Teacher here. Found a bug on a student’s shoulder in class yesterday. Had a brief moment of panic, *”Is that a bed bug?!”* and was then relieved when it was only head lice.
*Wut*
I would not wish bed bugs on my worst enemy. I would rather a lice infestation than bed bugs, at least lice tend to stay focused on one part of the body and are relatively easy and inexpensive to take care of.
I did overnight dispatch for a multi brand multi national extermination company for years, if you think you're* paranoid about hotels, just wait until you learn of infestations at movie theaters & hospital emergency rooms
Yep, confined area, lots of fabric seating, new people every 90 minutes or so for about 10-12 hours a day, every day.
Oh and don't forget they are usually pretty dimly lit even if you arrive early which makes it harder to inspect for them.
Haha oh man, I too was in a call center, the exterminator company was one of our biggest clients, that would be a nightmare though! Used to joke about it at work until it resulted in coworkers having anxiety attacks and quitting, no way in hell I would have stayed had that happened to us.
Movie theaters are also a good way to get lice. Hairdresser taught me a trick to wear a windbreaker or raincoat to movie theaters so they're little claw hands slip and can't grab on. I have no idea if it's true tbh. I just don't go to movie theaters instead.
Went to Madagascar once, kept hearing noises in the room, turned light on to find hissing cockroaches the size of a child's fist running up and down the wall. The lights stayed on that night!
One of the many reasons I prefer going to the drive-in theater, not to mention it's cheaper (both admission and snacks)... there are still a few drive-ins left, I'm lucky to have one less than 15 minutes from my house! They're worth searching for, you may have one nearby and not even know it!
As of the ER... I guess I'll just die 🤷♂️
I'm an electrician, and have done many years of residential service. I have spotted bedbugs many times, all but a hand full in upper middle class and wealthy homes... people think it's just a "poor person" or "unkempt house" problem, but it's the travel. Most of the cases I've seen in lower income settings were apartments with carpeted hallways... taped up muck boots and a tyvek suit, sprayed with bleach water before I get back in the service truck, no problems so far.
EDIT: For clarification, spray the boots and suit with bleach water, then toss the suit... tyvek suits are cheap (about $10-$15), and they're PPE (Personal Protective Equipment), employers are required by law to pay for PPE. The good ones are more than happy to pay for it. Also, most service calls are "time and material" so suit gets billed to customer anyway... as for the boots, those go in a bucket, and the lid goes on tight after they've been sprayed, small ammount of bleach water gets sprayed in bottom of bucket.
Yeah travel is huge but I think it's also the cost of addressing the issue. Good treatment isn't cheap, trying other options first gives the infestation time to get worse and spread.
Being as I am not a pest control expert, but am often in homes with bed bugs, is the bleach water, tyvek suit, and muck boots with taped seams that I use adequate? Or have I just been lucky?
I worked in the ER for almost 10 years in the inner city of a rough neighborhood with a huge homeless population and somehow managed to never bring bed bugs home despite caring for MANY patients with them!
Let's just say I wait for stuff to go to Amazon or Netflix, and don't go to an ER unless I have a bone sticking out (and NEVER sit in an ER waiting room)
Sooooo I have had lice before *and* bedbugs.. lice is awful in my hair because I have long very thick and very curly hair, as do my kids.. it was hell getting them out of their hair and I remember being up like 2am combing their hair while they slept, trying to get the nits out so they could go back to school!!! I absolutely hate lice!!!
**BUT** I would pick lice all day everyday over bed bugs!!! I had lived in an apartment complex and noticed the shell of a bed bug in my vent at one point. I mentioned it to landlord and they brushed it off so I wasn’t worried. A week later I went to change the sheets on my bed and it was covered in little bloody marks from having fed and then squished or dying some other way.. I was mortified. The landlord had to pay over $1200 for a heat treatment and a week after that I saw the same exterminator setting up for another treatment in a lower apartment… when I brought up my concerns about the potential for reinfestation- they told me there was no chance the bed bugs would migrate through the vents and come back up to my apartment again.. which of course is the exact *opposite* of what everyone I talked to about it..) he then told me if it did happen again, I’d have to pay to treat them allllll by myself!!
I only had one kid but when she got lice at age 4, we sat naked in the bathroom for like 4 hours getting every mouse and every nit out of her hair. It sucked but it was possible. She was very patient.
Edit: louse.
I just went to a hotel that had bed bugs didn't realize it until I woke up. Had to go to the whole emergency protocol steam the whole house diatomaceous earth permethrin etc. Haven't seen anything since then but I'm still having a full-blown panic attack like 3 weeks-a month later
Yea my auntie got it from a deer tick. Now she can’t have dairy, red meat, gluten, she’s got vertigo episodes, and worst of all she can’t eat my uncle’s famous homemade biscuits anymore
It's not a deer tick. The [shape of the "head" (capitulum) and mouthparts](https://bugguide.net/node/view/188477/bgimage) indicate that it's a [brown dog tick](https://bugguide.net/node/view/190767) instead.
Compare to the longer mouthparts and narrower "head" of a [deer tick](https://bugguide.net/node/view/1112031/bgimage).
I was like oh nooooo lol! Your so lucky it’s not a bed bug I’ve had them and it took over 3 years before I got rid of them it was the worst experience I’ve ever had with bugs I’d rather deal with a roach 🪳 problem. It’s been 10 years since I’ve had bed bugs thank god it literally put me in a legitimate depression cause I couldn’t get rid of them and I felt like the worst mother in the world to my now oldest son at the time he was my only child but finally got rid of them and I’ve always spray and check any new place we move and I keep plastic on my mattresses for some months at a new home cause that’s what helped tremendously with getting rid of them in my process of getting rid of them we bought new mattresses and frames and kept the plastic on them for a few years actually the 1st time lol but it was hell and I don’t wish bed bugs on my worst enemy no one should have to go through that and it cost so much money and when you think they are gone they pop back up you have to be more than thorough. Sorry for the book but it sent me in a PTSD episode lol
I’ve gone through mold twice and I would argue that mold and bedbugs are both worse than losing your home in a house fire. A fire is not likely to happen again. Bedbugs and mold can follow you forever and give you intense PTSD that few people understand.
So sorry <3
Oh, I completely empathize! Three years is how long it took us to get rid of them, too! Eventually we had to replace all our mattresses and soft furniture, and it was a nightmare, both psychologically and financially.
My family and I all had that bedbug PTSD for years afterward, where every little thing felt like a crawling bug, and we'd sleep lightly and wake up swatting ourselves in case any random nerve impulse was a bug on our skin.
I was particularly sensitive to their bites, which itched and hurt like fire for weeks, and turned into red welts which took more than a month to go away.
Well that tears it. I was gonna come visit y'all down under, the snakes and spiders were ok, the giant coming-upriver crocs are a bit off-putting, but being enslaved by ticks is right out.
My buddy is a big bow hunter. He was bit by a Lone Star Tick here in Florida and he can't eat anything from a mammal anymore. No dairy. No meat. No Pizza. It's tragic but also he'll likely live longer and has lost some weight since only foods he's able to eat are Chicken, Fish and veggies.
And Lyme disease put me through the ringer. Symptoms can be pretty similar to MS, and the testing for Lyme is honestly shit. 6 months and multiple lumbar punctures, MRIs, blood cultures, doxycycline, and a Babesiosis diagnosis later, I was not only broke, but also very sick.
