[stevehawk]

Just FYI - when I lived in Northern Virginia I discovered that in my area the main transmission method of Lyme disease was actually mice. So make sure if you find them in your house that you do something about it.

Also be careful when you remove via tweezers. If you squeeze their body you're likely to cause them to regurgitate into you which almost guarantees an infection.

I use a tick removal tool (actually used it yesterday while building a fence on the wooded side of my yard) that uses a tear drop shape to try and pinch the tick at the neck minimize regurgitation.

[mnctvanj]

You can deploy "tick-tubes" to use the mouse-based-transmission to mass-murder ticks in an area.

Soak cotton balls in permethrin concentrate (you can get it on amazon) and when dry, put them in empty toilet paper tubes. Put the tubes around your yard in the spring. Mice will feather their nests with the cotton balls and the ticks will die in droves.

Also - After finding an attached tick on myself this weekend (hiking in PA, including some bushwhacking) I found the following link full of good info and somewhat comforting. Check yourself for ticks after every outing in the woods - only 1.4% chance of catching Lyme if you actually find the tick attached: https://www.uptodate.com/contents/what-to-do-after-a-tick-bi...

[MycroftJones]

This video shows an even better way to remove ticks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82n9-eAoLjE

You take a q-tip. Soak in alcohol. Use it to gently rotate/spin the tick around its axis. After a few 360 degree turns, it will release its jaws and pop out all by itself, leaving nothing behind.

[wilsonnb]

Make sure to not kill any opossums that you see too. Many people see them as pests but they eat a whole lot of ticks and while they can get lyme disease, their immune systems are pretty good at fighting it so it's not that common.

They also pretty much never get rabies, which is just cool.

[stevehawk]

I had to relocate an opossum recently and it was disappointing for that reason. Unfortunately it took up residence near my house (20ft away under a shed) and for the meantime it's a risk to a tiny puppy we have. It would not bother me if he made his way back in six months though.

[wilsonnb]

That seems like a good reason for relocation. I would probably relocate any that lived in my yard (if I had a yard at the moment) simply because I wouldn't want my two 60 pound dogs to try and "play" with it.

[baud147258]

A long time ago, I tried to remove a tick with tweezers. I failed horribly and left the head in my upper skin layer, having removed only the body. So I had to use a a rather sharp pen knife to remove the rest.

Two year later, while camping, I had to remove a handfull of ticks and a tick removal tool (shaped like a crowbar) was very usefull.

[baud147258]

Of course I would recommend everyone to use proper tools to deal with ticks, if that's not clear from my comment. There's less risk to leave pieces behind.

All over, I must have remove a dozen of ticks, but luckily I've never caught anything.

[mrfusion]

It’s funny. I researched it and I could never find a good answer why you shouldn’t suffocate them with vasoline to remove them. All the articles just say it’s better to remove them ASAP even if you squeeze them.

[jjeaff]

Vasoline is not very effective and sometimes just results in the tick dieing while latched on.