Scratching myself to sleep

[topum]

So today after dinner I spent my time pulling ticks out of my legs. That was fun. Most of them are dark brown or black and relatively easy to see but some of them are really really tiny and close to the colour of the human skin and those are almost impossible to spot before the area around their bite becomes somewhat inflamed.

My host's wife asked me to throw the ticks I pulled out into the grass outside and not kill them, most of them were probably alive after I pulled them out. She told me that there were billions of them here at this time of the year anyway so killing this dozen of those little guys was not going to help with not getting them in the future anyway and it would be pointless to kill them. Instead, they just would educate me how no to get them in the future. Ok, I saw her point and I did release those little bastards back into their natural habitat. I did not feed them but I did not kill them either.

The locals apparently do not get them because they know where to walk and where not to walk (the lower road from the northern side of the forest, etc) and at what time (like just before sunset, after the rain, etc). We have now sat through the lecture on how to avoid getting them here in the future too. I was told that almost all of them here are harmless, particularly if you pull them out within the first 36 hours after getting them.

Now every 5 minutes I get itchy somewhere I cannot see, like the back of my neck and get convinced that I can definitely feel a tick there and I keep asking everyone to check if it is indeed there. It never is.

Comments

[found-world.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's nasty. I'm sorry.

[topum.livejournal.com]

I am quite easygoing about such stuff, I have been bitten by all kinds of weird creatures. What I would do if I was in Copenhagen or somewhere in Western Europe is go to a hospital to get them removed professionally and then have all of them tested in a lab for Lyme and other nasty stuff some of them could carry. But I was told that nobody would do it here for me. Just pull them out with tweezers, dental floss or credit card and forget about them, they told me. So I did it the Moldovan way. When in Rome, ha ha.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

The few times I've had one, I just take them off quickly with a ticktool, same as I do with the dogs and cats: ike the Moldovans, so far I have survived...

I believe the key thing is not to squeeze the body: presumably the dental floss/ tweezers has the same effect. Maybe I should be taking them more seriously.

I'm glad we don't get squillions of them here. They are horrid.

[topum.livejournal.com]

I am happy with your / Moldovan way too so far.
There are not that many of them here too I think. They are very localised to a couple of particular humid, tall grass, shady places here and very easy to avoid. They are also most active only a couple of short periods in the year here I think. I just hit the worst spot at the worst time hard in my shorts. I could not understand why a couple of local kids from the neighbouring village where shouting at me and waiving their arms and laughing when they saw me walking through that place. They actually came to our hosts' house to tell them that they saw the crazy Dane rolling around naked in the ticks breeding ground for some reason and that I definitely need to be de-ticked asap. But I was already sitting there pulling the ticks out by that time.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

Around here, ticks mostly hang out on tall weeds, waiting for something to brush through. We deal with them in large part with DEET, and in lesser part by tucking our long pants into our socks so they have to crawl all the way up to our beltlines to get to our skin.

Lyme is pretty nasty. There are several other pretty nasty tick-borne illnesses, although they're unlikely to be resident in Moldovia.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

My minnesota friends add: white socks, white pants. That way you can see 'em. One guy said his record was somewhat over 100 per hour, evicted mechanically from his pants.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Oh man, 100 of them. I pulled out 14 out of my legs and 3 out of my arms. Those were the ones that actually bit into me. Our hosts took away all my clothes when I came to de-tick.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

EEEEEEEWWWWWWW man that's a lot of ticks.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Imagine my reaction when I saw them. I also never had one before.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

I would be like you: itchy for hours afterwards.

[(Anonymous)]

Here too. I was told that they almost never get higher than 1 meter off the ground here. I walked through the tall grass in a damp shadowy area at the edge of the forrest just an hour before sunset in my shorts and that place is their home apparently and they are very active early evening.

[topum.livejournal.com]

That was me. Commented before I logged in.