They were sucking my blood. Crawling on my skin. Hiding in my hair. Clinging to my clothes. It was the worse tick attack in my life.
I grew up with ticks in Maryland, mostly burrowed into our dogs, but I had never encountered such eagerness for my blood as I found while bird-watching on the e
dges of lowland grassy meadows and deciduous trees east of the Cascades.
I discovered the problem when I got back in the car and saw two on my hand looking for a patch of skin into which they could drive their mouthparts. Jumping out, I took a longer look. My skin started crawling as I spotted more of these spider cousins (ticks are not insects) that are found in every U.S. state.
I drowned the parasites while scrubbing in the shower.
I’m not paranoid about getting a tick-borne illness such as Lyme disease. The longer a tick feeds, the more likely it is to transmit a disease if it is carrying one.
It’s more an issue of having to pick them off, easier when small and crawling, less appealing when they have ballooned with blood. They can be as small as the head of a pin to a quarter-inch.
Ticks have heat-sensing organs on their front legs. They sit on leaves and grasses, holding on by two legs with the other barbed legs waiting for a potential meal to walk by and brush against their perches.
Once aboard, they search for the right feeding spots. They pierce (not bite) the skin with barbed mouthparts and gorge themselves from tiny blood vessels. If they don’t like the restaurant, they’ll drop off and wait.
A secreted gluelike substance helps to keep them in place. The females must feed for up to several days, the males far less. Once the female is feeding (several hours to several days, depending on various factors), it expands to hold the blood and releases pheromones to attract males to do what male mates do while the female keeps feeding.
The ticks can then drop off and soon their eggs start a four-phase life cycle.
Picking them off requires a bit of common sense. Don’t use your bare fingers (remember the disease factor). Use a tweezers and grasp them as near to the skin as possible. Pull the tick straight out. Or use something as a barrier between tick and fingers and pull them off.
If the mouthparts break off, remove those too. Don’t squish the tick. A civilized killing would be to drop the tick in alcohol. On the trail, a lit match will do the trick.
Now wash your hands with soap and water.
Here are other points to ponder:
•Only a few kinds of diseases are tick-transmitted in this state.
Take extra precautions through August by wearing light-colored long pants and a long sleeved shirt. Tuck your pants into your socks so that you can more easily hunt the tiny blood-suckers.
Use insect repellent with 20 percent to 30 percent DEET.
Hikers should check each other at the end of an outing.
Get a turkey. Researchers say that wild turkeys are the main predator of ticks and an adult can eat up to 200 ticks a day.
Who would have thought?
Try the Tri: It’s not too late to register for the July 10 SheROX Triathlon Series’ stop in Federal Way. The all-woman event is the fastest-growing sprint-distance triathlon series in the country with eight U.S. stops plus Bermuda.
Participants range from 18 to 68. JoAn Reynolds of Snohomish, 68, who ran her first marathon at 55, will participate in the triathlon.
This is the first year that SheROX has come to the Northwest. Its popular free Mentor Program connects participants with experienced female triathletes who provide tips and encouragement.
Women can register online through July 7, and in person from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. July 9 at the SheROX Expo at Steel Lake Park, 2410 S. 312th St., Federal Way. Information: www.ocrf.org.
Columnist Sharon Wootton can be reached at 360-468-3964 or www.songandword.com.
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