Where You're Likely to Find Ticks
Avoid tall grass, brush, and heavily wooded areas. Walk in the center of hiking trails.
Ticks can’t fly or jump. They do not drop from trees. They cling to tips of grasses and shrubs. When a person, pet, or other animal brushes the vegetation where a tick is waiting, it quickly climbs aboard.
Ticks are found worldwide. To see where they are in the U.S., click here.
In your yard, rake leaves, trim shrubs and weeds. Keep lawns mowed short. This helps create areas where most ticks cannot survive. Pay special attention to border areas, woodpiles, stonewalls and sheds.
Create borders of wood chips, stone or any other landscaping material to serve as a barrier between tick-safe and tick-danger zones.
Removing a Tick
If you find an attached tick, use tweezers to grasp it as close to the skin as possible. Pull upward with steady, even pressure. Don’t twist or jerk the tick.
Avoid folklore remedies (“painting” the tick with nail polish or petroleum jelly, or dishwashing detergent or touching the tick with a hot match) to make it detach. The tick is cemented in place and cannot release until she has taken a full blood meal no matter what you do to irritate her.
There is a school of thought that suggests that the tick, when irritated, may regurgitate stomach contents into the wound, which could potentially increase the chances of disease transmission.
Click here to find out what else to do if a tick bites you.