Here's a simple and easy way to remove a tick if you don't have a tweezers handy, but you do have a loose thread from your clothing.
Ticks are everybody's "favorite" parasite. They just might cause more consternation and compel more worry than do grizzly bears or losing your car keys while boating.
If you go outside at all it's practically inevitable that at some point you're going to have a tick stuck to you, drinking your blood and potentially leaving you with some indescribably crappy disease. But if you can discover the little beasties before they engorge themselves on your bodily nectar you can safely remove them with no harm done.
Here is one clever way to remove a tick that's attached itself to you when you have no tweezers.
This trick with the thread works on the same principle as a Tick Twister. You secure the tick in the loop of the thread, and then you wind the thread until it spins the tick right out of your skin.
I don't think it could be any easier to remove a tick with even a tweezers.
So the next time you're trekking through the long grass and you have a loose thread hanging from your sweater or shirt hem, leave it there! It may come in handy a little later when you need to remove one of the nasty little blood-sucking vermin.
Make sure to do all of the things necessary to preventing and/or spotting ticks that get on you: spray your clothes with Permethrin, wear lightly colored clothing, tuck your pants in, and check yourself over when you get home.
Like what you see here? You can read more great articles by David Smith at his facebook page, Stumpjack Outdoors.
NEXT: Biting Insects to Watch out for in the Field: Part I
