Guest Author - Vance Rowe
There are so many urban legends that we come into contact with almost on a daily basis and do not even realize this. Let me give you an example of one. This one involves the dreaded arachnid we know as the evil and deadly...TICK!!!
Did you know that there is an urban legend involving the old wives' tale of how to remove a tick from your skin? I guess I never before considered it as an urban legend. Then, I thought about if there are different ways to safely remove a tick, then surely there are several ways of beating a breathilyzer test. When I found out that you cannot beat a police breathilyzer exam by sucking on pennies, I thought that maybe you cannot remove a tick by drowning it in cooking oil.
I found the latter to be true this very day. My nephew saw that his dog had a tick on his shoulder area and when my girlfriend was going to pull it off with her fingers and a piece of toilet paper. I told her not to do it that way because you may not get the head out. It may break off during extraction. I told her that she needed to strike a match and touch the hot head of the burned match to the tick's back end and then he will simply back out of where he is and you can then safely remove him. The funy thing is that by the time I had told her all of that, she had already removed the tick complete with head and all. “This isn't the first time I've ever removed a tick.” she said to me as-a-matter-of-factly.
“To the Internet.” I replied heroically and powered up my netbook.
I was shocked to find out that she was basically right in what she did. If you burn a tick with a match, a hot needle, pour oil on it, pour nail polish remover on it or some other old wives' tale about tick removal, you may be doing more harm than good. While these remedies may work, the tick reacts more fervently when surprised like this so before it dies or backs out of the skin, it will become more active and will deposit more saliva and tick stew into the blood stream, thereby increasing the chance of contracting Lyme Disease, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever or whatever other disease or sickness you can contract from the filthy little beasts.
According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the best way to remove a tick is by pulling it out with a pair of tweezers or by fingers and tissue paper and grasping it close to the skin and pulling it out and make sure to pull it straight out. If you twist it or crush the body, then the head may break off and remain active in the blood stream while it can. Then the organization says to save the tick's body in a plastic jug of some sort in case it is needed later on if the tick's host gets sick.
It is imperative that you do try and remove the tick by any means necessary because the longer the tick goes on drinking the blood and increasing the chance of the tick spreading disease.
