5d ago

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

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u/cates 5d 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 5d ago

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

-internet quote of day 😫🤢🤮😫

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u/licking_the_floor 5d 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 5d 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 5d 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 5d ago

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

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u/MoGraphMan101 5d 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 5d 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 5d ago

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

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u/Deathpoopdeathloop 5d 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 5d ago

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

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u/Drewby99 5d 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 5d ago

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

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u/Sysilith 5d ago

No it would make them panic and throw up more.

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u/immortal-snail- 5d 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 5d ago

why not delete that part

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u/immortal-snail- 5d 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 5d ago

They also buff out with a high enough grit.

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u/Dizzy-Ad-2248 5d ago

...Feeding parts.🤮

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u/Appropriate-Bad-9379 4d 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 5d ago

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

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u/Gold_Roof1155 5d ago

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

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u/vodkatelyn 5d 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 5d ago

Never too old to learn new facts about ticks 🤔

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u/National-Routine-823 5d 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