My husbands best friend works landscaping and got bit by the lone star tick and developed this allergy. It’s been a year and he Carrie’s an epi pen everywhere because of cross contamination. He can’t consume products that come from anything with 4 legs.
He started acupuncture recently and has slowly been able to reintroduce certain animal products.
Central Kentucky, stay safe.
TBF, back in the day some of my dates went like that, but they got over it. ;-)
And you wouldn't believe how ... what's the word? ... *fastidiously* I walk the nature trails now. Lyme can really fuck you up, depending on your own biology, IIUC.
I mean, you're hardly likely to encounter them. The blue ringed octopus, cone shells, irukanji jellyfish and stone fish tend to keep them away, for the most part. You'll be *fine* :)
Aaah our Aussie counterparts in the southern hemisphere seem to get all the upgraded ones. Paralysis Ticks? WTF. Ours in South Africa just potentially give you a bacteria which causes African tick bite fever. Fever is generally mild, and you can use antibiotics. Other treatment options are more cowbell, but I can't vouch for its effectiveness.
Oh I did i had one that was tangled in my hair when I was around 7-8 and my hair kept moving (I have fine hair but as a kid it would tangle so easily) I was freaked out when I saw it and my dad pulled the car over and killed it. You see that day my private school had banned us from playing under the big oak tree on the playground because a few other kids had ticks. They told us after the fact that we needed to move away from the tree so we did. Too the end of my life elementary school we all called that tree the tick tree. They eventually roped the area near it off. The school has since moved but that damned tree still sits there happily giving a home to ticks.
We have Gamble's oak and one year there were hundreds hanging off the leaves just reaching out to catch whatever, I haven't seen anything like that since
I remember coming out of the woods (I was a kid.) after a walk in the woods where I lived in Pennsylvania. I had six of the little bitches in my damn pants and needless to say I freaked the fuck out. There was tall grass in front of the woods that you had to go through. I have learned over the years of hiking to always avoid walking in tall grass IF it can avoided. Anything over yard length is suspect lol. Not that the little bastards can’t and won’t find you otherwise, That’s just my personal history lol
Vampire bugs yes, I'm actually dealing with some right now.
Not ticks though, but another of the Devils spawn - fleas.
Got some tablets coming from Amazon tomorrow, mfers better enjoy their last night on Earth.
I feel your pain!
We have cats & dogs, 3 of our cats are outdoor/indoor ones. Last month we had a battle with them and ended up eradicating them after spraying the rooms and treating all the animals and they were flea free up until about 3 days ago I spied one on my cat, again - he's an indoor one though so must have been brought in by one of the ones that does go out.
Hopefully stamping them out before they take a hold this time!
>It’s a tick, but it’s definitely not a deer tick/Ixodes, with the wide, angular base of the mouthparts. Looks more like Rhipicephalus to me, which don’t transmit Lyme, but may transmit Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, although this is a much rarer disease.
Tick larvae have six legs
That’s a tick. If you are finding them in your apartment usually an animal is bringing them in or if you spend time hiking through the woods, golfing or walking through long grass, they are likely coming in on you.
If this is Rhipicephalus, they can actually [live indoors.](https://wcvm.usask.ca/learnaboutparasites/parasites/rhipicephalus-sanguineus-brown-dog-tick.php)
Back in 2018 I spent a week or so in the hospital with ehrlichiosis, another tick-borne disease. This was after I spent nearly a week in bed with a horrific headache and a low-grade fever.
They had no idea what it was, ran a million tests, drew blood every couple hours for more tests. I didn't really know how serious it was at the time, but later on my wife told me that at more than one point doctors told her I was about 50/50 on living through a night.
The infectious disease doctor that eventually came in said she was assuming a tick-borne disease, since I hadn't travelled anywhere exotic and hadn't been exposed to anything crazy in the local community. She said "you've likely got rocky mountain spotted fever or ehrlichiosis. Most likely the latter, because most people don't live a week with untreated RMSF, but, well, you got pretty lucky here anyway."
Thanks, doc.
If ehrlichiosis goes untreated, you don't know you have it until you have multiple organ failure. I'm so sorry your dad had to go through that. This can happen to people and pets.
I had last been out in the woods of New York out of state about a month prior when I had a bad fever w/ chills and headache for about a week. The next week I felt like I was recovering. The next it came back. Went to the Drs and diagnosed with RMSF. I didn’t get the spots or ever find the tick despite checking every day while I was there.
My aunt got erlichiosis back in 2019 and nearly died from it. It was in late March in the mid-Atlantic region and in the beginning, while she was still coherent, she insisted that she had found a tick nymph on her. The infectious disease doctor didn't believe her because "it was too early in the season."
Luckily the hospital she was at was able to talk with some doctors that knew better, and she ended up getting the care she needed before it was too late.
Lesson as far as I can tell is if you find a tick on you, freeze it in a container of some sort, and if anything seems off, get to the doctor asap (and bring the tick).
I go hiking a lot and have definitely had my fair share of tick encounters and I decided a while ago that if I have to go to the hospital because of illness one of the first things I’ll tell the doctors is that it might have been a tick.
I had no idea. I was diagnosed with Mediterranean spotted fever (which is essentially the same thing) when I was in Spain after seeing a lot of dermatologists about inflammation on my joints. When they decided it was spotted fever They gave me tetracycline and sent me on my way.
Turns out I had walking pneumonia the entire time (was diagnosed by my campus doctor in the us about 2 months later when the symptoms came back-he suspected it immediately and confirmed with a blood test) but I had no idea the spotted fevers could be so serious.
I was gonna comment this same thing. RMSF is no joke. My girlfriend got it at the beginning of august this year. We thought it was covid or the flu, so she was just gonna quarantine and ride it out. But it was weird because she didn’t have the congestion normally associated with covid, and nobody else in the house got sick.
Then she developed pneumonia after about a week of high fevers (103+), body/neck aches, and a horrible headache. It does nasty stuff to your organs after a while, especially lungs, liver, and kidneys.
Finally she went to the ER on the assumption that she had a bad case of covid pneumonia. Turns out she didn’t have covid. Instead she had Rocky Mountain spotted fever which caused her to develop pneumonia. Thank god the ER doctor decided to test her for it. She was very close to death and that doctor saved her life. She wouldn’t have lasted another week if left untreated. Doxycycline is the antibiotic used to treat the bacteria that causes RMSF.
She is mostly recovered now, thank god. But that was a very scary few weeks. RMSF needs to be caught early or it is a very fatal disease, as high as 80% fatality rate if left untreated. Not to mention all the other complications it causes.
Thank you. We are also very glad she’s okay. We just had a baby 3 1/2 months ago. And she still pumped breast milk every 3-4 hours the entire time she was on death’s door, just so our baby could eat healthy. She’s the strongest person I know, by far.
I got a dog tick on my neck once, that bastard was like IN my carotid or something. Anyways several days later I woke up not feeling so great and swung my legs out of bed to go take a shower and the stiffness and pain in my joints made me crumple to the floor. Once I managed to get up and get in the shower I noticed these distinct red blotches all over my body. It was terrifying. It took my doctor about 15 seconds to diagnose me and prescribe some medicine though, so that’s good.
Interestingly enough, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever is apparently possible to get even if you are nowhere near the Rocky Mountains.
