July 27, 2010 • 39 mins
It's no surprise that ticks are one of mankind's least favorite animals. After all, they subsist on blood and spread disease. But how much do we really know about ticks? Tune in to learn more about ticks -- and how to get rid of them -- in this podcast.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know?
From house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuckers Bryant
(00:21):
and that makes this stuff you should know. If you
didn't know, now you know. Happy birthday, Josh, Thanks Chuck,
it's your birthday. It is my birthday. Four. Uh, you're
closer to me an age now for about a happy year.
And I'm six months older than Umi, which makes me
(00:41):
a year older than Umi right now? Oh she your age? Yeah,
I think it's so funny. It's okay when you say
that because you are way way older than me. But
it's funny when people say that about people who are
like a year or two different. They're like, you know somebody, um,
who's they're almost our age. It's like our age is
(01:02):
a year, maybe a year and a half on either
side of your age, maybe two years. But often think
we're the same age until you do something that reminds
me it's because we both act like we're eight. That's
where we're that's where we're on the same page. Case
in point, where's the worst place you've ever had a take? Well, Josh,
(01:22):
I know you know, because we share a commonality, and
I should a side from the show, I should warn
you I'm not going too fest up to anything on
this one before you do. I just want to give
you fair warning. Well, since I said that we share this,
I don't know what you're talking about, dude, Josh and
I have both had a tick in a very unfortunate place.
If you're a man, it was. There were different ticks though, Okay,
(01:47):
as far as we know, they good, well years apart.
Mine was last summer. This is the worst birthday? When
was your? Oh? Mine was years and years ago. Two
ticks last summer? Did you really horrible? Well, no one
was on my thigh and it's still itches and like
swells into a little bump every now and then look
(02:08):
at year later. You want to get that checked out there,
it's fine. I read up online. Sound fine? Now? I
read and they said tick bites can still bother you
for like years, evidently without lime disease or something like that. Yeah, okay,
well we're talking about ticks. Oh can I say the
inspiration for this real quick? Sure? Because I'm curious myself.
(02:31):
As you know, Josh are an official house fan the
Henry Clay people out of y Infested. They came through
town about a month ago, stayed at my house. About
a week and a half later, I get a call
from Joey, the lead singer and songwriter guy, and he said, hey,
you got ticks in Georgia. I said, sure, there's ticks
(02:51):
all over the place in this country. He got ticks
in l a And he said, Jordy, our keyboard player
has lime disease. Holy cow. He thinks he probably got
it from your house because you know, I live in
a wooded section of Atlanta, of Yeah, actually most of
Atlanta's wooded. Yeah, I think george is one of the
(03:11):
most wooded states in the country from what I understand. So,
Jordy got lime disease, and I am very sorry. Uh, Jordan,
if you got that from my house and residents, it
is likely, but although you were on tour, dude, you
could have gotten it from anywhere. Yeah, it's likely because
he's like, you know, the eighth or ninth person this
(03:32):
year to get lime disease. After you're like it, maybe
you know what that would make your house chuck a
infested haven of disease, a disease vector. Yes, let's not
get ahead of ourselves here. Here was my original intro.
You're ready. That was great, Chuck, thank you, that was great.
I was gonna say, Chuck, Josh, there is a tick
(03:56):
species called Epanoma comemodo, and say komodo wins. Eponoma komodo wins.
This is fascinating. It is a tick and it looks
almost completely like the scale of a Komodo dragon. It's
only host, the only animal that it feeds on is
(04:18):
the komodo dragon. Right. If it's sucking the life out
of a Komodo dragon, you can't tell just by looking
at it that it's a ticket. Looks like a scale.
That is the most interesting thing anyone has to say
about any tick anywhere. Okay, that's it. Uh. Does that
(04:42):
explain why the komodo dragon attack Sharon Stone's husband? Yeah,
it does. That's what I read it was mad with
in the Daily Mail. Disease. Yeah. Um, well, since we've
already gotten the most interesting part of this podcast out
of the way, Chucks um ticks story. The Henry Clay
People's lyme disease drummer, Right, keyboard player, keyboardists. And I
(05:03):
should mention you can buy the album somewhere on the
Golden Coast. You're such a chill how much what percentage
are you getting of growth sales? Nothing? Um, And and
then we've got the Eponoma Commodo ents story. Yeah, so
we're gonna get to explaining ticks just because you know,
(05:23):
what we're doing here is explaining every aspect of the universe, right, Yeah,
ticks are a part of it at a time and
everyone stuff you should know, lovers, we have to trudge
through this together. Yeah. And I kind of see this
as sort of a half kind of interesting and half
public service announcement. Yeah, because the summertime and ticks are everywhere.
