ticks :(

[nhbeekeeper]

just amazing how much misery these little ones can cause 

i have been limping around all day today trying to remember if I hurt my foot yesterday? it got so bad that I took off my shoe to see how my foot looked and was not surprised to see a bright red area but i was surprised when I found a tick in between my middle toes  boy he didnt want to come off either. looks like I picked up a unwanted friend walking through my woods this past weekend.

I think I will spray down my cloths on my next walk

[Michael Bush]

A bright red area around the tick? That would worry me. I've had lots of ticks and no reaction like that.

[Joel]

Ticks are serious business and can cause crippling disease for rest of your life. Lyme disease symptoms are consistent with what you describe(often described as a red bullseye-no not bill-pattern aroung the bite) and will evolve into a flu like stage. You need to seek medical evaluation immediately because once lyme disease develops it's like old luggage, it will be with you always. I think the incubation period is like 2 weeks from the bite so don't wait. Do yourself and us a favor and see your doctor ASAP. Let us know how it goes.

[Sundance]

Lymes is carried by the deer tick. Very small (little larger than a pin head). The common brown tick (wood/dog) is larger (match head).

If you have a rash around the bite then get to a Dr. and start anti-biotic's. If you act quickly there will be no side effects.

A good friend got it years ago prior to the "discovery" of lyme's and due to late diagonsis he suffers from arthritis.

[James Burke]

It's amazing how hard you have to squash the little buggers to kill them. Maybe we could cross them with the bees and get a tougher strain...any geneticists want to step up to the plate? [img]smile.gif[/img]

My son pulled a sheep tick off of our yellow lab yesterday. It was the size of a dime. He also found two smaller brown ticks on her as well.

I've heard guinea fowl are good for ridding your property of ticks. Is this true?

[Sundance]

Guinea's are tick eating machines!!! They do a wonderful job. Not compatible with my Cheseapeake, Lab, and Springer though.

[BjornBee]

Knowing if it was a dog/brown/common tick or a deer tick is important. The first can cause a local reaction as would any number of insect bites. A local reaction is normal. A red bullseye spot is common with lyme but not always a sign of the desease.

Getting lyme desease from a deer tick can be devestating. The first thing as already noted is flu like symptoms, starting within a week of being bit. Cold(teeth chattering) and hot(soaking and dripping shirts) periods unlike any flu is also common. Joint aches in the knee, hips and back are common. And I mean major aches. Its like getting arthritis over night. All together it will be worse than any flu you ever had. This period will last from a few days to over a week. Than it stops. This is why some miss the diagnosis. They think they had a simple flu. Then comes stage two....

After incubating in your body from 18 to 24 months, the lyme desease hatches out (spirea) and attacks your vital organs, nerve functions, motor skills, etc. I know one lady in her 30's and she is confined to a couch and for all purposes does not function normally. The final stage can be death for those not permanetly disabled.

Have a test conducted if you are not sure the difference in the two types of ticks. The brown/dog tick does not carry lyme. Most state and county agriculture departments also have hand-outs detailing and explaining lyme and have many pictures.

I had lyme two years ago and although I caught it, my knees and hips still do not feel normal today. It is a very serious desease and is tracked by the CDC. I have many pamphlets on the subject but not sure where they are at the moment. Do a search and I am sure pictures of the types of ticks can be found.

[BjornBee]

And let me add.....you are in lyme desease country. If you have any doubt at all, see a doctor and insist on a test. Lyme is serious stuff and please do not pass it off.

[power napper]

Okay folks--Here is the skinny--do not mess around with a tick bite that is a red circle (bullseye). If you get a slight fever the next day and it lingers on and on, achy, lose concentration, lose peripheral nerve signals, have vision disturbances, wake up to flashing lights when there ain't any,heart palpatations that make ya wonder if you will make it, do not see things that are there and are not allowed to drive an automobile any more, severly lose short term (present) memory and on and on. Yeah--do not fool around when any of these symptoms occur--get to a doctor that treats lyme disease fast, it can change your life forever.

[Ben Brewcat]

Agree on the medical visit wholeheartedly; there are other pathogens from ticks that are nasty too. Also note that not all folks who contract Lyme's manifest the flulike symptoms... some can be almost asymptomatic including the erythematous ring (red bullseye). Also worth repeating to NOT use kerosene, blown-out matches, or other mean stuff to make the tick withdraw; it can make them regurgitate high-count barf from their gut. Remove by grasping with tweezers near the head so you don't squeeze the body, and gently pull. I've even excised the pad of flesh they're in. Then you can torture them all you want... I feed them to my carnivorous plant collection, especially the sundews, so they're slowly digested alive mwaah aaahhhh aaaahhhhh! Little bas***ds seem to appreciate the irony :mad: . Did I mention I hate ticks?