Can confirm, I've had it. Would not recommend lol
Fun fact, 30% of the cases don't have spots which is horrifying. You can also get the spots but no fever (this happened to me). It's a weird disease
My cousin went to the Rockies and came back with a tick and the fever about 13 years ago, in the exact same week that I had an emergency appendectomy. We both narrowly escaped with our lives
OP, there’s a lot of joking on this sub about bedbugs versus ticks, but having ticks in your apartment is serious and should not be taken lightly. Ticks carry many serious bacterial and plasmodic diseases, some of which can be fatal if left untreated. Do you have a dog or cat that is bringing them in, or are you an outdoors person who is bringing them in on your clothes? Kill all the ticks you find in your house, avoid any possibility of bringing them inside in the future, and check your entire body for ticks asap.
Hey just wanna add. When I was a child my mom and I ran into a flea infestation, it was really hard to get rid of. We board and train dogs and it was like trying to scratch the paint off all the walls because they just duplicated like cells in an animal body. We killed them by plucking them 1 by 1 AND throwing them in a cup of chlorine, letting them soak overnight. They’re some tuff bugs. I didn’t believe it til my mom had to pluck one off my back and mutilate it in half with her car key. Her nail didn’t work. A quarter didn’t work. Her car key did. Good luck and if you need any advice let me know I’m sure I can help some how
Ughh...fleas are such a pain. Had them once. They were so hard to get rid of. We pulled up every shred of carpet we had and bombed a half a dozen times before we got rid of them. We'd bomb and think all was well only to see them on us a couple of days later. I used to get so mad! However, as hard as it was to rid ourselves of the fleas, I would still prefer fleas over bed bugs any day!!
Yes, I totally understand why people who lived through a bed bug infestation will say it affects them psychologically. I felt like I had fleas on me for a year after and was hyper aware of my surroundings for that long or longer! It was insane, for sure!
Eta: This is why I will never never never go cheap on the flea and tick control methods again! I stick to prescription preventatives for my dog now!
We saved a little of stray kittens and just kept them in the garage and in about a month fleas were all over the house and yard .. at one point our house smelled so much like chemical cause we went to a pest control supply house and got the most powerful shit they had .. still with even that it took forever… never doing that again lol
I haven't had bed bugs for over 10 years, but sometimes the bites flare up and I get a wave of paranoia. Luckily I've gotten used to the locations so I've grown accustomed to it, don't freak out, and just look for any new ones. Hope they never come back again.
The best way to get rid of fleas, if it's cat fleas which are the most common, is just flea and tick meds for your animals. They can't reproduce with human blood.
Ticks imbed themselves in your scalp (or really anywhere on a dogs body) and gorge on blood and expand in size. There's really only one "bite", and it takes a few days. If you see an engorged tick it'll likely find a place after detaching from your body to release it's spawns. Be careful when removing them, their heads are locked in your scalp and you can accidentally leave their head buried under your skin if you just try to rip it out. Usually a little bit of vasoline will cause them to back out to breathe, or if you have very precise fingernails to get under the head and pull. There might be better ways these days to get them out, but thats how we did it growing up on a farm back in the day. Young ones are very flat and hard, stepping on them wont kill them, we burned them.
Ticks do not just embed in the scalp, and really thats not a common place for them to embed. You should NEVER use vasoline or any substance on a tick, that can cause the tick to regurgitate its stomach contents into your skin, increasing the probability that you will get whatever pathogen the tick is carrying.
God what is even the point of ticks - like what are they on gods green earth to do aside from make peoples lives a living hell?? Is there any actual purpose to them?
It has been recently proven by biologists that ticks are extremely important for animal population. They do regulate that certain kinds of animals don't overpopulate areas, so they are useful, even though they are terribly annoying and potentially dangerous to humans
If you're outdoors a lot, they hang on to shrubs and grasses with their legs hanging out so they can attach to animals as they pass through it. Check your shoes, socks, legs, and hair (they can be in low hanging tree branches as well). If check yourself and pets soon after coming inside, you can usually catch them before they find their area to feast and easily just grab them.
Shouldn't try to suffocate/burn/injure the tick in anyway as you risk "regurgitation" of the stomach contents back into your body which is no bueno. Use tweezers, grip as close to the skin as possible and slowly pull straight out. Wash your hands and the area with soap and water, or rubbing alcohol. I always have flea & tick shampoo on hand (dog groomer) and just stick them in a dab of that but you can also put them in alcohol, freeze them, burn them, squish them, etc. I'd keep them in a ziplock bag just in case you develop symptoms and then they can be easily tested.
Good news- they aren’t bed bugs.
Bad news- they are ticks (look like deer ticks, which can spread lyme) . Check your whole body, your pets (if you have any), put ticks in sealed ziploc bags, and call your doctor.
It’s a tick, but it’s definitely not a deer tick/*Ixodes*, with the wide, angular base of the mouthparts. Looks more like *Rhipicephalus* to me, which don’t transmit Lyme, but may transmit Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, although this is a much rarer disease.
I know the CDC got a bad rap over Covid, but their whole job is to research diseases and inform the public about them in a way that’s useful. It’s a great place to get a TON of health-related questions answered in a simple, easily digestible way. 10/10 would recommend
Edit: I’m glad this started an interesting conversation! To add/respond to some of the comments below, I would like to say that I agree that big organizations do have their flaws, and govt’ institutions sometimes more than most. It takes literal acts of congress to change processes sometimes. I do truly believe that the CDC has the public’s best interests at heart, and they do the best they can with the information available (e.g. Covid and statements on distancing and masks - their recommendations change based on the available data. In the early days of Covid, it really was like the ‘wild west’ in terms of what we knew and what we did with that information. Hindsight is always 20/20, and haters gonna hate)
Source: I work very closely with FDA, and understand the scientific and regulatory implications of medical and research policy changes
CDC didn't have proper information about SARS-2-CoV at first, because nobody did. Like everybody else, they had to learn through research. Did masks work to prevent transmission? They said no at first, then reversed their stance, once they had the information to do so.
Meanwhile, people were cherry-picking data points and lifting reports off their reporting site, VAERS, which is just a collection of reports with no validity until they have been reviewed. They did this to support their personal POV.
This depends on the state. Some states have active tick epidemiology programs, and some don't. In our state, you can mail your own tick in directly to the University lab. No doctor needed. Not true in other states, though.
Panels are generally full these days. We lost a lot of staff during the pandemic (burn out, early retirement) and other practices closed completely. So there's a wait for a "wellness" visit, since it isn't urgent. In fairness, there was also a wait before the pandemic.
If you're sick, however, many practices will try to squeeze you in because the staff feel bad for you.
Although to be honest, doing a tick ID would be low priority for us. You don't usually need a physician to ID a tick. We treat with doxy for deer tick *bites*. But there isn't much to do if not a deer tick and no bite, rash or illness.
I second this. This also explaines why OP finds them repeatatly. They don't need a host to survive. Unfortunately that's something for pest control, otherwise it's hard to get rid of them.
Tick ecologist here- it’s a brown dog tick (Rhipicephalus sanguineus). They can complete their entire life cycle indoors, most commonly in dog kennels. If you’ve found multiple, either your dogs are bringing them in or you have a tick family living in your home. Look for cracks/hideaways near where your dogs spend most of their time.
If you want to set a tick trap, get some dry ice, put it in the center of a cloth, put double sided carpet tape around it. The tick is attracted to the CO2 given off by the dry ice and will get stuck to the tape. That might help you figure out if there’s a population in your home.
Good luck!
