mushrooms and tics

[kevin]

Hello everybody Im from eastern iowa in quad cities area . Im finding grey shrooms and MANY ticks. MY question is what is a good tick repellent and I think they are all over in my truck how do I get them out of my truck and will washing cloths in washer kill these gross things.

[vetspet(ind)]

there are several types of ticks in ohio and indiana...wood ticks ..dermacentor variablis have an ornate scutum or shell on their middle section...brown base and cream colored striping...these require dirt and soil to multiply but could survive in your truck or cloths....ticks do not generally infest your truck or local environment such as fleas do because their eggs do not survive in a truck or home....the other main tick is the deer tick...which is very small and not decorated on it's scutum...it has black legs ixodes species...it also does not multiply in a truck or home but can live in those environments...just does not multiply there...remember these ticks can transmit lymes disease...just had a client come in with a black legged tick and he had a huge purple lesion or bullseye at the site of attachment....first time i ever saw the sign of a bullseye as dogs do not get them (or we just dont see the bullseye beneath all the fur)....the only tick which can infest your truck and home is the brown dog tick...ripecephalus sanguinious...i think is the correct spelling...its been 25 yrs since i had to know the latin spelling....it lives in the south east i think and not in ohio....generally most veterinarians have some sort of pyrethrin sprays which are low toxic to people but generally kill ticks well....some people are allergic to pyrethrins but their toxicity is very low...steve

[vetspet(ind)]

oops....iowa would probably be the same as indiana and ohio...steve

[delque]

garlic seems to keep ticks from stickin, they will crawl around but wont stop to stick. that might seem like one of those old wives tales, but it does seem to work. i spend the money and carefully put on good strong repellent too,all around belt area,down around shoes-really put it heavy on the hat-im scared to death of Lyme, have a relative that had it,it isnt pretty. went to a mushroom festival, and in talking to othere shroomers found that they too use garlic as a preventative. chew a raw clove a day during mushroom season. you wont be such a social outkast if you get your close ones to do the same-just dont go out in public in a group-:)

[vetspet(ind)]

can't say for people because i'm an animal doc but several yrs ago it was popular to use garlic and/or yeast to ward off the fleas...well a university vet school went and ran some double blinded studies on combinations of yeast...activated/inactivated and garlic....put 50% of the dogs on a placebo (sugar pill) and the other 50% on yeast/garlic combos...put 50 fleas on each pet for i think 6 wks...at the end of each wk they would count how many fleas were on each pet and record it and put 50 new ones on for the 6 wk testing....the end results showed no significant reduction in two out of the three groups and the group that showed a reduction had a very small percent benefit...don't remember the exact numbers but they were not impressive....purdue did the same thing with the sonic flea collars which were popular several yrs ago and at the end of 6 wks the control group...which had the batteries removed retained an average of 96% of their fleas whereas the ave in the battery-intact group retained an ave of 97% of their fleas!!! they tried three different sonic collars....to the best of my knowledge no such studies have been done on ticks...i had so many clients say to me that the garlic and yeast and sonic collars worked for fleas...yet i saw many failures in every day practice...what it amounted to is that those who believed the garlic/yeast/sonic collars worked just did not get "hit" by fleas....again , i am not aware that the ticks have been studied...i believe they detect humans or other hosts in the same way as do fleas...co2 is detected as you approach them and the fleas just begin to jump when they sense co2 in hopes of finding you...the ticks climb onto grass or whatever and supposedly start waving their legs in order to attach to clothing....i'm pretty sure of the co2 theory....steve

[BigBadBucky]

Haven't had time to get out shroomin here in SW WI. I think it is going to be a bad tick year. My nephew was playing in his yard in town and picked up one. We've had a child pick one up on the playground at school (unless she had been carrying it awhile). We also had a conservation field trip into the woods/creek and had a few kids with them on.

[smiley]

I HATE ticks. Really, really bad. I don't go out in our woods during tick season...ever, but, I have always wondered if a flea and tick collar would work. A person could put it around their ankles. It works for animals. What do you think vetspet?

