Tick Checking, an Important Job that can be Fun
Though ticks are around throughout the year, we are now in the hieght of Tick Season in this part of the country.
You don’t have to go anywhere near the woods to be found by a wood tick or a deer tick. We find most of them are lurking in the grass between the road and the woods and sometimes even in our lawn.
When I was a kid we did not get too excited about ticks, they were just a part of summer. Lyme disease was not something that we had heard of yet but we still did a daily tick check just because we did not want one of these frisky little blood suckers ballooning up on some hidden part of our body.
When I was in college during the early 80’s Lyme disease became a serious and somewhat mysterious issue with ticks, worse yet it was in the wood tick’s tiny cousin the Deer Tick.
Now tick checks became a neccessity, and a check for the deer ticks is not an easy check since these fellows are TINY.
Though the disease can be serious, I still don’t get too concerned about these little fellows. Most of the time they reveal themselves by bumping into hairs as they travel up your body and can be picked off and disposed of.
Also most of them will be washed off if you take a shower within a few hours of picking up a tick.
And for those ticks who get by this step, it can be fun to have a friend (generally your spouse) do a check either in the shower or afterwards.
But if all of this fails and you do get one of these fellows embedded on your body, especially if it shows the telltale bullseye type target around the tick or if you are feeling like you have the flu in the summer, go see a doctor where they will start you on an antibiotic treatment.
picture credits
- http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Katya_-_Shower_-_92309.jpg
- http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Deer_Tick_-_geograph.org.uk_-_105508.jpg
- http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Deer_Tick_life_cycle.svg
- http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Deer_tick_on_a_dime.jpg
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