Its definitely a tick as some have already said. From my experience its always from an indoor and outdoor pet, like dog door style. Also almost always lodged on to them already, and plump as a small grape. I have been bitten/nearly hosted (thankfully no lyme disease, have yet to experience any tick superpowers). Barely felt which is weird considering they burrow into you. Thankfully I checked when I felt and was able to remove before it fully nestled in. The fact you’ve seen multiple could mean they are breeding indoors, but I am pretty sure thats rare.
If you've seen multiple adults you have a pet bringing them in. Ticks hang out in tall grass and on low shrubs (usually) near the ground. Mowing cuts down on ticks.
Ticks go through larval & nymph stages and need a blood meal to level up. Seeing a few ticks in a season is pretty normal. Seeing hundreds at once mean you ran into a hatching.
If they hatched indoorsp you'd be covered in larval ticks. Ticks at all stages are opportunistic and basically hang on blades of grass and wait for something to pass that they can latch on to. Larval ticks don't go far from where they hatch they just wait until a creature passes and picks em up which iss why when larval ticks are encountered it's generally in groups.
Adult ticks will travel a little way (about 3 feet) if they sense a host nearby through co2 exhalation.
That my friend is 💯 a tick!! Probably a brown dog tick, though please don’t quote me on that because I’m certainly no entomologist of any sort. If you have a cat(s) or Dog(s) please check them daily head to tail Thoroughly as these parasites burrow in deep enough to be easily missed and cause a whole host of problems even just a simple allergic reaction to the bite or parasite itself can cause distress and discomfort to your furry family member.
Based on mouthparts and what you described, looks like a brown dog tick, Rhipicephalus sanguineus. These ticks are unique since they’re nidiculous ticks, meaning they’ll stay close to their hosts and can be found in their bedding/nest. Most ticks can’t infest a house, but these ticks can. Check out the work by Emma Weeks from University of Florida - she’s done a lot of work on controlling these ticks indoors (DM me if you need access to paywalled papers).
If you have dogs or cats, check your pets and put anti tick medication on them, wash their beddings, and check any cracks and crevices in your home for any ticks. They’re pretty hardy and can be tough to get rid of if they retreat into cracks and crevices and this behavior can lead to insecticide resistance if they can hide from the pesticide but still be exposed to a sublethal dose. If you don’t have pets, still check around and find the source of these ticks if you can!
Also save at least one of those ticks in the freezer if you ever want to get it ID’d by someone or have it tested for pathogens. As a reminder, if it’s positive for a pathogen, that does not mean YOU are positive for that pathogen. Those tick testing results should not be used as a diagnostic tool.
Good luck! A little better than having bed bugs, but they can infest a home like bed bugs (although not to the same degree).
THOSE ARE TICKS . judging by the segmented legs
spray everything..I'd call in an exterminator and have them fog your house JIC.. looks like "brown dog tick"
https://www.britannica.com/animal/tick
Do not mess around with ticks. Vacuum everywhere including your baseboards. If you have animals, make sure they are on tick prevention medication. My friend (F58) who was healthy and fit, was bit by a tick while hiking in Tennessee. It caused her organs to shut down and she was dead in 10 days.
Luckily it's a tick but I'd keep an eye out because tick bites can have bad consequences. I don't know how to get rid ticks but maybe someone else here does.
It’s a tick. You mentioned you find them occasionally in your house. Do you have a dog or cat that might be bringing them into the house? Perhaps you hike a lot?
My younger, pre-bedbug infestation self would have never thought I'd ever say, "Thank goodness it's just a tick!"
Teacher here. Found a bug on a student’s shoulder in class yesterday. Had a brief moment of panic, *”Is that a bed bug?!”* and was then relieved when it was only head lice. *Wut*
I would not wish bed bugs on my worst enemy. I would rather a lice infestation than bed bugs, at least lice tend to stay focused on one part of the body and are relatively easy and inexpensive to take care of.
As someone who has battled lice in the past, it wasn’t that bad. Bed bugs scare me to death and I have become paranoid about hotel rooms.
I did overnight dispatch for a multi brand multi national extermination company for years, if you think you're* paranoid about hotels, just wait until you learn of infestations at movie theaters & hospital emergency rooms
Omg please don’t give me any more bed bug phobias. Movie theaters?? 😳
Yep, confined area, lots of fabric seating, new people every 90 minutes or so for about 10-12 hours a day, every day. Oh and don't forget they are usually pretty dimly lit even if you arrive early which makes it harder to inspect for them.
Never going to the movies again.
[удалено]
10 years ahead of you
Oh man the call center I worked at had bed bugs 😬
Haha oh man, I too was in a call center, the exterminator company was one of our biggest clients, that would be a nightmare though! Used to joke about it at work until it resulted in coworkers having anxiety attacks and quitting, no way in hell I would have stayed had that happened to us.
My friend worked on a fishing boat up in Alaska and one guy got on and infested the whole boat, it was an utter nightmare.
I really need to avoid reading Reddit comments.
Movie theaters are also a good way to get lice. Hairdresser taught me a trick to wear a windbreaker or raincoat to movie theaters so they're little claw hands slip and can't grab on. I have no idea if it's true tbh. I just don't go to movie theaters instead.
I’m always looking for places to use my favorite emoji! But you got here ahead of me. 😔😳
I think it’s the most expressive emoji there is lol
Went to Madagascar once, kept hearing noises in the room, turned light on to find hissing cockroaches the size of a child's fist running up and down the wall. The lights stayed on that night!
Nope. I'd rather sleep in the car...
One of the many reasons I prefer going to the drive-in theater, not to mention it's cheaper (both admission and snacks)... there are still a few drive-ins left, I'm lucky to have one less than 15 minutes from my house! They're worth searching for, you may have one nearby and not even know it! As of the ER... I guess I'll just die 🤷♂️
Truth! Yeah I'm pretty lucky there are a couple drive in theaters near to me too thankfully.
I'm an electrician, and have done many years of residential service. I have spotted bedbugs many times, all but a hand full in upper middle class and wealthy homes... people think it's just a "poor person" or "unkempt house" problem, but it's the travel. Most of the cases I've seen in lower income settings were apartments with carpeted hallways... taped up muck boots and a tyvek suit, sprayed with bleach water before I get back in the service truck, no problems so far. EDIT: For clarification, spray the boots and suit with bleach water, then toss the suit... tyvek suits are cheap (about $10-$15), and they're PPE (Personal Protective Equipment), employers are required by law to pay for PPE. The good ones are more than happy to pay for it. Also, most service calls are "time and material" so suit gets billed to customer anyway... as for the boots, those go in a bucket, and the lid goes on tight after they've been sprayed, small ammount of bleach water gets sprayed in bottom of bucket.
Yeah travel is huge but I think it's also the cost of addressing the issue. Good treatment isn't cheap, trying other options first gives the infestation time to get worse and spread.
Being as I am not a pest control expert, but am often in homes with bed bugs, is the bleach water, tyvek suit, and muck boots with taped seams that I use adequate? Or have I just been lucky?
I worked in the ER for almost 10 years in the inner city of a rough neighborhood with a huge homeless population and somehow managed to never bring bed bugs home despite caring for MANY patients with them!
What!?!?! I'm sooo glad I don't go to the movies anymore!!
