8 on me
6 on my wife
7 on the boxer
5 on the brittany

last night i couldn't sleep, every 5 minutes i'd feel something crawling on me.

i'm still all paranoid today.

At one point I was really excited about living by the american tobacco trail....



[Edited on May 15, 2008 at 11:02 AM. Reason : oh and we walked maybe 300 yards.]

5/15/2008 11:01:19 AM

this is something everyone on TWW wants to know and discuss.

5/15/2008 11:02:37 AM

There might be bugs on some of you mugs

5/15/2008 11:02:40 AM

5/15/2008 11:03:00 AM

5/15/2008 11:03:18 AM

i'm a little bitch when it comes to spiders.

5/15/2008 11:03:48 AM

me and you both

5/15/2008 11:04:00 AM

my coworker has found a bunch on her and her dog too...her doctor was saying something about tick population being higher this year b/c of the drought. dunno how that's related but something we should all think about when doing outdoor activities.

5/15/2008 11:04:08 AM

I wonder what percentage of ticks ever find something to eat?

5/15/2008 11:06:01 AM

Quote :

"i'm a little bitch when it comes to spiders any bugs."

That's for me! Ugh now I feel as if something is crawling on me!!!

5/15/2008 11:06:17 AM

I hope it's way better than 27 dresses

5/15/2008 11:08:09 AM

Looking at these pictures, it looks like I got the variety pack. Definitely a few of each.

Lone Star Tick

Amblyomma americanum

Transmits ehrlichiosis, Southern Lyme (STARI), tularemia, tick paralysis,
and possibly Lyme disease and babesiosis in NC.

American Dog Tick

Dermacentor variabilis Transmits Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, tick paralysis,
tularemia, and possibly ehrlichiosis.

Brown Dog Tick

Rhipicephalus sanguineus Transmits ehrlichiosis and babesiosis, and possibly
Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

Deer Tick or Black-legged Tick

Ixodes scapularis Transmits Lyme disease, babesiosis, erhlichiosis, bartonella,
and possibly Powassan encephalitis and tick-borne encephalitis (viral).

5/15/2008 11:08:24 AM

i really and truly despise ticks more than anything else on this planet. In fact i'm even okay with roaches and will pick them out and take them outside, but ticks, fuck no. You don't see them until its too late. I'll refrain from the woods and camping this summer.

5/15/2008 11:18:38 AM

im walkin outdoors thru all types of terrain all year for work. september last year i got rocky mountain spotted fever. most fucked up part about it is at its worst (the day i went to the doc), anytime i would look to the left, i would get dizzy. really fuckin weird and almost made me sick at one point. you dont realize how much your eyes move around until literally EVERY time your eyes shift left, your head spins.

ive already picked off several biters so far this year, including one that got me good between the toes. sketchy as fuck. im gonna leave this job diseased as hell.

but yea, try picking off 5-10 every workday. the larval ones are a bitch, too. and fucking chiggers...dont get me started on chiggers.

5/15/2008 11:25:43 AM

^ speaking of chiggers -- are those the tiny pinhead size red bugs that i find on my patio and fence? when you kill them they leave behind what looks like blood...

5/15/2008 11:31:00 AM

I think the diseases that each species carries are somewhat interchangeable because I got Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever from a deer tick. I absolutely 100% detest ticks. I've stepped in a bed of ticks and my feet were covered in hundreds of tiny ticks. When I see ticks I go like this

5/15/2008 11:31:42 AM

chiggers are hell. my brother and i worked at the same golf course about 7 years apart from each other and both dealt with chiggers way too much. I went through tons of nail polish getting those fuckers out.


and ticks, i hate ticks too but i love camping and try not to let them get to me.


but to find 26 in a 300yd walk, where the fuck were you?

5/15/2008 11:34:52 AM

yeah, ticks are a lot worse this year

5/15/2008 11:35:08 AM

^^ american tobacco trail

5/15/2008 11:38:58 AM

i didnt realize the american tobacco trail was a real thing. i thought you were just glorifying tobacco road region

5/15/2008 11:40:41 AM

yeah, it's a 22 mile hiking/walking/biking trail

http://www.triangletrails.org/images/Map3-4-rules1.pdf


but looking at the map, i think we we screwed up. There's a path for the high voltage power lines, and from where we are, you gotta go down it a little ways and then you hit the trail. looking at the map, i think we went the wrong way and just walked along the power line trail. maybe the ATT itself is a little more maintained.

or at least looking at the google maps sat view, it appears that way.

5/15/2008 11:49:32 AM

wow, time to buy hats? what time of day? (or night)

5/15/2008 11:51:35 AM

Quote :

"I went through tons of nail polish getting those fuckers out. "

It's a common misconception, but they don't actually burrow into your skin. They inject enzymes that break down your skin and then feed on that slurry. By the time the red, irritated dots show up they're already gone.

5/15/2008 12:03:00 PM

holy crap!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Rsd2i-qFHK4

5/15/2008 12:11:44 PM

Quote :

"^ speaking of chiggers -- are those the tiny pinhead size red bugs that i find on my patio and fence?"