[PA Pete]

Get prophylactic antibiotics. Period. Insist on it with your doctor. Lyme is now considered a multi-organism disease. Erlichiosis and Babesiosis are some of the co-infections that can occur. Your treatement should include a tetracycline (typically Doxycycline) to address the erlichiosis. Babesiosis is a non-bacteria parasite and so is not treated with typical "antibiotics." Mepron is used in one treatment regimen, and hydroxy chloroquine in another. Seek experienced medical treatement - someone who knows these organisms and is willing to treat them aggressively and quickly. Do not wait for any of the standard tests, as their results are questionable at best. Treating aggressively and early could mean the difference between recovery and permanent disability.

-Pete

[power napper]

Two big things that I forgot to mention--headaches and fatigue, they are characteristic of later stage lyme disease--you sleep a lot.

[ChellesBees]

DEET and tick checks are just a part of life around here. I don't bother to spray myself to often, but everyone else in the house gets it. mostly on the clothes though. If the tick is removed in less than 12 hours, (12 or 24, can't remember now) the probability of getting lymes disease is very slim. We are also gearing up for another year of West Nile. Another good argument for DEET, and there are two new substances approved that work too.

[BjornBee]

West nile is blown way out of line. For every person bitten by an infected mosquito, 1% will come down with symptoms. These symptoms will range from absolutely nothing to death in the extreme. Under two or over 55 is higher risk. For all the hoopla over west nile and the money spent scaring the heck out of people, it amounts to a tiny fraction as compared to pneumonia, flu, or any other yearly cycle desease that all kill way more people than the west nile ever will. Every year its something else. A few years back if you put your toe in the ocean it would be bit off. Then if your kids were playing in the front yard, they would be taken. Then west nile. Its always something that has to be the hot subject and the cause for great wastes of money by the goverment. I'm not saying west nile is not real, but its just way over blown and if the people would look at the stats, and compare that to the hysteria, it absurd.

[BjornBee]

Also, to put it in perspective.....More people were killed in cars over the labor day weekend last year than were killed by west nile for the entire year in the state of Pa. But boy it was nightly reports of another infected pond, or another west nile case, or another report on scaring people. More killed on the highways in two days, than west nile for the entire year. Go figure.

[ChellesBees]

So aren't we all, in some way or another, as bad as those silly people that scream "it's a bee!!!get it away, I'm allergic!"
I don't intend to minimize those who have gotten Lymes, it is another nasty bug, and can be really hard to treat. Fortunatly, those cases are few. With awareness, they are even fewer. Ditto for west nile. What makes me sad about West Nile is that it takes birds and horses. In another year or two, something else will come along to make headlines for awhile.

[Ben Brewcat]

Amen to that BjornBee! For another example, though U.S. violent crime rates have steadily declined for decades, the public's perception of violence in our country consistently polls at higher and higher levels. The difference IMO is that now when someone gets shot in NJ, the whole country has it screamed in their TVs and browsers at the top of that very hour.

I've said it before and it bears repeating... people are basically decent and a couple crimes, however horrific and however graphically reported to tittilate the TV viewers, do not mean you need to Kevlar your kids and home-school them.

So swim in the ocean! Let your kids ride their bikes! Ask your neighbor check in on your cats. Don't let the scare-ists convince you the world's an evil, frightening place!

[Michael Bush]

... but back to ticks. I'm an outdoorsman and I've been picking ticks off of myself all my life. Some of them end up attached and I have to try to get them to turn loose with the usually tactics of a just extinguished match etc. But of all those thousands of ticks I've pulled off (a friend of mine and I counted over a hundred in one day each in the Kiamichi mountains in Oklahoma one year) none of them every left a red blotch or hurt after it was removed. During sometimes, but not after.

I'm not an alarmist when it comes to ticks, but if I had some kind of reaction or infection it would concern me. Ticks have carried (and I assume still carry) a variety of diseases including, but not limited to, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and Lyme disease. It's true Lyme disease is usually carried by the deer ticks that are so small you can barely see them (think Varroa mites), but I don't know that regular wood ticks CAN'T carry it. And even if they don't there are other diseases that wood ticks can carry.

[Patrick Scannell]

> deer ticks that are so small you can barely see them (think Varroa mites)

This is true for the first year of a deer tick's 2 year life cycle. The second year they are big enough to easily see and feel. I've found 2 this year already. But they are still small compared to a wood tick.

[nhbeekeeper]

I did end up going to the DrÂ’s that day with the tick so they could also id the critter. It was a female deer tick (I guess femaleÂ’s have red dots on them??) I did asked for the antibiotic so now I am popping pills for 3 weeks  the DR gave me a choice to start taking the pills that day or return in a few weeks to see if I test positive for lyme? I didnÂ’t quite understand that logic?? so again I am taking the pills now better safe then sorry.

wood ticks do not alarm me either but i knew this was a deer tick ( i trained with the National Guard for years down in Lyme CT and we where very aware of ticks there, students had to be evacuated from the field within hours if they got a tick bite) the thing that got my attention with this bit is that it really hurt bad. I was still limping the following day but the redness around my toes did go awayÂ…2 days later I felt fine.