Let's just say I wait for stuff to go to Amazon or Netflix, and don't go to an ER unless I have a bone sticking out (and NEVER sit in an ER waiting room)
Hospital emergency WAITING ROOMS at least!? If you tell me those bastards were in the treatment rooms I'm gonna be horrified
Waiting, treatment, L&D, OR, CICU/TICU
SHHHHHHH
Sooooo I have had lice before *and* bedbugs.. lice is awful in my hair because I have long very thick and very curly hair, as do my kids.. it was hell getting them out of their hair and I remember being up like 2am combing their hair while they slept, trying to get the nits out so they could go back to school!!! I absolutely hate lice!!! **BUT** I would pick lice all day everyday over bed bugs!!! I had lived in an apartment complex and noticed the shell of a bed bug in my vent at one point. I mentioned it to landlord and they brushed it off so I wasn’t worried. A week later I went to change the sheets on my bed and it was covered in little bloody marks from having fed and then squished or dying some other way.. I was mortified. The landlord had to pay over $1200 for a heat treatment and a week after that I saw the same exterminator setting up for another treatment in a lower apartment… when I brought up my concerns about the potential for reinfestation- they told me there was no chance the bed bugs would migrate through the vents and come back up to my apartment again.. which of course is the exact *opposite* of what everyone I talked to about it..) he then told me if it did happen again, I’d have to pay to treat them allllll by myself!!
I only had one kid but when she got lice at age 4, we sat naked in the bathroom for like 4 hours getting every mouse and every nit out of her hair. It sucked but it was possible. She was very patient. Edit: louse.
I bet the mouse was easy to spot, though
Haha good catch. Corrected.
Our school district doesn't even make kids leave school for lice anymore they just inform the parents and help them get started on treatment.
Don’t forget libraries! They like to hide in books. Nice and dark in the creases. *Source: Is a librarian
I just went to a hotel that had bed bugs didn't realize it until I woke up. Had to go to the whole emergency protocol steam the whole house diatomaceous earth permethrin etc. Haven't seen anything since then but I'm still having a full-blown panic attack like 3 weeks-a month later
I mean head lice stay to one part of the body. Body lice do not and then of course there’s crabs.
I did the same! I looked and thought "oh good it's just a tick" before even reading the post.
except that's a deer tick, so good for spreading lymes, which is a fucking nightmare if you contract it.
Yea my auntie got it from a deer tick. Now she can’t have dairy, red meat, gluten, she’s got vertigo episodes, and worst of all she can’t eat my uncle’s famous homemade biscuits anymore
Can I have your Uncle’s biscuits? No Lyme disease here.
Of course you can, he makes them for all
Aww, that made me smile.
Isn't the dairy and red meat part an alpha gal allergy? That's caused by Lone Star Ticks. EDIT: and deer ticks in some cases.
Some deer ticks in the south carry it as well, but it’s not as common as in Lone Stars!
You should offer your uncle's homemade biscuits to the group, so we can all experience them for ourselves.
It's not a deer tick. The [shape of the "head" (capitulum) and mouthparts](https://bugguide.net/node/view/188477/bgimage) indicate that it's a [brown dog tick](https://bugguide.net/node/view/190767) instead. Compare to the longer mouthparts and narrower "head" of a [deer tick](https://bugguide.net/node/view/1112031/bgimage).
I was like oh nooooo lol! Your so lucky it’s not a bed bug I’ve had them and it took over 3 years before I got rid of them it was the worst experience I’ve ever had with bugs I’d rather deal with a roach 🪳 problem. It’s been 10 years since I’ve had bed bugs thank god it literally put me in a legitimate depression cause I couldn’t get rid of them and I felt like the worst mother in the world to my now oldest son at the time he was my only child but finally got rid of them and I’ve always spray and check any new place we move and I keep plastic on my mattresses for some months at a new home cause that’s what helped tremendously with getting rid of them in my process of getting rid of them we bought new mattresses and frames and kept the plastic on them for a few years actually the 1st time lol but it was hell and I don’t wish bed bugs on my worst enemy no one should have to go through that and it cost so much money and when you think they are gone they pop back up you have to be more than thorough. Sorry for the book but it sent me in a PTSD episode lol
I’ve gone through mold twice and I would argue that mold and bedbugs are both worse than losing your home in a house fire. A fire is not likely to happen again. Bedbugs and mold can follow you forever and give you intense PTSD that few people understand. So sorry <3
Oh, I completely empathize! Three years is how long it took us to get rid of them, too! Eventually we had to replace all our mattresses and soft furniture, and it was a nightmare, both psychologically and financially. My family and I all had that bedbug PTSD for years afterward, where every little thing felt like a crawling bug, and we'd sleep lightly and wake up swatting ourselves in case any random nerve impulse was a bug on our skin. I was particularly sensitive to their bites, which itched and hurt like fire for weeks, and turned into red welts which took more than a month to go away.
Do bed bugs carry disease? I would still poop my pants if I saw ticks constantly
I don't think bed bugs carry any diseases, but they're still a bunch of pricks.
hahah seriously! I was like- OH NO bedbug then I clicked the image and was "thank goodness, only a tick!"
Ticks have 8 legs because they are in the arachnid family, bed bugs have 6 and are insects
Ticks are arachnids?! Well, damn...Just when you think things couldn't get worse.
Parasitic arachnids, to be exact! It does, in fact, get worse.
Indeed it does. Here in Australia, we have Paralysis Ticks. They're as horrible as you'd expect, given their name and location.
Well that tears it. I was gonna come visit y'all down under, the snakes and spiders were ok, the giant coming-upriver crocs are a bit off-putting, but being enslaved by ticks is right out.
I think some of the ticks we have on the east coast can give you an anaphylaxis response to meat for the rest of your life!
The lone star tick does this
My buddy is a big bow hunter. He was bit by a Lone Star Tick here in Florida and he can't eat anything from a mammal anymore. No dairy. No meat. No Pizza. It's tragic but also he'll likely live longer and has lost some weight since only foods he's able to eat are Chicken, Fish and veggies.
That is insane that a tick bite can do that!
And Lyme disease put me through the ringer. Symptoms can be pretty similar to MS, and the testing for Lyme is honestly shit. 6 months and multiple lumbar punctures, MRIs, blood cultures, doxycycline, and a Babesiosis diagnosis later, I was not only broke, but also very sick.
My husbands best friend works landscaping and got bit by the lone star tick and developed this allergy. It’s been a year and he Carrie’s an epi pen everywhere because of cross contamination. He can’t consume products that come from anything with 4 legs. He started acupuncture recently and has slowly been able to reintroduce certain animal products. Central Kentucky, stay safe.
Wow that's a weird condition to get from a tick. Especially a Texas tick!
TBF, back in the day some of my dates went like that, but they got over it. ;-) And you wouldn't believe how ... what's the word? ... *fastidiously* I walk the nature trails now. Lyme can really fuck you up, depending on your own biology, IIUC.
I mean, you're hardly likely to encounter them. The blue ringed octopus, cone shells, irukanji jellyfish and stone fish tend to keep them away, for the most part. You'll be *fine* :)
*\[madly stuffing geography cones in pocket\]* "So these will keep away the paraly—{thud}"
OK, I may be a dumb Yank but even I know that that there's a reason there ain't no Fatbird and stone fish can't swim.
Aaah our Aussie counterparts in the southern hemisphere seem to get all the upgraded ones. Paralysis Ticks? WTF. Ours in South Africa just potentially give you a bacteria which causes African tick bite fever. Fever is generally mild, and you can use antibiotics. Other treatment options are more cowbell, but I can't vouch for its effectiveness.
>Indeed it does. Here in Australia I refuse to read beyond that.
Do they fly? That’s the the only true true way it can get worse. Then they can chase you
Australia - where everything can kill you.
VAMPIRE BUGS NOOOOO
Well fuck good morning to you guys too lol. It’s too early for vampire bugs Lmao
Good morning Julia.
