This topic contains 22 replies, has 16 voices, and was last updated by 
Astro_D 18 years, 6 months ago.
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my dogs vet told me how to remove ticks. grab it gently and give a quarter turn counter-clockwise. i had to use a kleenex cuz i really hate those things, but the quarter turn to the left did the trick and the ugly thing came right out. course it was pretty close to dead already cuz shes on frontline.
i had a tick crawling on my back last saturday during a play. tickle tickle. finally grabbed it and threw it on the floor. then for the rest of the play i kept feeling things crawling up my legs. but ya gotta stick them in alcohol to kill them and i just didn’t have any with me. i figure i picked it up in the car from our mornings caching. can’t wait till they’re mostly gone for the year.You do not need alcohol… we just carry regular old clear tape and wrap them up in it… that way they can suffer a long painful death… not uncommon to see half a dozen or more taped to my hiking stick, have a roll of tape attatched to my stick and always keep a roll in the vehicle. Great way to grab them off your clothes too.
TEI found my handy Leatherman multi tool works great. Just pick them off with the pliers and a quick squeeze and no more Tick. Squishes the life right out of them.
Never heard of the 1/4 turn counter clockwise trick. I wonder if the other side of the world has left handed Ticks?? Would I have to turn it clockwise then? Sorry couldn’t resist. I wonder why counter clockwise? Just curious.
I had a vet also tell me that if you get a large wood tick you can turn it counter-clockwise because if you look at them under a microscope their head is screw shaped. Not sure if this is true, but it always worked for my dog years ago.
But for small deer ticks is does not work at all. I have found that small tweezers that in Swiss army knifes work great. They have a wide flat tip, not pointed with serrations. To get these out, just grab on hard at the skin and pull until the skin rips. Do not be timid, get it on the first try. But do no grab so hard that it puts pressure on the tick and squishes back into you (very bad). I have had about 90% success with this method.
This week I am on my pretty green pills because Tuesday night I noticed a nice bulls-eye on my leg. I was out camping this weekend and must have gotten a nymph because I checked myself each night and it was in a visible area. I even found a nymph on my thumb during the campout, showed it to all the other Boy Scouts, small and fast (then squish!!!). I just checked the map from a previous post and I was in a red tick county.
At the WGA Campout I sprayed all of our clothing with the tick spray and did not have any. This time I did not….. Heading out to buy several more cans now.
– Michael
As luck would have it, I take one doxycycline every day and I will for the rest of my life. I take it for an eye condition common among divers and welders. I’ve never dove and the last time I welded anything was in the 8th grade. I’ve always got a supply of doxycycline at home so give me a holler if you are in a pinch.
Does this make me immune to Lymes or would I need to take a triple dose if I suspected Lymes?
Daily doxycycline makes it extremely unlikely that you would ever get Lyme disease. Antibiotic resistance can develop very rapidly if people take only occasional dosages of doxycycline. However, since mice and deer are rarely exposed to antibiotics, new Lyme infections are almost universally susceptible to doxycycline.
However, please never share antibiotics. There are some very good reasons that these drugs are not available over the counter.
Another nitpicking clarification – there is no “S” in Lyme disease.
Thanks Doc. To add the ‘S’ or not to add the ‘S’? That was the question I kept asking myself. Once again, I chose incorrectly. Me spel badley. You smart, me dumb.
How do you spell blepheritis? I think my spelling is barely phonetic.
OK, I will only share my Doxy if I’m stranded with a potentially infected cacher, on a remote island, with no chance of rescue. Whose up for getting stranded on an remote island in the boundary waters with me?
Lyme resistance. Hummmm….at least I got that going for me. Does that make me some kind of tick fighting super hero? Do I have any other super powers related to Doxy that I should know about?
What are you doing up so early? I though Doctors slept until 10am and knocked off at 2:00 pm on Fridays.
@Trekkin’ and Birdin’ wrote:
He’s got the symptoms, for sure, minus the rash. He has had these fever spikes for three days now, breaks out in a sweat, then gets chills. Joints ache, headache (but not screaming like in meningitis). He thought he was feeling better this afternoon, but crashed in the evening again. Caching tomorrow seems doubtful at this point.
Although he felt the doctor was very thorough, it was not our own family physician, who is well aware of our tendency to be out in the brush. When our younger son was a toddler, we were pretty sure he had Lyme, and called to bring him in. The nurse wouldn’t let us, she figured it was chicken pox. No way, if you’d seen this rash, you’d know that wasn’t it!
Anyway, the doctor had overheard the conversation, asked who’d called, and called us right back to bring him in. Highest titer in LaCrosse County up to that point, poor kiddo. So far, I’m the only family member who hasn’t been treated for it. I am always concerned because I have fibromyalgia, which means a normal state of aches and pains. I don’t even pay much attention to them anymore, because it’s just part of me. It’s caused me to be momentarily tricked when I had influenza, so it could do the same for lyme. Actually, my diagnosis came by default when I had gone in many years ago because I thought I had lyme. They tested for that and everything else along those lines, all of which came back negative. I had the pressure points for fibro as well.
It’s too bad we aren’t all 20 anymore, huh? 🙄
Ach! Sounds like the same symptoms I’ve been dealing with since my tick bite at the camp out. I had the added joy of nausea and muscle weakness. But I never got a rash. So I didn’t think it was a big deal and never went to the doctor. Hmm…maybe I should have?
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