Tick-o- Rama!

[quote] Have you ever tried to look closely at something on the bottom of your knee? You can’t. Your face can’t get there.

If it could, you wouldn't be bothering with your knee.

I had Lyme disease about 10 years ago. I was treated for it & had no sequelae.I never saw the tick that but me. I just saw the bullseye rash behind my knee. I got the tick walking in a field. Back then we didn’t have deer in our yards. But then the town allowed the farmers to put up 10-12 ft deer fences around their fields. Now we have deer in our yards all winter.

[quote] the tick that but me

Bit me.

I'm in N. Georgia helping a friend recovering from illness. I've found two deer ticks crawling on me in a span of six days. They are terrible here. And the poor deer are so plentiful, they are literally starving to death.

Call a tick service, Tick Ranger is the one I've used, Natural Lawn of America is another. They come a few times a year, and spray natural pet healthy solutions to kill the larvae from the last season, to kill ticks on the height of tick season and another treatment in the fall. Leaves your yard smelling like cedar, but they do work.

Sweet pea, take a kitchen match, light and blow it out. Immediately place it on the the ticks ass. It will release it's hold on you and YANK.

Girl, ticks ain't nothing down South.

“Natural” pesticide kills all insects, not just ticks. Bees, butterflies (caterpillars), lightning bug larvae, ants - everything. I like having bugs for toads to eat in my garden & for hummingbirds.

And “natural” doesn’t mean it isn’t poison. Arsenic is all-natural. Belladonna, digitalis, asbestos, cyanic glycosides, uranium, radon. As for pest companies telling you their pesticides are pet & child friendly — suuuure they are. Just like the air was fine to breathe at Ground Zero and cigarettes were fine according to tobacco companies.

Are you rolling around on the ground or working your way through a brush pile?

[quote] I’m in the northeast

Another reason for quaranting people who travel from the Northeast. Don’t bring your ticks and bedbugs to other parts of the country.

It's because of the warmer winters. It's not going to get any better anytime soon. A woman here in New England just reported her dog picked up 6 ticks in a quarter mile walk. Get some more Guinea Fowl, some chickens, and some possums (which are harmless and make good pets).

My husband and I went to a super-fancy resort in northern Wisconsin (yes, they exist)

After our first walk in the woods, we came back COVERED in ticks. My husband found 11 of ‘em on him.

(We stuck to the lake after that.)

Opinions on using diatomaceous earth for tick control without damaging beneficial or desirable insects. I only find conflicting info.

[quote] Opinions on using diatomaceous earth for tick control without damaging beneficial or desirable insects

It kills beneficial/desirable insects. Not an opinion - it’s true & common sense will tell you so. Think of how it kills insects. It cuts them. It dries them out. They breathe it in & it destroys their respiratory system as well as their the rest of their bodies.

I like birds. It makes me so less depressed when the birds come back in spring. They nest, have young & feed then insects. I look out in my backyard & see tons of robins, r g blackbirds, grackles on the ground in my backyard picking up insects and digging up worms. My neighbors all put pesticides on their lawns. There are no birds in their backyards. Their backyards are dead & empty. Mine is full of life.

Sorry folks. Killing ticks won't solve the problem. Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that causes Lyme Disease (and I have had it) survives in numerous animal reservoirs, deer mice, shrews, squirrels, rabbits and many other little critters.

You would have to kill every small mammal in a mile radius to be safe from Borrelia.

Use a DEET containing insecticide and wear clothing treated with insecticide.

[quote]It kills beneficial/desirable insects. Not an opinion - it’s true & common sense will tell you so. Think of how it kills insects. It cuts them. It dries them out. They breathe it in & it destroys their respiratory system as well as their the rest of their bodies.

But, those insects are not as small as the ticks so the effects would not be the same.

If the anti chemical brigade is against yard treatment based on Cedar oil, carry a lint roller when outside, with light colored long sleeves, makes it easier to just roll yourself every half hour or so. Its what entomologists use up here.

I live in the NE, the Cape, and I had Terminix come and spray for ticks and mosquitos. I have five thousand mosquito bites but haven't seen one tick on me or my dog and we're both in the yard all day.

[quote] But, those insects are not as small as the ticks so the effects would not be the same

Diatomaceous earth can destroy your lungs & look how big you are.

If you don’t believe me, go get a duster & dust your house & attic with DE & don’t use protective gear. Get back to me in a few years.

I took these from various pest control company sites. Btw, you cant say “exterminator” anymore. Now it’s “pest control professional” aka “PCP.”

Diatomaceous earth is one of the beneficial home remedies to get rid of carpenter bees infestation.

Diatomaceous Earth dust kills insects by dehydration/ingestion. Eradicates bedbugs, cockroaches, ants, fleas, silverfish, millipedes, centipedes, earwigs, caterpillars, flies, moths & more

Sprinkling diatomaceous earth on the wasp nest helps in killing them by drying them out. Wasps definitely will die from DE exposure and contact.

Like borax, yellow jackets and nearly all other insects, find diatomaceous earth toxic.

Food grade diatomaceous earth is often recommended as an environmentally friendly form of pest control, but it isn't recommended for use in areas/on plants frequented by beneficial insects like butterflies and their larvae. It cuts and dries out soft-bodied insects like caterpillars.

——-

So it pretty much kills all insects.

Had a poppy seed bagel for breakfast, took a shower & when I was putting on lotion I saw a poppy seed on my leg. Tried to brush it off - nah. Poppy seed was attached to my leg. Just the head was attached though - it was kind of standing perpendicular to my leg. Sooooo tiny! I always read “deer ticks are the size of poppy seeds.”

