Sunday, May 13, 2012

How to Start Your Own Tick Collection - A Pictorial































Emma brought home 2 ticks, while Kona contributed a whopping 7 (probably not the final count). Somehow Sophie and Myles, who spent quite a bit of time sitting in the grass, had none.
After learning more than I would have liked about ticks yesterday afternoon, I can now identify a deer tick verses a dog tick, tell you which ones are males and which are females, tell you that dog ticks are what we encountered yesterday and that they do not carry lyme disease, but can spread Rocky Mt Spotted Fever, and that the 9 we found had not fed yet.  Although we gave Kona an at home hair cut/shave, I would not be surprised to find more in the next 24 hrs when they start to feed.
Gross.
As an aside, I love my Kool Ties neck cooling bandanna!
I soaked it Friday night and it is still cold today, Sunday.
Here's to another day of tick hunting.

5 comments:

  1. Where was this? I love the trails and creeks and such! Maybe not the ticks though, although I feel better now that I have an expert to go to when I end up with them (and I always do, several times a year).

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    1. Looks a bit different w/o all the Brazen peeps, huh?? Its the last 1.5-2 miles of the Diablo Challenge course at Castle Rock park. We took a lot of the side trails on the creek side of the main trail. There are a lot of caves off the main drag across the creek.

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  2. just pulled number 8 off the dogs bottom lip, I think it was dead though from the tick shampoo, it's been 36 hours and it had not started to feed yet, still flat and small...so maybe if there's any left on him they are dead?? lets hope...

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    1. Would love to see a pic of Kona's new haircut.

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    2. ha...we are keeping his grooming appt next saturday...you can see him after they fix it : )

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