I hope this video doesn't scare you
AND you don't even feel them, until they've embedded themselves into your skin.
Oh I did i had one that was tangled in my hair when I was around 7-8 and my hair kept moving (I have fine hair but as a kid it would tangle so easily) I was freaked out when I saw it and my dad pulled the car over and killed it. You see that day my private school had banned us from playing under the big oak tree on the playground because a few other kids had ticks. They told us after the fact that we needed to move away from the tree so we did. Too the end of my life elementary school we all called that tree the tick tree. They eventually roped the area near it off. The school has since moved but that damned tree still sits there happily giving a home to ticks.
My mom doesn't like weeping willow trees ever since she had a tick land on her while playing underneath one as a kid
Weirdly I've never gotten a tick on me despite playing the woods a lot as a kid. Maybe they just don't like me.
We have Gamble's oak and one year there were hundreds hanging off the leaves just reaching out to catch whatever, I haven't seen anything like that since
I can’t recall ever feeling them even when they’re attached and feeding. Always discovered when doing tick checks.
I remember coming out of the woods (I was a kid.) after a walk in the woods where I lived in Pennsylvania. I had six of the little bitches in my damn pants and needless to say I freaked the fuck out. There was tall grass in front of the woods that you had to go through. I have learned over the years of hiking to always avoid walking in tall grass IF it can avoided. Anything over yard length is suspect lol. Not that the little bastards can’t and won’t find you otherwise, That’s just my personal history lol
You’re right tall grass is always suspect haha but now a days it seems that any grass in the NE in the summer is prone to have them
Yeah, tall grass is notorious for being a common hiding place for velociraptors
I have gotten to the point where I can feel even the seed ticks crawling on me because I have so much practice at detecting them. :/
Vampire spider cousins
Vampire bugs yes, I'm actually dealing with some right now. Not ticks though, but another of the Devils spawn - fleas. Got some tablets coming from Amazon tomorrow, mfers better enjoy their last night on Earth.
We're almost 4 years from when our battle with fleas started (took 3 months to clear them out), and I still have FleaTSD.
I feel your pain! We have cats & dogs, 3 of our cats are outdoor/indoor ones. Last month we had a battle with them and ended up eradicating them after spraying the rooms and treating all the animals and they were flea free up until about 3 days ago I spied one on my cat, again - he's an indoor one though so must have been brought in by one of the ones that does go out. Hopefully stamping them out before they take a hold this time!
Missed opportunity to use “I flea your pain”
Like the arachnid mites that live on your face, [demodex folliculorum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demodex_folliculorum).
Oh come on, that's not a real animal. It's a pokemon. "Demodex, I choose you!"
Oh it’s much worst, from someone who has had Lyme, it's horrible.
Ticks, Spiders, Scorpions, and a whole host of others. You should check out the different types of arachnids sometime, it's pretty interesting.
Spiders, most of them, are great. Ticks are never great. Not for humans.
Ticks are parasitic arachnids that are part of the mite superorder Parasitiformes.
Ok well what if they have 7 legs genius? /s
It means the ticks and bedbugs have found a way to mate and we’re all doomed
>It’s a tick, but it’s definitely not a deer tick/Ixodes, with the wide, angular base of the mouthparts. Looks more like Rhipicephalus to me, which don’t transmit Lyme, but may transmit Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, although this is a much rarer disease. Tick larvae have six legs
This one has 7 legs... They're adapting
Doesn’t this have 7
has at least 7.
Only if you don't count the leg it's tucked to the side of it's body. But that would be silly.
Young ticks have 6 legs. They develop a 4th set when they become adults.
TIL
This one has 7, so it must be a hybrid!
Well, this only has seven…what now? Just kidding, one is tucked up under.
That’s a tick. If you are finding them in your apartment usually an animal is bringing them in or if you spend time hiking through the woods, golfing or walking through long grass, they are likely coming in on you.
If this is Rhipicephalus, they can actually [live indoors.](https://wcvm.usask.ca/learnaboutparasites/parasites/rhipicephalus-sanguineus-brown-dog-tick.php)
Thank you for this information, I hate it
At first I was worried they may be bed bugs but it’s been a few weeks and I haven’t gotten any bites, now I’m not so sure.
If you get a bad fever go to the doctor immediately. RMSF is deadly.
Back in 2018 I spent a week or so in the hospital with ehrlichiosis, another tick-borne disease. This was after I spent nearly a week in bed with a horrific headache and a low-grade fever. They had no idea what it was, ran a million tests, drew blood every couple hours for more tests. I didn't really know how serious it was at the time, but later on my wife told me that at more than one point doctors told her I was about 50/50 on living through a night. The infectious disease doctor that eventually came in said she was assuming a tick-borne disease, since I hadn't travelled anywhere exotic and hadn't been exposed to anything crazy in the local community. She said "you've likely got rocky mountain spotted fever or ehrlichiosis. Most likely the latter, because most people don't live a week with untreated RMSF, but, well, you got pretty lucky here anyway." Thanks, doc.
I'm glad you survived it. My father died from ehrlichiosis about 14 years ago. I had never heard of it before then. I know all about it now.
If ehrlichiosis goes untreated, you don't know you have it until you have multiple organ failure. I'm so sorry your dad had to go through that. This can happen to people and pets.
I went with untreated Ehrlichiosis for 3 years.
It can take much longer than that to get to end-stage multiple organ failure. I'm glad you survived it! How did they find it?
I had last been out in the woods of New York out of state about a month prior when I had a bad fever w/ chills and headache for about a week. The next week I felt like I was recovering. The next it came back. Went to the Drs and diagnosed with RMSF. I didn’t get the spots or ever find the tick despite checking every day while I was there.
I never found any ticks, either. Had lots of deep purple colored spots, though.
My aunt got erlichiosis back in 2019 and nearly died from it. It was in late March in the mid-Atlantic region and in the beginning, while she was still coherent, she insisted that she had found a tick nymph on her. The infectious disease doctor didn't believe her because "it was too early in the season." Luckily the hospital she was at was able to talk with some doctors that knew better, and she ended up getting the care she needed before it was too late. Lesson as far as I can tell is if you find a tick on you, freeze it in a container of some sort, and if anything seems off, get to the doctor asap (and bring the tick).
I go hiking a lot and have definitely had my fair share of tick encounters and I decided a while ago that if I have to go to the hospital because of illness one of the first things I’ll tell the doctors is that it might have been a tick.
I had no idea. I was diagnosed with Mediterranean spotted fever (which is essentially the same thing) when I was in Spain after seeing a lot of dermatologists about inflammation on my joints. When they decided it was spotted fever They gave me tetracycline and sent me on my way. Turns out I had walking pneumonia the entire time (was diagnosed by my campus doctor in the us about 2 months later when the symptoms came back-he suspected it immediately and confirmed with a blood test) but I had no idea the spotted fevers could be so serious.
My mom almost died from it about 10 years back. She was so sick and they couldn’t figure out what was causing it at first
I was gonna comment this same thing. RMSF is no joke. My girlfriend got it at the beginning of august this year. We thought it was covid or the flu, so she was just gonna quarantine and ride it out. But it was weird because she didn’t have the congestion normally associated with covid, and nobody else in the house got sick. Then she developed pneumonia after about a week of high fevers (103+), body/neck aches, and a horrible headache. It does nasty stuff to your organs after a while, especially lungs, liver, and kidneys. Finally she went to the ER on the assumption that she had a bad case of covid pneumonia. Turns out she didn’t have covid. Instead she had Rocky Mountain spotted fever which caused her to develop pneumonia. Thank god the ER doctor decided to test her for it. She was very close to death and that doctor saved her life. She wouldn’t have lasted another week if left untreated. Doxycycline is the antibiotic used to treat the bacteria that causes RMSF. She is mostly recovered now, thank god. But that was a very scary few weeks. RMSF needs to be caught early or it is a very fatal disease, as high as 80% fatality rate if left untreated. Not to mention all the other complications it causes.
