Too Many Ticks: Lyme Disease Alert

This is the worst season for ticks I can ever remember. They are a part of life here in the country that you just learn to deal with. But this year they are thick!

We noticed that they like moisture and are more numerous in years with a wet spring. This year has been very wet and the ticks are everywhere.

My hubby and I took a walk the other night and when I came home I had over 25 tiny ticks crawling around my ankles. Yuck!

The larger ticks, Lone Star and Dog Ticks are bad enough, but at least you can see them.

It’s the Deer Ticks that cause us the greatest concern. They are so tiny you don’t even notice them. They look almost like a very small moving freckle.

My Father-in-law contracted Lyme Disease about three years and it took several months for a correct diagnosis to made. He was a very sick man. After several strong rounds of antibiotics he has recovered although he still has residual pain in his knees.

Needless to say, we take ticks very seriously around here.

We do frequent and careful “tick checks”. If we are in the house, we put all ticks into a small jar of rubbing alcohol to die. This is the one sure way to kill them. They float when you try to flush them down the toilet and then have a tendency to climb out. They are impossible to crush and cutting them in half with a knife is rather disgusting. So the tick jar works very well for us.

When we are outside walking or hiking, we carry a roll of masking tape with us, we call it our Tick Tape. (It fits around your wrist just like a bracelet.) When we have a tick, we just use a small piece of tape to pull it off. Then the tick is stuck on the masking tape and dies. We just throw the piece of tape away.

Every once in awhile we miss one. My hubby found a deer tick attached about two weeks ago, I just found one this morning.

When this happens, we try to isolate the tick and keep it. Then we watch for symptoms beginning with the rash (which isn’t always a bull’s eye, but can look like other things) and then the severe flu like symptoms.

So far so good on my hubby and we’ll keep watching mine…