Tick Season?

[firefighterjake]

Never saw a single tick until about two years ago . . . they're not really all that common where I live . . . but travel south about an hour and they can get pretty thick. I'm hoping for a particularly cold winter to show those ticks that they do not belong this far north in Maine.

 

[muncybob]

OK, I have to post this......just as more than 1 cord is cords(not 4 cord...it's 4 cords) the opposite is true of this disease, it's only Lyme disease....no plural!

I know it won't change anything since I've been preaching this to my wife for years, but I do feel better now!

 

[basswidow]

I fish alot and scrounge wood alot. I'm always into ticks. Picked one off me yesterday and it was in good. No bulls eye. Thought it was a skin tag, little sucker didn't want to let go.

So how does one know if they have Lyme? My son complains all the time that his legs hurt.

The only aches I have are age and work related.

 

[charly]

I fish alot and scrounge wood alot. I'm always into ticks. Picked one off me yesterday and it was in good. No bulls eye. Thought it was a skin tag, little sucker didn't want to let go.

So how does one know if they have Lyme? My son complains all the time that his legs hurt.

The only aches I have are age and work related.

Blood test.

 

[Thistle]

Normally see quite a few in warmer months.Except for a 2 week break in July-August when we had that 105-117 heat index,I've worked in the woods rain or shine 1 day a week since mid April.Finally almost done,1 large Red Oak,1 medium Bur Oak & 1 medium White Elm snag left to drop,may just wait until next Spring now.

Only seen 4 ticks on me all year,thinking the record rains from April-early June then the very hot & dry July through September killed a bunch off.

 

[4fire]

I got one on me while shed hunting last spring that required an ER visit to remove. That sucker had himself deep into the back of my shoulder where I couldn't see him. After finding that one I checked the dog and pulled 3 out of her. NASTY!

 

[littlalex]

Lots of the nasty buggers here lately. Some deer ticks but mostly the good 'ol big and easy to find ones. They get on our two Aussie Shepherds. We us a commonly available (I believe) little plastic orange spoony thing with a slit on the end that works pretty well. Costs about $5.

Weird thing is, my wife is a gentle and kind soul, except when it comes to ticks.

She tortures, cuts up with a knife and finally immolates them (just to be sure - as if they were zombies). When she's at it I always get confused as to who it is I'm watching...weird.

Littlalex

P.S. - JamiePNW78. Excuse my ignorance. What's shed hunting?

 

[Willman]

What’s shed hunting?

Antlers

 

[littlalex]

Gotcha' - thanks.

Littlalex

 

[4fire]

What’s shed hunting?

Antlers

Yup.

(broken image removed)

 

[lctatlp]

How did this thread get from ticks to antlers?

 

[weatherguy]

I got one on me while shed hunting last spring that required an ER visit to remove. That sucker had himself deep into the back of my shoulder where I couldn't see him. After finding that one I checked the dog and pulled 3 out of her. NASTY!

I thought you were gonna say you had one in another part of your anatomy :cheese:

I use an OTOM tick puller. 2 sizes are in a pack. They look like minature cat paw nail pullers. Simply slide under the tick, start slowly turning with slight up pressure and the whole tick comes right out. Gets the head and all everytime. http://WWW.OTOM.COM.

thanks for the link, I just ordered one, Ive pulled well over 100 ticks off one of my cats this year, this tool will come in handy. Only had a couple on me so far.

 

[Battenkiller]

What’s shed hunting?

Antlers

Ah... I thought it was like house hunting, only smaller.

 

[ValentineHill]

Saturday I did a good couple of hours of splitting, then last night I found one of those buggers deep into my armpit, having a great ol' time. Damn thing took 10 minutes to get fully out!

Thankfully it was a dog tick, but still - when is it going to get properly cold around here? Forecast says 66 today!

 

[jashcroft]

I haven't found any on me yet this fall, but I harvested a buck last thursday and found about a dozen on the deer. Hate those little buggers!

 

[firefighterjake]

Nix my last comment . . . talking to a neighbor and firefighter the other night and he said while out walking in his wood lot he found three ticks on him afterwards . . . guess the ticks are marching northwards.

 

[gpcollen1]

Ticks are always clinging on well into a few frosts and then they make themselves scarce. The dogs a cats are still covered with them...

 

[ValentineHill]

Here's the ultimate proof of the relevance of this post. I was writing on the forums a minute ago when guess what crawled OUT OF THE KEYBOARD.

Yup, a tick.

 

[Boom Stick]

Just had a tick embedded in me a couple of weeks ago. Doctor gave me two doxycyclene pills to take at one time. I called three days later and asked for a two week cycle of amoxicillin which I am taking now. Lyme disease is no joke and I do not want it.

 

[bears12th]

alright, I have done a little reading on this online, but what are the experiences of you pros and what is the appropriate course of action if a deer tick is found on you. Im in the Coast Guard and am transplanted from California where I never learned of Lyme disease. I was down in Washington DC for work the other day and my wife called frantic because she found a tick on my almost 3 year old's neck (back of his neck - right below hairline, slightly to the right of spine). She got home and removed it using tweezers and there is no parts (visible to my eye at lease) left in my kid and we have the whole tick in a ziploc bag. This was a few days ago and I am curious - do I need to do anything or just watch and see if where the bite was the ring becomes apparent. Do I take my kid to the local Navy Base for tests or do I find somewhere to test this dead tick that we have in a ziploc bag? I am not 100 percent sure it is a deer tick - I think it is, sure is small enough.