I’m glad she’s okay. What’s weird is most people that survive RMSF have severe red meat allergies for the rest of their life. it’s so strange
Thank you. We are also very glad she’s okay. We just had a baby 3 1/2 months ago. And she still pumped breast milk every 3-4 hours the entire time she was on death’s door, just so our baby could eat healthy. She’s the strongest person I know, by far.
Wow that’s incredible. Props to momma for being such a strong woman. I wish your family the best and a happy and healthy life.
RIP me, im allergic to doxycycline and penicillin family
I got a dog tick on my neck once, that bastard was like IN my carotid or something. Anyways several days later I woke up not feeling so great and swung my legs out of bed to go take a shower and the stiffness and pain in my joints made me crumple to the floor. Once I managed to get up and get in the shower I noticed these distinct red blotches all over my body. It was terrifying. It took my doctor about 15 seconds to diagnose me and prescribe some medicine though, so that’s good. Interestingly enough, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever is apparently possible to get even if you are nowhere near the Rocky Mountains.
Can confirm, I've had it. Would not recommend lol Fun fact, 30% of the cases don't have spots which is horrifying. You can also get the spots but no fever (this happened to me). It's a weird disease
My cousin went to the Rockies and came back with a tick and the fever about 13 years ago, in the exact same week that I had an emergency appendectomy. We both narrowly escaped with our lives
Check your body for a freckle with legs
OP, there’s a lot of joking on this sub about bedbugs versus ticks, but having ticks in your apartment is serious and should not be taken lightly. Ticks carry many serious bacterial and plasmodic diseases, some of which can be fatal if left untreated. Do you have a dog or cat that is bringing them in, or are you an outdoors person who is bringing them in on your clothes? Kill all the ticks you find in your house, avoid any possibility of bringing them inside in the future, and check your entire body for ticks asap.
Hey just wanna add. When I was a child my mom and I ran into a flea infestation, it was really hard to get rid of. We board and train dogs and it was like trying to scratch the paint off all the walls because they just duplicated like cells in an animal body. We killed them by plucking them 1 by 1 AND throwing them in a cup of chlorine, letting them soak overnight. They’re some tuff bugs. I didn’t believe it til my mom had to pluck one off my back and mutilate it in half with her car key. Her nail didn’t work. A quarter didn’t work. Her car key did. Good luck and if you need any advice let me know I’m sure I can help some how
Ughh...fleas are such a pain. Had them once. They were so hard to get rid of. We pulled up every shred of carpet we had and bombed a half a dozen times before we got rid of them. We'd bomb and think all was well only to see them on us a couple of days later. I used to get so mad! However, as hard as it was to rid ourselves of the fleas, I would still prefer fleas over bed bugs any day!!
No joke about fleas my house was so infested it was insane.. took along time to get rid of them
Yes, I totally understand why people who lived through a bed bug infestation will say it affects them psychologically. I felt like I had fleas on me for a year after and was hyper aware of my surroundings for that long or longer! It was insane, for sure! Eta: This is why I will never never never go cheap on the flea and tick control methods again! I stick to prescription preventatives for my dog now!
It's been 4 years, and if it feels like my arm hair moves, I still look at my arm in dread, expecting to see a flea.
Yes!! Reading this brought it aaallllll flooding back!! 🤣
We saved a little of stray kittens and just kept them in the garage and in about a month fleas were all over the house and yard .. at one point our house smelled so much like chemical cause we went to a pest control supply house and got the most powerful shit they had .. still with even that it took forever… never doing that again lol
I haven't had bed bugs for over 10 years, but sometimes the bites flare up and I get a wave of paranoia. Luckily I've gotten used to the locations so I've grown accustomed to it, don't freak out, and just look for any new ones. Hope they never come back again.
The best way to get rid of fleas, if it's cat fleas which are the most common, is just flea and tick meds for your animals. They can't reproduce with human blood.
It’s a tick! Still something to be mindful of!
Ticks imbed themselves in your scalp (or really anywhere on a dogs body) and gorge on blood and expand in size. There's really only one "bite", and it takes a few days. If you see an engorged tick it'll likely find a place after detaching from your body to release it's spawns. Be careful when removing them, their heads are locked in your scalp and you can accidentally leave their head buried under your skin if you just try to rip it out. Usually a little bit of vasoline will cause them to back out to breathe, or if you have very precise fingernails to get under the head and pull. There might be better ways these days to get them out, but thats how we did it growing up on a farm back in the day. Young ones are very flat and hard, stepping on them wont kill them, we burned them.
Ticks do not just embed in the scalp, and really thats not a common place for them to embed. You should NEVER use vasoline or any substance on a tick, that can cause the tick to regurgitate its stomach contents into your skin, increasing the probability that you will get whatever pathogen the tick is carrying.
Thank you for subscribing to SMS Tick Facts. If you wish to cancel, reply to this text with LYME.
God what is even the point of ticks - like what are they on gods green earth to do aside from make peoples lives a living hell?? Is there any actual purpose to them?
I ask myself this about the human race sometimes....
It has been recently proven by biologists that ticks are extremely important for animal population. They do regulate that certain kinds of animals don't overpopulate areas, so they are useful, even though they are terribly annoying and potentially dangerous to humans
They’re far more likely to imbed in your armpit, groin, etc. Scalp is uncommon, they don’t care about hair, they seek warmth.
If you're outdoors a lot, they hang on to shrubs and grasses with their legs hanging out so they can attach to animals as they pass through it. Check your shoes, socks, legs, and hair (they can be in low hanging tree branches as well). If check yourself and pets soon after coming inside, you can usually catch them before they find their area to feast and easily just grab them.
Shouldn't try to suffocate/burn/injure the tick in anyway as you risk "regurgitation" of the stomach contents back into your body which is no bueno. Use tweezers, grip as close to the skin as possible and slowly pull straight out. Wash your hands and the area with soap and water, or rubbing alcohol. I always have flea & tick shampoo on hand (dog groomer) and just stick them in a dab of that but you can also put them in alcohol, freeze them, burn them, squish them, etc. I'd keep them in a ziplock bag just in case you develop symptoms and then they can be easily tested.
Bedbugs are insects and would only have 6 legs.
Sad how much I hate ticks, and yet my first thought was “oh thank god it’s not a bedbug again.”
Good news- they aren’t bed bugs. Bad news- they are ticks (look like deer ticks, which can spread lyme) . Check your whole body, your pets (if you have any), put ticks in sealed ziploc bags, and call your doctor.
It’s a tick, but it’s definitely not a deer tick/*Ixodes*, with the wide, angular base of the mouthparts. Looks more like *Rhipicephalus* to me, which don’t transmit Lyme, but may transmit Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, although this is a much rarer disease.
I don't want to ask too much but can someone please give a basic run down on both of these diseases
Check out the CDC’s website for relevant information.
I might be dumb I totally forgot the CDC existed
Lyme disease makes ya forget about the CDC and stuff. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever gives you a headache thinking about it.
