Friday, June 26, 2009

tick contamination

You know what sucks? Waking up after a nice, restful night to find a tick climbing up the wall right over my head. It makes me wonder what else was crawling around in my hair last night.

I've left ticks in hotel rooms all over the place. Usually, though, I catch them and/or get rid of them in the shower if they don't get left behind in my clothing. If they're on my clothing, I'll find them crawling around the floor.

I did some work in a resort area, and since I was working in the off-season, I was able to stay in a fancy hotel. I was somewhat chagrined when I took my stuff off, took a shower, and came back to find several ticks crawling through the carpet. Over the month of fieldwork, I'm afraid that I utterly contaminated the hotel - not intentionally, but the damn things get everywhere. Especially the little tiny ones that are the Lyme's disease carriers.

I'll have to keep an eye out for flu-like symptoms and joint pain...

3 comments:

Elli said...

Turns out that ticks have to be on you for >24 hrs, fill up with your blood (which makes them easier to find), and then try to disengage before they'll hit you with the infectious diseases. Nice when you can use your wilderness first responder training to answer geo-related issues :)

Unbalanced Reaction said...

Wow, I didn't know that, Elli! That (sort of) makes me feel better.

Jennie said...

Oh problems! I've always been able to throw my tick invested items into a washer so that the ticks can't contaminate my house. Though I did find a tick on my car stereo once and got completely paranoid that ticks were all in my car.