The Irish Travel Kit - How to arm yourself against ticks
The one piece of tick kit you should always pack.
The Festival Nightmare
You have just had the BEST day ever at the festival, and, wow!, what a killer set by…[insert name of fave singer, band, musical combo] The dancing, the drinking, the eating, the mates, the BEST!
And now its about 5am and you have just been woken in your tent by this feeling coming from sort of somewhere round about the back of the knee, or maybe the inner thigh, or perhaps the fleshy lower part of the back. It’s not painful, it’s just that there is something, there.
So you wake up your tent mate and ask if they could take a look and, yeah, there’s the tick there, right there. Ugh!
If you find yourself in this situation, here’s what not to do.
Ignore the Folklore (even if the advice comes from a medical professional)
Last time this happened to us, we had no tweezers in the bag but we did know that fingers and fingernails are bloody useless right now. Of course, it was Sunday morning, and everything was closed. What should we do?
Back in the day, our country doctor back home used to hold a Sunday telephone surgery. His advice? Go to a service station or shop, buy some white spirit and dab it on the tick.
At least he didn’t suggest we stab it with a lit cigarette.
These are the folklore remedies that still persist - grab it and turn it counter clockwise… no, grab it and turn it clockwise! (depending on the cultural source of the advice). The twisting method comes from a sensible observation that the tick must have “screwed” itself in. Righty tighty, lefty loosey, and all that.
Except that’s not how it happens. Ticks don’t actually screw in to your flesh, they anchor their barbs and secrete both a blood thinner and an anaesthetic.
What also doesn’t work is using petroleum jelly to smother it, or painting it with nail polish. All they do is invite the tick to get sick, and to vomit more venom into your leg. Ugh!
Memory tells us that on this occasion that we did listen to the doc and tried the white spirit method, and maybe it was the resultant redness from that application that led the pharamacist – on Monday morning – to suggest an antibiotic. The antibiotic was administered to protect against Lyme disease, which is the reason why dealing with a tick correctly is so important.
The Chase
Here’s the tick. It started out with six legs, but grew two more during its early life cycle. The tick has crawled up the grass stem to about knee height, and its back legs are holding on to the blade of grass. The front legs are now stretched out, and it’s actually not chasing at all. It’s waiting.
The tick, which is pretty well blind by the way, will just stay here for hours, days, months, even up to a year for some species, just waiting. It’s called Questing. It’s simply holding on to the grass, trying to sense heat… C02… vibration, warm blood and, when it finds it, it attaches and digs in to gorge itself on a blood meal that, it hopes, will swell it to several hundred times its body weight.
The Tool
The tick would have been happy with a dog, a deer, a hiker or a farm animal. But, right now, it’s chosen you. So what do you do?
The answer is, you’re prepared, you have your travel tick list and you’ve brought the correct tool with you and that tool is a pair of fine-tipped tweezers, “pointed” tweezers, which you have bought for about six quid.
Don’t holiday without one! Keep it in the car, the toilet bag, the suitcase, the handbag, but always travel with it.
Your plan now is to slide the tweezers almost parallel to your skin, and you’re aiming for the tick’s mouth and front legs, trying not to come in contact with its body. Once you’ve put the tweezers in place, firmly squeeze and then lift. Don’t twist, just pull. After a moment of defiance, the tick will release itself, at which point you dispose of it carefully, without touching the body as, even when dead, a tick can carry Lyme pathogens.
If you follow this advice, you will have succeeded the first line of defence but, once bitten by a tick, you must watch for an expanding red rash around the bite. If you feel you’ve got flu in the wrong season, or have flu without the runny nose, then visit the doctor.
Check all over if you’ve spent time in the long grass, and this could mean walking in a garden, hiking a mountain or, at this time of year, attending a Festival. Take care, and remember your travel tick list:
Passport - tick
Credit Cards - tick
Shades - tick
Sunscreen - tick
Precision tweezers - no tick!
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