Nobody wants to get a tick on them, but sometimes you just can’t help it. Especially if you are out hiking or camping in the woods. The most important thing to remember about a tick sucking itself onto human flesh is that it can take several days for any disease that the tick is carrying to be passed onto its human host, so it is imperative to get the tick off you as soon as possible. The problem, of course, is that it may actually take a day or two to even realize that the tick-and I don’t mean Patrick Warburton-has become a greater part of your life than your favorite song. The first instinct of many people upon the sickening realization that a tick has fastened onto their flesh can be to simply squash or crush the tick.
This is not a good thing. Crushing or squeezing or smashing the tick is not a good thing.
The reason is that even if you succeed in killing the tick by damaging it, you may still succeed in passing along dangerous pathogens from the tick to yourself. Even worse is if you happen to leave the mouth of the tick intact on your skin. You may wipe out the body, but in leaving the mouth you open yourself to a potentially very irritating infection.
What goes on during a tick attack on your flesh can be described thusly: go out to the backyard and pick up a barb from rose thorn and the press that thorn into your flesh and glue it in place. You really have to work hard to remove the barbed snout of the tick from your flesh and, yes, the sensation is going to be like anything but receiving a kiss from your favorite movie star. Grab a pair of tweezers or, even better, a small pair of forceps. Pinch the tweezers or forceps as close to the skin as possible while making sure that the tick is safely caught between the end of the tweezers. Pull strongly while making sure that you don’t lose grasp of the tick. If you do not have access to forceps or even tweezers, you can use your fingers. You will want to put on some gloves or at least some kind of protective between your fingers and the tick. You just do the same trick that you would do with the tweezers. Grasp the tick as close to your flesh and possible and pull straight up. Refrain from twisting the tick or jerking it hard even if doing so makes the sensation less painful. A slow, gentle motion is the best bet for removing a tick from human flesh. Sterilize the affected area with rubbing alcohol if you’ve got it and drinking alcohol if you don’t.
Okay, you’ve got the tick off and you managed to even remove the head. You’re okay, right? Not so fast. You may have to deal with infinitesimal tick larvae known as seed ticks. These can simply be carefully scraped off the skin by using a knife, but only after sterilizing with alcohol beforehand. Another way to remove tick larvae is by wrapping some tape around your finger with the sticky side out and brushing it across the area where the larvae became attached.
