If you think living in the country (almost any wooded area on Long Island, not to mention hundreds of thousands of other similar settings throughout the country) is all milk and honey, let me set you straight right away on that notion in one word: Seed Ticks.
Alright, two words. But really, seed ticks are tiny, scary, ugly and even creepy. Now, I’ll tell you how I really feel…
I HATE TICKS, all ticks, but especially seed ticks!
And we live in Tick Central. I live in the East Islip town of Long Island which borders Hecksher State Park. Also becoming noted as Tick Haven of the Islip’s . . . Aside from our crops of clams from the Great South Bay, our main crop is, you guessed it, TICKS. It’s just a fact of life in our area.
What? You don’t know what a seed tick is?
A seed tick is the larval stage of a tick. Often, they sit in masses of hundreds, in grass, or maybe in some alternate tick dimension where they spontaneously generate into existence just when we decide to stroll by. Simply brushing against grass and brush, lots of teeny tiny seed ticks can grab on and swarm up the leg or arm at near sonic boom speeds. By the time you notice it, it’s pretty much too late and in most cases what happens next is you totally freak out!
See those freckles? Guess what, those are about a hundred baby ticks crawling across my hand and up my arm. This is a super tiny tick. I mean as small as the point of a pin.
If you don’t get the ticks off, they bite in, leaving tiny, mosquito like bites that can itch for weeks. I read that seed ticks are too small to spread Lyme disease or Rocky Mountain spotted fever, so there’s that. Also, they are very hard to see. If you think that’s a mosquito bite you’re scratching, think again. It could very well be a seed tick. You need a magnifying glass to be sure. Only yesterday, Trish (my girlfriend) and I pulled six of these little monsters off of us collectively. One that was on my hip took me a full ½ hour to get off using a lighted magnifying glass and a pair of brand new expensive tweezers.
Preventive measures must be taken. But what kind of preventative measures are we talking about? Well, some people use the chemical method, some people use a blocking method. For example, some people try to keep the ticks away with tall boots, spraying them down with an aerosol or a rub. This can work all right, unless you get ticks on your arms. And if you spray your whole self, there you are,covered in deet. Other people say to tuck in your clothes tightly, tucking your pants into your socks etc. in an attempt to keep the ticks on the clothes and off your skin. Then, they toss the clothes in the washer. That’s a joke, have you ever tried to kill a tick? Unless you burn or are able to squash them, they are very difficult to kill. A tick can make it through the wash (most of the time).
One day when I went fishing from the shore, I put a layer of Vaseline around my ankles so the ticks could not climb up my leg, DUH! The ticks couldn’t climb any higher than the Vaseline, yeah it worked, but when I took my shoes and socks off when I got home there were 11 ticks on my feet.
So what can we do?
The first thing to do when you see this:
Or even this:
Is not to panic!
The second thing to do is pull out some TAPE.
Because look:
The tape works like a charm, every time, except when one of these ticks is already attached to you.
Here’s a closer look:
To Remove an Embedded Tick:
Don’t worry about the tick’s head breaking off and still living without a body, this can’t happen. Just like anything else if the head is removed, there’s nothing but death.
So, with that said there’s no need to live in fear of the woods, just get a roll of tape and a pair of tweezers and keep them handy when venturing into tick infested looking territory.
That’s my take on seed ticks. I hope you gained from it.