Lisa

[DELGUE]

IOWA-I Outha Went Around--am from Iowa City- We have lots of shrooms and tics around here too. Dough Us plowboys aint too sofisticated,a few indeed went on to graduate from high school and even some have went on to University(Wheeeeeedoggies). We heah like to pluck dem tics out of Our bodys,use a match to torture and kill ticks in front of children! Some have spoken bout the importance of twice blind studys,exacting percents and so on, Us Sodbusters say, "pay attention fool"{! Dam we are ignorant!
---Ah say, EAT,Ah say EAT,a raw clove of garlic in the morning and another at night---the ticks wont quit gettin on You,in fact they will leap on You from 20 yards or so,Yup thas rite, but they wont put the suck tube in Your because, well, in Syentific Terms, Ya'll smell bad! You will feel them crawing round real frantic like, but they wont stick Ya.
---double blind study--my acheing a##

[vetspet(ind)]

meant no insult...just thought i'd say what i did know about fleas...but ticks are definitely a different critter and much harder to defend against....i do know that the garlic was not effective for fleas...never said a thing about ticks except that they use the same method to detect us...co2 ...the clove sounds interesting...steve...sorry if i said anything out of line..

[jr]

I work as a forester in central Minnesota. The only true way to keep ticks off is to check yourself religously while you are in the brush/forest and to strip down at the end of the day and check yourself carefully before a shower.

The ticks are generally worse in grassy areas or brushy Jack Pine forests.

Woodticks are not a big concern. You can ussually feel them when they crawl on you. It's the deer ticks you have to look out for. The nymph stage is extremely small so look carefully.

[IaCraig]

Ticks don't want to be in your truck either, just pull out the dome-light bulb and leave the doors open for a night or two and they will find their way out.

Last week I went turkey hunting, and in mid afternoon when the temps got warm the ticks were everywhere. I took about a 30 minute nap, and when I woke up first thing I saw was 8 ticks on the front of my hunting jacket. God I hate them, they were crawling on my gun and everywhere. I moved to a new spot and it didn't help much. No exageration, I quit keeping count when I picked the 50th one off of me. (none stuck to me, just crawling) I entertained myself by breaking off some old multiflower rose bush branches and using the thorns to stab & kill the ticks. I had one branch with 11 thorns and 11 ticks on it.

It's a very bad tick year. In 1 day this year I had more crawling on me than I remember in the previous 40 years all added up.

Oh yeah, I got my turkey too!

IaCraig

[delgue]

Vet i apologize for that snide remark at the end, it started out as a spoof but obviously devolved into insult-uncalled for. i read Your input on this board, and appreciate Your input.

[cisco]

Our rural home in central Minnesota is smack in the middle of ticks. I need protection even while doing yard work -- including just mowing the grass.

For me, the Bug Off insect suit (pants & hooded jacket) works well. I keep it "charged" with Permethrin, a tick repellent for use on clothing (not skin) available thru several companies (I use Duranon in a non-aerosol pump dispenser). It works well.

My aging English pointer gets Lyme vaccine boosters, but I have not taken the human vaccine because of the negative publicity it has gotten -- "vaccine worse than the disease" claims.

"Wood" tick is a misnomer, as those critters are more at home in grassy areas. Deer ticks hitch rides on almost everything from deer to field mice and chipmunks and birds. Don't trust the buddy system with deer ticks, as the adult is the size of the "D" mint stamp on a Roosevelt dime (and that's a big one).

Ticks (inc deer ticks) wander about your bod for several hours before taking a blood meal. So, be sure to shower after you may have been exposed to the critters.

Good luck.

[rd]

I have a Brittany that got the bullseye from a deer tick and later came down with lymes. The bite was on the short fur on his face where it was pretty easy to see if you dug around a little.

[GRUBBB]

Be careful... my wife got Lymes last summer. We diagnosed it
ourselves after several doctors said it was a bad spider bite.
If you get a nasty bite of any kind get to the doctor and insist
on the antibiotics right away. You need the antibiotics for
8-12 weeks to lick this thing and it never goes away. We think
she got it from sitting in the grass watching my son's ballgame.

She had many symptoms of lymes - body aches, head aches, bells palsy, and the stupid idiots still would not say it was lymes.
We finally got a doctor 8 months later to admit she had/has
lymes disease. He said we were very smart on insisting on the
antibiotics right away (even though the first doctor did'nt
want to do it).

JUST BE CAREFUL - IF YOU GET A BULLSIZE BITE GO TO THE DOCTOR
RIGHT AWAY - GET THE ANTIBIOTICS!!!!!!! this will ruin your life
if you just ignore it.

Take Care -