This really ticks me off…

Sure, ticks like springtime when they can hide in moist grasslands and woods, but it seems like every season is tick season here in southwest Oregon. Having lived and worked in the woods for the past fifty years, I’ve certainly had my share of run-ins with these blood-sucking beasts.

Toss in a wife, three active boys (and friends), and a parade of dogs, and I can safely say that Susie and I have removed literally hundreds (likely thousands) of ticks. (Full disclosure: For some reason ticks don’t seem to like me very much. Sure, I’ve a my share, but nothing even close to what I should have had, considering the time I’ve spent in tick-country. Lucky? Oh yeah, but my sensitivity to poison oak more than makes up for the apparent boon.)

Ticks really love to latch on — as I understand it, they need the blood to allow them to reproduce (they’re like mosquitoes and leeches in this respect). As such, once they get a tight hold on their host, they are truly reluctant to let go. And whether you want to blame God or natural selection, they have what they need to hold on tight!

Paraphrasing an article on the Science website: “Before wood ticks attach themselves to a potential host, they use two flexible mouth parts called chelicerae (the upper portion of the image, above) to probe and pierce the skin. Microscopic hooks on those mouth parts help the ticks get a tentative grip. Then, by repeatedly retracting and extending the chelicerae, the tick buries a stiff, well-barbed structure called the hypostome (the tongue-shaped body part in the center of the image) in the host’s skin.

“Once fully embedded in the host, the tick forms a tube by holding the chelicerae and the hypostome together, and the blood meal begins. To keep the host from recognizing its presence for the week or so that it takes to become fully engorged, studies have shown that the tick’s saliva contains a cocktail of substances that keeps the blood flowing, stifles swelling and itching, and numbs pain.”

Yuck! (To give my own personal opinion on the above poser, I would likely credit natural selection, at least for the blood-suckers. No deity I can imagine — especially one that made me in His image — would design something like this. But, as my daddy told me, He does work in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform. I get so confused sometimes.)

Anyway, it’s really important to remove the tick, but also to get the entire mouth and associated hooks and barbs. The trick is to get the tick to withdraw the attachments and let go.

I always find it interesting to read the recommendations regarding how to get this done — especially with the head still attached (this is critical to reduce the chance of Lyme disease, infection, or worse). Many of the time-honored remedies almost sound worse than the tick itself: cover it with lard or butter to cut off its air supply (forcing it to back out); burning its butt with a cigarette (encouraging it to back out), or simply yanking on it with a pair of tweezers and hope it lets go before the body separates from the head.

So if the trick is to encourage it to let go, then maybe tweezers aren’t such a bad way to start.

Here’s a proven method that works every time — did I mention that Susie and I have removed literally hundreds to thousands of ticks over the years? The steps are easy:

1) Get the patient to hold still. This may sound tough with either a screaming three-year old or a dog, but both creatures have demonstrated, with repeated practice, to learn this part relatively quickly (especially the dogs — panicked kids can take a bit more time, but the effort is surely worth it).

2) Hold the tweezers in your dominant hand — you’ll want to be able to manipulate them with a high degree of control.

3) LIGHTLY grasp the tick’s butt in the tweezers. DO NOT SQUEEZE to the point that it crushes the tick. This can be challenging, especially if several days have passed and the tick is partially full of blood. Along with killing the tick and pretty much negating any possibility of recovering the head, it also makes one hell of a mess.

4) Slowly rotate the tweezers (still holding on to the tick’s body). This puts stress on its neck, forcing it to let go or risk having its head twisted off. It is tempting to let my warped sense of humor loose at this point and say that you need to rotate counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere (clockwise south of the equator), but this is too important to joke about (see, there actually is a smidgen of hope for me yet). Either direction will get the job done.

As I said above, this works every time!