Ticks

[Charlesaf3]

Deet works.

Yet to encounter a chigger in Va I'm pleased to say.

[nstjohn]

I might be wrong, but I think the tick population has a lot to do with the type of trees. I've always thought that pine trees attract more ticks. I'm in NC & live near a forest of pines. Ticks are a bad problem. I've tried many products for my dogs & the best I've come across is Virbac Preventic Tick Collars. They are expensive, but they do a good job.

[SmartMoney]

I grew up in Vienna and as a child remember a tick infestation in my childhood home, likely from the family pet. I'm sure it took chemicals no longer legal, but as a 10 year old, petrified to fall asleep, it was something I carried with me into adulthood. For a period of a week, we kept finding them on walls, furniture, on us. We must have had a couple mammas hatch their brood. I still shiver thinking about it. (This was not an apartment or multi-family either, a SFD neighborhood on the backside of Westwood Country Club).

Fast forward, to age 19 or 20, heading to bed a little tipsy (okay, not far off from falling down drunk after a night of cards), I was laying in bed and felt something on my stomach. I got my fingernail under the critter and ripped it off, while screaming to my husband to turn on the light. I sat up, and had blood pouring out of a wound about 3 inches above my navel. I ripped off a mole. Took a while to stop the bleeding, lol. By the time I got to the doctor the next day, they didn't want to stitch - would only had been one stitch anyway, was not a large one wound, they gave me a shot, a lecture on consuming too much alcohol and home I went, to a bed looked like I'd been stabbed.

So, yes, ticks can be a problem in more ways than one. Don't drink while picking off ticks.