Any advice is appreciated. Oh, and we still have these guys going strong here on the L.I. Sound of CT. I hate these guys and live, no kidding, 12 minutes from, yes, LYME, CT. Ugh. Ha.

Thanks.

 

[Willman]

I had a deer tick on me a couple of weeks ago and went to the docs office. Took the tick with me and he said they no longer test them. Gave me a scrip for the doxy one dose and have a nice day. Said to keep a look out for any rashes anywhere on my body and flu like symptoms. So fa nothing. Lyme is not something you want to go thru from what I hear.
I would get my little one to the docs asap.
Will

 

[Battenkiller]

alright, I have done a little reading on this online, but what are the experiences of you pros and what is the appropriate course of action if a deer tick is found on you. Im in the Coast Guard and am transplanted from California where I never learned of Lyme disease. I was down in Washington DC for work the other day and my wife called frantic because she found a tick on my almost 3 year old's neck (back of his neck - right below hairline, slightly to the right of spine). She got home and removed it using tweezers and there is no parts (visible to my eye at lease) left in my kid and we have the whole tick in a ziploc bag. This was a few days ago and I am curious - do I need to do anything or just watch and see if where the bite was the ring becomes apparent. Do I take my kid to the local Navy Base for tests or do I find somewhere to test this dead tick that we have in a ziploc bag? I am not 100 percent sure it is a deer tick - I think it is, sure is small enough.

Any advice is appreciated. Oh, and we still have these guys going strong here on the L.I. Sound of CT. I hate these guys and live, no kidding, 12 minutes from, yes, LYME, CT. Ugh. Ha.

Thanks.

I've been through this disease this year, and frankly, it scares the chit out of me. I've had tons of antibiotics and I still don't think I'm "cured". I now am starting to think I have the chronic version of the disease, which is supposed to affect about 20-30% of the folks who get it. There is no known cure for chronic Lyme. Long-term antibiotics have been shown to be largely ineffective in treating it, and may cause other health problems. You wait it out and hope the symptoms diminish in time.


The more you research Lyme, the worse you find it is. If you have Netflix instant play, give this one a watch. It'll have you up all night long feeling imaginary ticks crawling on you:


(broken link removed to http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Under_Our_Skin/70118373?trkid=496624)


I have no idea why this disease is being brushed so thoroughly under the rug by the medical community. OK... I really do have an idea why, but I am incredulous that such greed and corruption exists at the highest levels of public safety. Lyme is THE emerging disease of our times. Untreated Lyme disease is devastating in almost all cases, even fatal in some. The CDC in Atlanta estimates that there are 10-15 times as many unreported cases as there are reported ones. There were twice as many probable case in 2010 than just four years before in 2006. So far, the CDC has recorded almost half a million confirmed cases since the first disease cluster was discovered in Old Lyme, CT. (and of course, this disease was present in the L.I. Sound area - there are 100 year-old reports of a syndrome called "Montauk Knee" - for a very long time).

Since the CDC uses these figures primarily for surveillance reasons, their acceptance criteria are very stringent so as to keep consistent with the tracking criteria used since the disease was first discovered. You basically have to have ALL of the symptoms, along with positive ELISA and Western blots tests (and there are numerous false negatives here, including in my own case) to make it into the CDC database. However, if the true incidence of Lyme is as high as 15 times higher than the reported cases, that would mean that there have been about 7.5 million cases since 1975. In the general endemic areas, there are only about 50 million people. That means that it is possible, or perhaps even likely, that up to 15% of the population in the endemic areas has been exposed to Lyme. That is a staggering figure, especially if you add in the fact that most of these cases would be in kids who have their curious little faces in the bushes and tall grass all summer long... and statistically speaking, over 90% of these kids have never been treated for Lyme.


Can you take a clear closeup photo of the critter and post it here? I can ID it if the photo is clear enough. If it was a deer tick found on the child, I'd get treatment ASAP. Particularly in your highly-endemic area. An ounce of prevention is worth 30 pounds of your child's health.


Read this from the CDC:


http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/43/9/1089.full

Antibiotics recommended for children are amoxicillin (50 mg/kg per day in 3 divided doses [maximum of 500 mg per dose]), cefuroxime axetil (30 mg/kg per day in 2 divided doses [maximum of 500 mg per dose]), or, if the patient is ⩾8 years of age, doxycycline (4 mg/kg per day in 2 divided doses [maximum of 100 mg per dose])

Good luck, hope everything works out fine for your kid.

 

[4fire]

One of the things I was told when I had a tick removed in the ER, was that Lyme isn't present in this part of the state. I hope that's true!
The vet my family takes their dogs too said he got some kind of bulletin last spring about the increase in ticks around here. Ick!

 

[bears12th]

Can you take a clear closeup photo of the critter and post it here? I can ID it if the photo is clear enough. If it was a deer tick found on the child, I'd get treatment ASAP. Particularly in your highly-endemic area. An ounce of prevention is worth 30 pounds of your child's health.

Hope this works. Thanks. For reference the dime is there for size purposes. This is the best I could do and I hope it's good enough.

Thanks again.

 

[Battenkiller]

That's a deer tick alright, but it seems kind of small for an adult female. Is it right side up? If so, it lacks the red posterior of the female. Best I can tell that's an adult male deer tick. The males are smaller than the females and are all brown. Only the adult females feed and engorge. The males will attach but can't infect you.

Here's a couple photos - one with a scale (in millimeters) to compare size, the other was stuck in me a couple weeks ago. The one that nailed me is a female.