removing ticks

[TBMonkey]

Originally Posted by Perndog

You people are ridiculous. Not a lot of ticks in your neighborhood, I take it?

I'd take walks in the woods as a little kid and sometimes come back with three or four on me (not always biting, but generally..). Two fingers, grab it next to your skin, rip it off and then torture it with whatever implements are handy. If it's the kind that would infect you with something, it already started injecting you with saliva when it bit and you're fucked no matter how you take it off. And if it's not that kind, the wound it makes is small enough that the only way to actually hurt yourself would be to try and dig it off your skin with a knife.

Most tick infections are due to peoplejust yanking them out and leaving the head in, or by various other means of "tricking" the tick to dislodge. Infection because of leaving the head in is quite obvious, but the other aren't. Since a tick has no anus it has to vomit it's waste, and any reason for the tick to dislodge it's head will make it vomit.

I know this because my area is infested with ticks, the kind that give you all sorts of diseases. Here, people who just yank it out will eventually find themselves in the hospital.