a cautionary tale

[dajanx]

i've got a couple of moles underneath my arms. moles is what my people have. my dad is covered with them. when we were kids we would play connect the dots with our fingers, tracing them along his back

Comments

[anonymous]

Just the thought of a little parasite sucking my blood sends shivers down my spine, and I've probably picked two dozen ticks off of myself in my lifetime. So I can only imagine the horror of having a filthy little immovable object of a head stuck in me.

After field exercises, we would check each other for ticks in the shower. You'd think a bunch of uptight homophobic military guys would freak out about the very idea, but the sheer necessity of it removed all the discomfort. Mostly it just reminded me of monkeys, though.

[preitas]

Yes tick searching is very important. Being raised in MN this commenced imediately after all camping trips & hiking exursions. :D

[miss_a_achoo]

our pets always had ticks, 'cause we lived in Buglandia aka Florida, and we always had the most success removing it whole with the "toilet paper in hand" yank method, followed with flushing it down the toilet. Occassionally the head would not go with the body, especially if it was particularly engorged, but we always were able to still retreive the head with more toilet paper and a strong grip, and maybe some tweezers. I'm very sorry your underarm suffered so. : ( It's never a great idea to bring fire or hot metal near your sensitive flesh, especially underarm flesh. Hurty!

I pulled a tick off of Garrett's leg this weekend after his orienteering race in the woods. It was not engorged yet, but it was a clean pull regardless. You guys can be tick twins!

I have never had a tick bite into me, and I've had the great fortune of always feeling them crawl on me first, before biting in. But I have yanked out many an animals' ticks...

I'm glad you're feeling better. Ticks Suck! : )

[xiuzan]

I, too, am from Buglandia and have removed ticks from my cats. I believe we used some sort of gasoline like substance that seemed to cause them to let go. I can't remember, since it's probably been a good 15 years since I had the joy of tick removal from my cat.

There was just an episode of House M.D., maybe a month or so ago about a girl who was bitten by a tick. It almost killed her...but first, she became progressively more paralyzed from her feet upwards. It was great fun for the whole family.

[miss_a_achoo]

Isn't every episode of House about some person who has a horrible problem and might die, and it's something that they don't figure out till the last minute and then House gets it, they get better, and then he is sarcastic...?

: )

Yeah, i haven't encountered cat ticks here either. Ahhh, the joys of an indoor kitty!

[xiuzan]

Well, yeah...but only one was about a tick :p.

[megatexas]

I just yank the motherfuckers off. That's pretty much what you ended up doing, but with much more hilarity. I see about a million ticks a year when I'm working at CALM and I just yank them off.

Never did figure out how to burn them when they're embedded in the skin, anyway. Maybe you can make such a big blister that they float away.