Yup.

As others have said, warmer winters lead to more ticks.

This was a very mild winter, so the ticks are terrible. A friend went hiking here in Jersey and was covered in them.

I get a horrible reaction to tick bites! They itch and never really heals. Some other mysterious bugs too.

Selsun Blue helps.

OP if your tick bite looked like it had a sunburn around it, check for lyme disease. A red bullseye is a common symptom.

Ticks aren't as common down south r6.

In the Northeast and upper midwest they get really bad.

R122, once I took out a tick from behind my knee and for a year I had a recurring hive in that spot. Nowhere else. Just there. I finally had my dr cut it out.

We never had a problem with ticks when we sprayed with DDT.

Oh R24, you have no clue. Thanks for playing.

But here are several maps from the CDC on tick regions and notice how Florida is included in four of them. We do have more than beaches. I lived in the wooded scrub area. across the street from a park and wooded area.

Stop gardening nude.

The Internet is so often wrong and people just mindlessly repeat wrong stuff. The first time I found a lone star tick on me in the 1990s I looked online & every website mentioning lone star tick assured me that these ticks with white spots were only found down south. I’m in the northeast.

I was informed the tick only caused STARI — southern tick associated rash illness, a perfectly harmless infection. It’s just a rash, it’s nothing like Lyme disease, it’s fine. Turns out it’s not fine, it can make one quite ill. And it doesn’t just cause STARI, it causes ehrlichiosis and tularemia. And in the Midwest it can cause something called heartland virus.

I think it took 5 years before any “experts” on the Internet allowed that well...yeah, this tick is almost everywhere.

Our dog got a tick on the corner of her eye.

Fleas are terrible this year too.

I wonder how ticks decide where to attach themselves? Years ago when I had Lyme disease the dr told me that women seemed to get tick bites behind the knee while men tended to get them in the shoulder.

I’ve taken attached ticks off my stomach, my neck, my shoulder, the bottom of my knee, the side of my calf.

fleas are horrible. they are becoming immune to the flea meds. bought the wrong kind and fleas still everywhere. bought borax. worked immediately.

pet armour seems to be the only one that works now.

borax on the carpet.

Two ticks in a week!

Shit. Growing up in the Ozarks we'd be doing tick checks five times a day and still pulling the fuckers off at night. THOUSANDS crawling. Seed ticks, dog ticks, deer ticks, nasty bloated ticks up a kid's ear and hanging off the hounds like grotesque grapes when they'd turn up from a three-day escape in the woods.

Two ticks. Shit. A day like that was called a rare present from the Lord.

And don't get me started on mosquitoes, leeches, botflies, red wasps, fire ants, nettle patches, sand flies, deer flies, scorpions, black widows and brown recluses, being shot at when my uncle had a feud with the neighbors, being chased by bulls and being chased and beat up by the neighbor kid who wanted to fuck me but I didn't trust his mouth to keep It quiet.

Two ticks. Christ.

It was 3 ticks. Found another on my leg.

I’ve been dealing with Lyme disease and co-infections from a tick for 15 years. I have take warehouse amounts of various antibiotics. I am still dealing with it. It’s serious shit. Save the tick if you’re able to, that can be easier to test than figuring out what you have been infected with. If you get the bullseye rash (not everyone does) you have Lyme. You may have Lyme if you didn’t get the rash. Right now I’m being treated with disulfiram which is Antabuse, which supposedly kills Lyme in a lab setting. It’s somewhat experimental. Lyme is not a joke, neither are the coinfections. Take it very seriously guys. It’s fucking he’ll and has ruined by existence.

...sorry for the misspellings, my phone thinks it knows what I want to say....^^

I’ve already had Lyme & babesiosis. I know the symptoms.

Lyme seems like COVID - I have heard absolute horror stories of entire lives destroyed physically and mentally. Others who say they have had it and no big deal. I know a girl who was a stellar high school student started having major issues around 15-16. By senior year she had to take classes at home and couldn’t get out of bed for days.

The science seems so medieval - diagnosis and treatment are both so convoluted. And the symptoms are all over the place. It scares me because I have seen some cases of lifelong debilitation with heavy doses of mental illness. Yet doctors seem to just stay “take a ton of antibiotics for years”. Very sketchy - the whole thing.

They do a test for antibodies to the rickettsia that causes Lyme disease. That’s how most every blood test for an infectious disease is. They look at the antibodies. A large number of IgM immunoglobins mean you have active disease. A large number of IgG means you had the disease it it’s no longer active, or you are recovering.

That’s how they test for infectious diseases.

To develop a blood test for a disease, scientists find the causative agent and inject it into lab animals so they will come down with the disease. The lab animal comes down with the disease, then develops antibodies to that specific disease. The scientists then look at the antibodies for that specific disease microscopically & identify them. Now they can identify antibodies to that disease. Now they can take human blood and look for antibodies to that disease. If you have IgM, you have active disease. If you have IgGM you either had the disease and recovered from it or you are in the process of recovering from it.

Lyme has an ELISA test (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay)

But not everyone is the same & every test doesn’t have the same specificity & sensitivity

.

Took a deer tick off me when I woke up. Luckily, deer ticks make me itch when they bite me - like mosquito bites. So I can find them when I scratch the bite & feel something there that isn’t skin.

They always latch on to places that are so difficult to see/remove them.

My hand to god, I have periodically found ticks in my Manhattan high-rise. Found one ON me a few WINTERS ago.

I’m guessing people’s dogs bring them back and they get in here somehow?