This is what I've been in the habit of doing when I detach an engorged, or other regular looking tick from my cats---- I use that O'Tom tick remover hook tool, grab the engorged tick off of the cat(s) and put it in a ziplock baggie. I then put the sealed baggie on the wall next to my trash cans. I cannot fathom the thought of throwing the damn tick away, thinking that something in the trash can might rip thru the baggie, releasing the tick so that it could possibly wander away and find me somehow.

Strange thought process, I know, but I have only recently come to the point where I can purposely even remove a tick once I find one on the cats. Even found I could do it when the neighbors dog comes to visit.

So, having described what I do when I find a #$%^ tick on the cats, Anyone, Barb? know if, once the engorged tick has been put into the plastic ziplock baggie, will it suffocate and die, eventually, or will it lay eggs in the bag (if it's pregnant) and will those #$%^ eggs make it out the ziplock at the top of the baggie because they're so small?

Am I nuts?

Yup, I knew that .

But, in all fairness, I'm only trying to get rid of the pestulence before they get me. I have removed dead ticks, and live ticks off of both my Frontlined cats. All the ticks go into a baggie, to wait on the concrete wall, until trash day, ,when I wheel the trash cans out to the front of my house, deposit all my collected ziplock baggies I have filled with various ticks into those trash cans.

I have smashed a few ticks in the bags, for effect for both my sons to watch. I tell them when they see the blood smearing in the bag, see that blood? It's most likely filled with hundreds of thousands of spirochetes, the ones that cause Lyme, and all our problems. I hope one day they won't give me that sideways "she's gone off the deep end" look, probably when they're taking microbiology and looking under the microscope at some spirochete or something (I remember doing that when I was in nursing school)

Ok, enough rambling about here. Can anyone answer my question about whether it's beyond stupid to put the ticks in a baggie? Should I leave them crawling alive in the baggie, or smash them, and hope that I'm not releasing a billion little tick babies that may somehow escape the baggie?

Flushing them down the toilet seems like such a final removal type way to get rid of the #$%^ ticks, but I remember reading Tincup or someone saying that the ticks can CRAWL BACK UP OUT OF YOUR TOILET. Yeesh, what a thought.

Tuesdays thought for the day!!!
Julie

Hello, I just read your post and can understand your frustration with these little critters.

What I do when I find them is put them in a jar with some "nail polish remover" sure does the trick!

Never will they be crawling out of that jar again! and you don't have to worry about getting it out to the trash every week. Just keep it out of reach of children.

I don't have little ones so I keep it on the top shelf of the med. cabinet.

I honestly don't believe that if I put the baggied ticks into my trash, that they'd somehow escape and "find me". I'm just of the school of thought that if you can prevent something, then, why not? I also have the heebies about the ticks getting out of the baggie, and just crawling around the area where my trash cans sit, because it is a walkway that we all pass through daily, and I suppose, if we were picking up a recycling bin (which sit on top of the concrete retaining wall near where I keep my tick baggies) and a billion little tick babies were crawling about, we could pick one up that way.

So, that's my rationale, and I'll stick to it. I will have to mull over the tick soup jar idea you posted and see if I can stand the thought of not getting rid of the critters every week in my trash can. I don't normally have a stock pile of jars that I can keep handy, so I think if I did your jar idea, I'd have to keep a lot on hand to be able to "get rid" of the tick soup juice frequently.

Isnt' it something what we all have to think of, and about?

Oh, I loved Dr. WiseA$$'s blog site. Very honest compliation of her life and times in the Lyme world. Aside from the obscenities, it's a blast to read.

How do you do it? How do you manage to continue living where you do? You said you lived on about an acre, right?

Are your children allowed outside? I forgot if you let any of the animals inside your house anymore?

About the baggy thing, I put the last one I extracted from my cat into a baggy with a wet cotton ball. I put it outside on top of our small air conditioner unit. It was fully engorged, so may have been a female. I never did look at it that closely since at that point in time, I was too freaked out to examine it. It's still sitting out there in the baggy (since November, I think), but it's dead now and I know it was alive when I put it in there. Wait, I'll go look at it now.....

Okay, here is what I saw: the engorged tick is dead, but still engorged. I can't tell if it's a female or not and I'm not about to open the baggy and turn it upside down to check.

Now, here is the strange thing. The cotton ball is covered with small black "fuzzy" things. Some are less fuzzy than others. With the naked eye, you can't tell that they're fuzzy...they look like gobs and gobs of small black specks. Kind of like pepper. So, I used my husband's super duper magnifier that he uses to examine coins with and most of the black "fuzzy" things appear as if they're mold. I hesitate to say that these are ticks because they seem too big to be larvae or even nymphs. Could possibly be nymphs, but I don't see how they could have survived to the nymphal stage in the ziplock bag.

However, they might be mold-covered eggs. It wouldn't surprise me one bit. The most convincing thing to me about this is that this isn't just regular mold - or any kind of regular mold that I've ever seen. There are most definitely a whole heck of a lot of "specks" all over the cotton ball, not blended together at all, but definite specks. I would think if it was simply mold, it would have grown like mold typically grows and this is not typical mold.

My husband and I both think that there is no way nymphs could escape the baggy since it's has a freezer lock seal on it, but who knows for sure? They certainly couldn't "bite" their way out - the baggy is way too thick for that.

