The Ticks Are Coming

Last week my husband Charlie saw a spider on the dining room floor, so he stepped on it but it wouldn’t smash. Stamping his foot on it had no effect. Getting down on his knees for a better look, he yelled to me, “Honey, there’s a TICK on the dining room floor. Must have come in on one of the dogs”.

For us in the Northwest, our winter weather ended up going east, giving the good folks in the Midwest and the East Coast OUR winter right on top of theirs. If ticks are already out and about it’s going to be a tick-fest this summer.

Ticks carry diseases in their saliva, which can infect their victim. In the Pacific Northwest we are likely to encounter 3 species of ticks that can transmit disease to humans. The Brown dog tick and the Rocky Mountain wood tick can transmit Rocky Mountain spotted fever, while along the Pacific Coast the Western blacklegged tick carries Lyme disease.

The best way to remove a tick from yourself or your pet is to see it BEFORE it latches on and brush it off. Wearing light colored clothing helps you see them more easily. Wearing long sleeved shirts and tucking your pants into your boots keeps their access to your skin limited.

When you get home from an outing where you are exposed to ticks (tall grass, or woodsy, brushy areas) shower within 2 hours to get the best chance of rinsing them off or finding them before they get dug in. We check our 3 Scottish Terriers and each other frequently during the summer months, looking for new “freckles” or bumps. You can’t be too careful with Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever out there.

The next best way to remove a tick is to take fine-pointed tweezers and grab the tick as close to your skin as possible. Pull upward nice and STEADY, up, up UP. Avoid tugging or jerking the tick, which can cause tick body parts to break off and get left inside the bitten human or pet.

Having removed many a tick, over the years I have tried nearly every method (sane or insane) to get them to detach themselves QUICKLY so I don’t have to grab and patiently puuuuull them out. I’ve tried verbal threats (“Don’t make me get my tweezers and GRAB you!”), which had absolutely no effect. I’ve heard of people using lit matches (“Hold STILL for heaven’s sake, or I’m going to set your hair on fire!”). DON’T use Vaseline®, as it makes that tick so darn slippery your tweezers can’t get a grip. Forget nail polish. It makes it hard to grab that little guy, and then Heaven help you if you haven’t got polish remover close by.

Which brings me to the mystery of liquid dish soap to remove a tick. Reading about it on the Internet, my friend Denise and I thought, “Hmm, sounds like it COULD be useful someday…” We gave it a lukewarm thumbs-up, to be tucked away with other someday-possibly-useful bits of information like 48 ways to reuse fabric softener dryer sheets.

Then one summer when my 3 Scottish Terriers went to stay at Denise’s house, she found a tick –a TICK FOR HEAVEN SAKE- on my 6 year-old Scottie Jamie. Jamie was a gentle soul whose nickname was Spook because he was black, hated loud noises and liked to lurk under kitchen chairs. Denise decided to try out the dish soap trick.

After she put a dab of liquid Dawn on Jamie’s neck where the tick sat, to her amazement it immediately began a frantic backstroke and within moments was OUT, completely out. After wiping it off with a tissue, she told me that it was the EASIEST and MOST EFFECTIVE way to do that she had ever imagined. And you can clean the skin afterwards so easy, too!

I’ve used it twice since, with equally impressive results. Don’t encase the whole tick, just put a dab of the soap at the skin where the tick is attached. It makes cleaning the bite area really easy, too. I now pack liquid soap on every picnic and camping trip.