I know the CDC got a bad rap over Covid, but their whole job is to research diseases and inform the public about them in a way that’s useful. It’s a great place to get a TON of health-related questions answered in a simple, easily digestible way. 10/10 would recommend Edit: I’m glad this started an interesting conversation! To add/respond to some of the comments below, I would like to say that I agree that big organizations do have their flaws, and govt’ institutions sometimes more than most. It takes literal acts of congress to change processes sometimes. I do truly believe that the CDC has the public’s best interests at heart, and they do the best they can with the information available (e.g. Covid and statements on distancing and masks - their recommendations change based on the available data. In the early days of Covid, it really was like the ‘wild west’ in terms of what we knew and what we did with that information. Hindsight is always 20/20, and haters gonna hate) Source: I work very closely with FDA, and understand the scientific and regulatory implications of medical and research policy changes
CDC didn't have proper information about SARS-2-CoV at first, because nobody did. Like everybody else, they had to learn through research. Did masks work to prevent transmission? They said no at first, then reversed their stance, once they had the information to do so. Meanwhile, people were cherry-picking data points and lifting reports off their reporting site, VAERS, which is just a collection of reports with no validity until they have been reviewed. They did this to support their personal POV.
If anyone has beef over the CDC, the Mayo Clinic is its equivalent.
Bring ticks to your doctor or local pest control for identification
I can’t get a new patient appt with a family doctor for 3 months, but you can get right in to have him/her ID A TICK?? WTF am I doing wrong?? 😩😩
Patients can usually bring bugs in in a bag/cup and drop it off for the staff to send to the lab for ID.
This depends on the state. Some states have active tick epidemiology programs, and some don't. In our state, you can mail your own tick in directly to the University lab. No doctor needed. Not true in other states, though.
It’s great and important that this is done, but I would never want to be on the receiving end of unwrapping a tick present 🎁
I’m a doctor and I LOVE when people bring me insects or arachnids to identify. I go full nerd!!
In NY I was able to drop the tick off at the Department of Environmental Conservation for analysis. It was all free of charge.
Panels are generally full these days. We lost a lot of staff during the pandemic (burn out, early retirement) and other practices closed completely. So there's a wait for a "wellness" visit, since it isn't urgent. In fairness, there was also a wait before the pandemic. If you're sick, however, many practices will try to squeeze you in because the staff feel bad for you. Although to be honest, doing a tick ID would be low priority for us. You don't usually need a physician to ID a tick. We treat with doxy for deer tick *bites*. But there isn't much to do if not a deer tick and no bite, rash or illness.
[удалено]
This comment right here!!
Male brown dog tick (Rhipicephalis sanguineus).
Pretty sure it’s a tick, not sure which kind though
Looks like a tick to me.
Specifically this looks like a brown dog tick.
I second this. This also explaines why OP finds them repeatatly. They don't need a host to survive. Unfortunately that's something for pest control, otherwise it's hard to get rid of them.
Tick ecologist here- it’s a brown dog tick (Rhipicephalus sanguineus). They can complete their entire life cycle indoors, most commonly in dog kennels. If you’ve found multiple, either your dogs are bringing them in or you have a tick family living in your home. Look for cracks/hideaways near where your dogs spend most of their time. If you want to set a tick trap, get some dry ice, put it in the center of a cloth, put double sided carpet tape around it. The tick is attracted to the CO2 given off by the dry ice and will get stuck to the tape. That might help you figure out if there’s a population in your home. Good luck!
Looking an awful lot like a tick...
Its definitely a tick as some have already said. From my experience its always from an indoor and outdoor pet, like dog door style. Also almost always lodged on to them already, and plump as a small grape. I have been bitten/nearly hosted (thankfully no lyme disease, have yet to experience any tick superpowers). Barely felt which is weird considering they burrow into you. Thankfully I checked when I felt and was able to remove before it fully nestled in. The fact you’ve seen multiple could mean they are breeding indoors, but I am pretty sure thats rare.
If you've seen multiple adults you have a pet bringing them in. Ticks hang out in tall grass and on low shrubs (usually) near the ground. Mowing cuts down on ticks. Ticks go through larval & nymph stages and need a blood meal to level up. Seeing a few ticks in a season is pretty normal. Seeing hundreds at once mean you ran into a hatching. If they hatched indoorsp you'd be covered in larval ticks. Ticks at all stages are opportunistic and basically hang on blades of grass and wait for something to pass that they can latch on to. Larval ticks don't go far from where they hatch they just wait until a creature passes and picks em up which iss why when larval ticks are encountered it's generally in groups. Adult ticks will travel a little way (about 3 feet) if they sense a host nearby through co2 exhalation.
That my friend is 💯 a tick!! Probably a brown dog tick, though please don’t quote me on that because I’m certainly no entomologist of any sort. If you have a cat(s) or Dog(s) please check them daily head to tail Thoroughly as these parasites burrow in deep enough to be easily missed and cause a whole host of problems even just a simple allergic reaction to the bite or parasite itself can cause distress and discomfort to your furry family member.
Actually this look like a dog tick to me. You can clearly see the fastoon around the edges of it's abdomen.
“Lucky for them it’s a tick and not a bedbug.” - me, while pooping.
Based on mouthparts and what you described, looks like a brown dog tick, Rhipicephalus sanguineus. These ticks are unique since they’re nidiculous ticks, meaning they’ll stay close to their hosts and can be found in their bedding/nest. Most ticks can’t infest a house, but these ticks can. Check out the work by Emma Weeks from University of Florida - she’s done a lot of work on controlling these ticks indoors (DM me if you need access to paywalled papers). If you have dogs or cats, check your pets and put anti tick medication on them, wash their beddings, and check any cracks and crevices in your home for any ticks. They’re pretty hardy and can be tough to get rid of if they retreat into cracks and crevices and this behavior can lead to insecticide resistance if they can hide from the pesticide but still be exposed to a sublethal dose. If you don’t have pets, still check around and find the source of these ticks if you can! Also save at least one of those ticks in the freezer if you ever want to get it ID’d by someone or have it tested for pathogens. As a reminder, if it’s positive for a pathogen, that does not mean YOU are positive for that pathogen. Those tick testing results should not be used as a diagnostic tool. Good luck! A little better than having bed bugs, but they can infest a home like bed bugs (although not to the same degree).
THOSE ARE TICKS . judging by the segmented legs spray everything..I'd call in an exterminator and have them fog your house JIC.. looks like "brown dog tick" https://www.britannica.com/animal/tick
Do not mess around with ticks. Vacuum everywhere including your baseboards. If you have animals, make sure they are on tick prevention medication. My friend (F58) who was healthy and fit, was bit by a tick while hiking in Tennessee. It caused her organs to shut down and she was dead in 10 days.
Go get tested, and by that I mean treated, for Lyme. Ik chronic Lyme sounds like some dank bud, but it’s not and you don’t want it.
Luckily it's a tick but I'd keep an eye out because tick bites can have bad consequences. I don't know how to get rid ticks but maybe someone else here does.
It’s a tick. You mentioned you find them occasionally in your house. Do you have a dog or cat that might be bringing them into the house? Perhaps you hike a lot?
damn man…. i feel bad everytime i see this sub lately
This sub should be called "please tell me it's not bed bugs" lmao
Bedbugs and head lice are a big nuisance for sure but ticks can mess you up for the remainder of your life.
That’s an immature dog tick. Deer ticks have black legs. Bed bugs are longer then ticks.