Chiggers are the larvae stage of the red bugs that you're seeing. Red Bugs won't bite you though. They're harmless.

The chigger bites you and feeds for a while. Then it drops off and grows into a red bug. By the time you feel the itch they have already dropped off. Nail polish won't help by that point. A good anti-itch cream is better.

[Edited on May 15, 2008 at 12:32 PM. Reason : l]

5/15/2008 12:32:12 PM

yeah the ATT is paved ... not exactly tick central

at least it's paved all through Durham, don't know where else it goes

5/15/2008 12:37:57 PM

^^^ that's disgusting!

5/15/2008 12:40:12 PM

^^^^ I just realized that ticks are like nature's fatties. They just eat and eat until their body gets so big that their mouth can't reach the food anymore.

5/15/2008 12:56:11 PM

Quote :

"^ speaking of chiggers -- are those the tiny pinhead size red bugs that i find on my patio and fence? when you kill them they leave behind what looks like blood..."

my intuition (yes it has failed me before) says those are BEDBUGS. only cause i just saw em on tv like 2 days ago, but i guess chigs are red too and dont live inside. no idea just typing

and they are evil / die with fire / etc

i DVR this new show called VERMINATORS, its awesome to see these master craftsmen wipe out 20 years of filth in a day

5/15/2008 1:14:24 PM

Do ticks serve any good purpose in the animal kingdom? all they seem to be capable of is spreading disease.

5/15/2008 3:39:04 PM

they help spread disease so that species dont become overpopulated ( weird purpose but it is a purpose)

5/15/2008 3:45:17 PM

bed bugs are quite a bit bigger than a pinhead.

begbugs = 4-5mm
red bugs = 0.4mm

5/15/2008 3:46:01 PM

I'm sure there's some animal that eats them

5/15/2008 3:46:07 PM

^^ i didn't realize bed bugs were that big... that grosses me out

5/15/2008 3:49:19 PM

i've never seen one in person, but i would kinda rather them be bigger (b/c they'd be easier to see). i've heard the bites are really itchy/bad.

5/15/2008 3:50:49 PM

seems like we should invent some kind of virus to kill off ticks and mosquitos, I'm sure it would turn out to be a bad idea but they don't seem that vital to the ecosystem and mosquitos kill millions of people

5/15/2008 3:53:18 PM

ttt

5/15/2008 4:14:09 PM

^^ like DDT? not a virus, but we had one that worked damn well

5/15/2008 4:19:04 PM

Lyme disease is serious business

5/15/2008 5:04:09 PM

after a 6-hour hike yesterday, i only had one and the gf only had one...i don't know about the dog because she has short black hair and darker skin, and the only ticks i found (including the one crawling on my car) were those tiny ticks, so i don't think i didn't check the dog save for the obvious spots

5/19/2008 10:44:58 AM

i had two on me after gardening this weekend. luckily they were just crawling and hadn't latched on yet

but for the whole next day i kept feeling squirmy and i was convinced there was an infestation in my hair. there was not. but i just felt gross.

[Edited on May 19, 2008 at 10:48 AM. Reason : .]

5/19/2008 10:47:31 AM

i found one on my penis once

i found myself humming the tune to that camp song "there's a tick on my dick, get it off" for the rest of the day

5/19/2008 10:49:34 AM

"latched on"

ew. refrain from saying such things plz

5/19/2008 10:49:48 AM

I am betting that you weren't on the ATT.

Even out where I live which is in West Cary, the ATT is very well maintained. There are some areas of the trail which aren't officially open yet which stretch in between New Hope Church Road then across O'Kelly Chapel Road past that subdivision where Jerry Stackhouse has a home, but even then, they are so heavily traveled that the grass isn't that tall.

If you are on the ATT in Wake or Chatham County and you can't see other people, then you probably weren't on the ATT. There is a pretty constant flow of runners, bikers, and on the Wimberly Road entrance end there is heavy horse traffic.

5/19/2008 10:49:49 AM

knock on wood, but the wife and I went to Harris Lake Saturday, which is right down the road from the American Tobacco Trail terminus. We walked halfway around the lake and did not end up with a single tick (or we just havent found one yet)

maybe it was the off we used

5/19/2008 10:52:16 AM

^^

yeah, we were going by what the people at the model home told us.

they were wrong.

we were just on the service trail for the power lines.

5/19/2008 11:01:22 AM

There used to be a dog in my neighborhood who wandered around and would just get tons of ticks on him. I'd sit there every summer on my front porch and just pull tick after tick off of him. Between that and pulling ticks off dogs at work constantly, I've gotten used to the things.

Now, fleas on the other hand, sill make me itch all over.

5/19/2008 11:33:46 AM

I despise ticks more than anything

5/19/2008 11:48:24 AM

Quote :

"but they don't seem that vital to the ecosystem and mosquitos kill millions of people"

I'd say that something that is killing millions of people and other animals is playing a pretty big role and would think things would change after you take out that influence. The natural way is that the strong survive after all.

5/19/2008 11:49:24 AM

that aside,

i'm in favor of the wholesale elimination of all arachnids.

5/19/2008 12:04:56 PM