Ticks, ticks, and snakes

coasterqueen wrote: My most favorite creatures ever. Our beloved cat used to kill all the snakes on our land so I never had to see them. Well now she's gone, I've already seen one. Sunday I was weeding the landscaping around the house and bent down to pull a weed and there was a lovely large black snake. EWWW!!!!!!!!!! I had to keep my composure, though, because the girls were weeding with me and I don't want them scared of every living thing.

Then this morning Kylie says "mom, I have a bump on my head. isn't that weird?" So I look and yep, sure enough it was a tick. I told her "hmm, that is weird. we'll have daddy look at it when he gets out of the bathroom." So he helped me get it out. Then I had him check Megan's head and he said it was all clear. We get to the sitters this morning and Megan says "mom, I have a bump on my head." Surely she's just saying that because she likes to repeat her sister, right? Nooooooo. She had a tick on her head. So we take her back home, get the tick out, take her back to Terri's and go on our way to work. I spent the rest of the drive to work checking my head for ticks. Ryan was laughing the whole way.

I despise ticks and snakes. If we've already found 2 ticks, this is going to be a long season.

luvmykids replied: If it makes you feel any better, I have you beat We've had four ticks, one on each dog, one on DH and one on Colt One green snake in the yard, one brown snake right at the mailbox (the kids thought it was a copperhead, thank God it wasn't!), and the one I ran over

I'm already freaking out completely....didn't help when the landlord told me how many rattlers he kills on the ranch every summer.

~Roo'sMama~ replied: Ugh! I don't know how you managed to not scream when you saw that snake! *shudder* We've found a couple ticks on Andrew and Allie too, but only one was attached. We haven't found any more since we put the advantix on our dog though, so that must be where they were getting them from. I was wishing for a while there that there was some kind of formula I could rub onto my kids' necks to keep the ticks away.

lisar replied: We killed 11 snakes just in May. And dh had a few ticks but none on us thankfully

coasterqueen replied:
Ryan said that same very thing this morning. He said "I think we should put Frontline on the kids". Of course he was joking, but it was funny.

coasterqueen replied: Lisa and Monica - keep the snakes away from me!!!! Ewww.... I know I'm going to find more now that Smokey is gone. I've watched her kill several this year, but she gets them in her mouth before I encounter then, so that is fine with me. But not anymore

CantWait replied: Ahhhhh GROSS!!!!!

mom21kid2dogs replied: You might want to consider one of these things. They ROCK!! We use them at school and they make tick removal super simple!
http://www.tickedoff.com/

coasterqueen replied:
Thanks, Cheryl. I'll have to look for those. I think we are going to puff diatomaceous earth in the back yard as well. I don't even want to see ticks on any of us, let alone have to remove them anymore. Lyme disease freaks me out. And we have a ton of deer on our land, unfortunately.

Calimama replied: Oh gosh! Ticks are so gross! How do you get them off? You can't just brush them off right?

coasterqueen replied:
You heat up a needle or something like that, stick it on the head of the tick, and pull it off with tweezers....that's what we did at least. It doesn't really hurt to get one off, either. The girls were more scared that they were on their head, than getting it off.

Calimama replied:
I don't blame them. I'd be scared too.

HuskerMom replied: We haven't gotten any ticks, thank goodness. I was in the backyard with Dh the other day and I saw 4 snakes in about 5 minutes. But they were minding their own business and stayed about 5 feet away from me so I didn't care. I HATE ticks though!

My3LilMonkeys replied: We are at 5 so far this year - 2 that were not attached yet and 3 that were (Brooke had 2 and Madison 1). Madison's DH found and was not able to successfully remove the entire tick - it was burrowed in too far - so she had to go to the Drs. and have it scraped out.

jem0622 replied: I have found 3 ticks on Olivia (one on her scalp also) and 1 on Hannah. No snakes thank heavens. We've seen them by the river during fishing but not our yard. Eeps!