Anyway, that is what I saw. I wish I could explain it better, but did the best I could. Oh, yeah, and nothing was alive in that baggy no matter what is in there ... unless of course it IS mold. Mold is a living thing after all, isn't it?

On an aside note, I've been reading Dr. WiseA$$'s blog, too. Got it bookmarked as a matter of fact. I think the obscenities fit in the commentary quite nicely. As a matter of fact, if it were me writing the blog, I'd probably add a LOT more!

A friend of mine uses rubbing alcohol in a jar with a lid. You drop the tick into the alcohol and seal the jar. I don't think it takes too long and it is likely you don't even need to seal the jar because, I think, it happens pretty fast. However, just to be certain you could wait a few hours and then transfer the dead tick to a plastic baggy to throw out.

Personally, I would not put a live tick in a baggy to go in the trash. They can live a very long time on very little air and in some pretty extreme conditions. The larva are supposed to be pretty small so maybe they can get through the seal, maybe they can not. I don't know. However, I do know it is easy to tear one of those bags or to open the seal. In the simple course of going out with the rest of the trash the bag could be ripped. I would think this could put the garbage men at risk. So, see if alcohol will kill the ticks before sending them on their final tour to the dump.

Angie

what is the URL for reading Dr. WiseA$$'s blog?

I will grab a 12 pack of mason jars at Safeway on my next trip to the store. I think that and a costco size bottle of nail polish remover should do the trick. I seriously doubt I'll ever stop finding the frickin' ticks on the outside cats. I'm past my paranoia in touching the things, so I guess it'll just be part of my everyday routine tick check.

HS mommy, I truly don't know how I do it. I think just being aware of what I'm facing is most of what gets me through the day. In hindsight, I can remember 7 years ago, when we first looked at this house and property, before I knew I was harboring the Lyme, and my kids symptoms were still undiagnosed by the pedi's, that there was a brief "I wonder if there's ticks in the backyard" thought that migrated through my consciousness, but in my extreme delight in finding out that I was going to be getting into a house 5 times the size of the crackerbox I'd lived in for the previous 11 years (2 small kids, 2 large dogs, one bathroom)I just shoved that thought right into the stratosphere of my brain.

And we moved in.

And 2 years after we moved in, I found that I was infected w/ Lyme, and both kids. It took a whole YEAR after we first were getting treatment, for me to make the concrete lifestyle changes that I knew we had to make in order to avoid more tick bites.

A whole year.

Why?

I was probably in denial, but I knew without a doubt that my husband would not move from this house. He already had me pegged as a lunatic for spending all the $$ on the LLMD and abx combos that I had me and the kids on. I knew I had to make those necessary changes in order to keep my sanity.

So, I've done the creative things, tried to think outside the box, and avoid avoid avoid like crazy. What I did NOT have is a small child, like you do, one that would be so very hard to try and teach or train to stay out of the tick exposure places in a yard. I can't imagine staying where we live now, and having a child or children younger than mine were at the time I had to institute all the yards changes and neighborhood playing rules.

And even now, I have the faintest doubt that when my kids are at the neighbors houses playing, that they aren't staying entirely out of the danger zones. And here, there are plenty.

I have no inside animals, always have had the 2 outside only cats, and how I deal with even having them in my yard is Frontline Plus, I personally spray my outside yard perimeter that is fenced with Diazinon (illegal, but found it on ebay in Texas, let me know if you need links) for flea and tick reduction. That is the only way I can handle having the tick carriers, aka cats,in my space. Oh, and my rule for cat handling is that we only pet the cats with our hands, they never sit in our laps, and no body rubbing (by the cats)whatsoever. I'm happily anal about the whole cat deal, my boys certainly know how I feel about this!

I appreciate your in depth commentary on your own engorged tick and bag scenario. I would likely speculate that those black specs are baby ticks, myself. I have not seen or heard of mold looking like that. Not to say it's impossible, but I believe from your description, that those specks are very tiny ticks, I've seen them that small. I pulled one off of my sons ear when we were camping in Costanoa (tick capital of northern CA)4 yrs ago. Our last camping experience! What a doozy!

Two Angie: I know the stinkin' ticks live a long time in the baggie- I put a live one in, and out of curiosity, I did not kill it and watched it crawling in the bag for 2 straight days before garbage day. But, after reading your post, I know I will not be using ziplocks anymore, it's jars and nail polish remover or alcohol for me from here on out.

Linda: I tried to include a link for Dr. Wisea$$ blog, but it did not work. I'll keep trying, it's a great pick-me-up with loads of black humor, wicked insights.

And Cave . . . sigh. I only buy coffee in bags, no cans, that would sure save some dough, and I don't use my woodstove anymore due to lack of effort in getting the flue checked from year to year. But the thought, just the thought, of bringing a tick, dead or alive, INTO MY HOUSE still gives me the willies. Complete and total willies. Ok. there you have it. I have a touch of paranoia still coursing through my veins. As if I needed THAT right in my face, but I have to be honest here.

There are some things I know I will just never do anymore. Camp, hike through the tall green grass in the open space parks, grab my neighbors sweet kitty cats and snuggle them in my lap, let my kids sleep over at a neighbors house. It's all so disgusting and heartwrenching and anger provoking, that most days, I don't even let myself think about what I've lost, and what I've felt it's necessary to give up.

But, as a mom, I guess I just do.
Boogers.