Tick!!

Can't believe I came in today and had a tick on me. We almost never get them here in the yard. I had some weird bee/fly thing in my shirt too. Now I've got the heebie-jeebies!

Sue,

How do you handle the ticks issue? How do you treat the yard?

We won't treat our yard. Other than being nasty blood suckers they really don't do much harm. The deer tick is the one that causes lyme disease - and those aren't all that common. I just hate them crawling on me. They freak me out every time.

Tis the season alright. I've found a few on the cats already. So far I haven't found any in the house though.

I have never seen a tick out here in the pacific northwest, is it a heat loving insect?

I've found on me(not all at once, but different times). They make my skin crawl, and I go shower cause I just know there are more of them!! Found a couple of them on the dogs and even found one on the cat. These are just 'dog ticks' and not the bad ones, but I still hate them. Our vet suggested we switch from Advantage to Frontline for the dogs and cats. We've not seen this many before.

I have gotten ticks quite a bit in Tennessee & South Carolina. A tick is not a normal sight in my area of Ohio. Ticks & other weird bugs like scorpions are one reason I would not prefer to live any further South than where we are today! Can you believe I applied for Survivor? Mind over matter when it's needed!

Susie,
We treated our dogs with Frontline. If I recall correctly, the killing process does not start until a tick attached itself to the dog for 24 hours. Or is it 12 hours.

we have ticks real bad down here. and we get the deer ticks more than dog ticks. But all you can do is stay inside. We don't even own a dog, but that doesn't stop them from finding us:) just pray I don't find one on the baby.

We have wood ticks here. The past few years have been terrible for them. In the spring, until it gets really hot, we find them everywhere. We've checked into pretty much everything for the cats, but have found that the remedies don't kill the ticks for a long while. By that time, they are off the cat and in the house somewhere looking for a new host. Ugg.

We keep the grass cut in the yard, but the cats go into the shelterbelts and where ever. They bring them into the house.

So we should get rid of our pets? That works for me, I'm sending the animals away!!

Louisa
Please keep any eye out for a box from the post office, animals in transit! LOL

lol Tim...

The ticks are awful this year. I'm finding them everywhere - on me, on Dh, on the pets. I pulled one off my head the other night at work. Now I have a big bump on my head. I hate em!!!

We've never had tick problems at all...But a couple weeks ago, I was scratching my head and felt a bump. You guessed it. I was SO grossed out!! I was chatting with Pangie on Yahoo at the time and I typed AAAAAAARGH! Oh GROSS! It was so yucky {{shudder}}.

Bobbie hasn't been out side hardly at all and she found two on her stomach last week. She hasn't been around any animals beside me. LOL

It must be a good season for them. I see them now and then when I've been out in the woods ... but this year they're everywhere. It's creepy!

They are really bad this year we are finding them too. Jim be sure Bobbie treats you for ticks before the round up. lol

grossss I hate those-saw my first one last year in GA! I hope i never ever see another one!! grossssss!

We usually see four kinds of ticks by the end of summer ~ flat brown ones with white spots on their backs, flat brown ones without white spots on their backs, teeny tiny seed ticks and big gray/blue cow ticks. We keep Frontline on the dogs, but that's mainly for the fleas. We keep the area near the house/barns mowed and that seems to help.

If y'all have tried all that and still have them, get guineas! Guinea fowl eat ticks ~ and how! When I was growing up, we had a flock of about 30 and rarely got ticks if we stayed up near the house ("up near the house" means within 1500 feet or so ~ within the guineas' range). They make a heckuva racket, but are good watchdogs because of that. We'll be getting more soon. I want some white ones and lavender ones!

Lyme disease isn't the only disease you can get from ticks. There is Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever which is usually gotten from the ticks on wild game like rabbits that some people hunt for food. It isn't limited to the Rocky Mountain area tho. We sometimes hear of cases here in central Missouri. Then there is plain old Tick Fever which isn't all that uncommon in our area. Some people react to tick bites of any kind more severely than others. When I find one on me and think there may be more, I take a shower with flea/tick pet shampoo. Plain old dog tick bites make me sick and leave large red areas if I don't find them quickly. I agree that guinea fowl are the best protection against ticks. Banty chickens do ok too.

So far, I've not seen any more ticks, but I'm creepy-crawly watching for them, ugh. Doesn't help that I had to walk through a cloud of swarming termites outside today when bringing the dogs in from their walk. {{heeby-jeebies!}}

Haven't seen any ticks here yet, but got one last summer. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever does occur in Ohio, but is very rare.

Mostly I have gotten ticks when walking through woods or tall grass prairie. But now I need to go check myself and stop itching after reading this one! yuck!

EEEEEWWW Ticks so gross ugly don't send here. LOL It had one tick on my tummy OUCH try to pull could not use match and blow out the fire while still hot and put tick's back finally pull out and kill em. The people who had a cow so gross so sad to see cow has hundred of ticks all over the body and skinny cow don't know who belong to that how I got a tick from this cow when I walked by and look at cow that heart broken. That time when I was 17 years old.

<< We usually see four kinds of ticks by the end of summer ~ flat brown ones with white spots on their backs, flat brown ones without white spots on their backs, >>

If your ticks are wood ticks or like wood ticks, maybe the plain brown ones and those with white spots on their backs are the same, just different genders. I checked into wood ticks years ago (with two Centers for Disease Control researchers) when I had a summer house in a Colorado canyon. The "spotted" wood ticks are male. The spots occur on a hard shell over their backs. The females have a tiny hard shell just below the back of the "neck" on what would be shoulders if they had shoulders. Brace yourselves, tick-haters. That's so they can swell up with blood from whatever unfortunate mammal they attach to.

Ticks are disgusting beyond words.

When I lived in the mountains, I kept "tick rocks" scattered about. Ticks are nearly impossible to kill short of burning them. Tick rocks consist of a flat rock and a small vertical rock, flat on one end. The following also is disgusting. Find a tick, place it -- with a tissue if you're squeamish -- on the flat rock and beat the absolute hell out of it with the flat end of the vertical rock. Result? Flat tick, larger than it was before the beating, but DEAD, which is what all ticks should be. :)

LOLOL, Shendoh!! And isn't that cool about the gender thing ~ I always thought they were two different species! BTW, welcome to Dave's ~ you're gonna' love it here!

<< BTW, welcome to Dave's ~ you're gonna' love it here! >>

Thanks, Wingnut. I already love it here -- so much information!

Isn't there?! I think it's as handy as socks on a rooster to have a Gardenology with highlighted and hyperlinked words to it (click on a blue word like fry and you'll see what I mean). Dave and Go_Vols just reworked the Plants Database, so it's better than ever. They're kicking around the idea of a Pests and Diseases Database. And there are handy things, too ~ LOVE the journals and the tradetracker. The journal takes a bit of getting used to, but it's SO handy, too! I've never been able to keep a journal until I started keeping one here.

And fun ~ click on the "contests" link on the right for photo and garden contests. They're informal with just bragging rights as the prize, but fun!

Our local paper said it is going to be a bad year for ticks.I think with the crazy weather we have had it is going to bring all kinds of bugs out in full force. Right now the black flies are so bad that we can't even sit outside without getting chewed up.