(05:43):
That is great idea and a lot of people there's
a lot of misinformation out there about ticks and how
to remove them. So we're gonna say straight yes, thanks Chuck,
way to frame that. Um, there is a lot of
misinformation out there, misunderstandings, uh, specifically with ticks being insects. Right,
they are not insects. They're arachnets. They have eight legs. Yeah,
(06:06):
well they're born with six like an insect, but they
will ultimately develop eight unless they're they're um disfigured. Uh,
they are not spiders, though they are in the same
group arachnets as spiders, but spiders have segmented bodies and
ticks is just one nasty, bloody lump of a body.
(06:28):
That's right. And um, there's about eight hundred and fifty
species of ticks in the world. And uh there I
didn't either. I thought it was just like I hate
you when I hate you more, right, um, And they're
generally you can divide ticks into two general types, the
hard tick and the soft tick. And the hard tick
(06:49):
I get the impression that if there is such a
thing as intelligent design, the hard tick was like version
one point oh and the soft ticks version two point oh. Yeah,
hard ticks are They're like the philis signs of the
arachnid world. They are an example of just the single
minded ruthlessness of genes to anthropomorphize, right, yea. Their entire
(07:11):
purpose in life is to suck blood so they can
reproduce and die so they can make babies that suck
more blood. Bloodsuckers are I'm a I'm a big animal, guys,
you know, as are you? And I even save insects.
You know. I won't kill a bee, you know, or
a spider. I will usher them out somewhere else. But flies, mosquitoes, ticks,
(07:34):
and fleas no use for him. You and I are
on the exact same page. Those are the only four
insects that all kill. I won't kill a roach. Um,
I will kill roach. I won't kill kill the hell.
Roach never did anything to anybody. It's just it just
happened to be unfortunately ugly and like scuttle. That's what
it is. Roaches scuttle. That's why we don't like them.
You can't kill something for scuttling, something for being a parasite.
(07:59):
If it moved at least slowly across the room, I
probably wouldn't kill it. But the fact that they run
like they've they're like they're looting exactly makes me want
to kill them. All right, So those are insects we hate.
I don't mind roaches, don't. I'm not going on record
with you on well, what does Umi do when she
sees a roach? I try to keep roaches out of
Umi sight. Think if we ever see him, I'm like, hey,
(08:21):
you look over here, and I'm like kind of brushing
it out like yeah, um, so Chuck, we're talking about
we were talking about the differences the hard tack and
the soft take. Right, let's talk about the commonalities. Takes
a pretty basic creatures, right, Um. They are one celled organisms. Right, No,
(08:44):
they're not. I'm just trying to jazz this up a
little bit. Okay, Um, they are. The commonalities are a body,
eight legs, I think eyes on either side. Generally most
of them have eyes. Um. And then the capitulum, which
is the mouth part. Right yeah, mouth parts is actually
(09:05):
a word, a single word, mouthparts, blood, sucking and gorge.
Everything about ticks are wrong blood meal, yes, um. And
then you've got on the hard tick a something called
a dorsal shield or a scutum, right um. And that's
pretty much it, unless you want to get into the
(09:27):
details of the mouth parts, which really just to add
a little more time to this podcast, we probably should.
Now they get in your body, that's what matters. What
it was interesting though, my friend, is the legs are
covered in little spiny hairs and it has the legs
have a tiny little pincher claw at the end, and
(09:48):
they use this too, you know, climb up grass blades
and vegetation, sticks, trees, and should we'll go ahead and
talk about questing, should we? Since we're right there, why
not ticks? How? This is how the hard tick feeds.
It goes on a quest and it literally will wait
on a blade of grass with this little pincher claws
(10:10):
up in the air for somebody to brush by them,
and then they'll go hack and then they'll latch onto
your pant leg or shoestring or whatever your face. Yeah,
and then it's all over. But we'll get into questing more.
But that's what they use, a little pincher. I don't
think there's anything more to questing. Well, yeah, you're right,
um we I I gotta vta you man. We should
(10:30):
talk about the mouth parts, right, Okay, So you've got
like the little what looks like their head, that's actually
their mouth parts, right right? Um. You have two flaps
on the side that are called palps. Yes, right, that's
a beautiful illustration. You have their color shiny um. Uh
(10:53):
So the palps when when a tick gets on you
right and starts digging in, the palps moved to the side. Yeah,
they're they're not part of the eating and digging in process.
Then you get the cellisera, which are too I guess,
kind of cutting boring mouth parts and not boring like
more like boring into your skin, right, um. And then
(11:17):
you have the hypostone, right, which is this um barbed
needle like protrusion that they just go room and start
sucking blood. But it's barbed in. The hooks curve backward
toward the tick, which makes it harder to pull out
if you if you pull a tick out the wrong way,
you just pull its body right off of its head
(11:39):
and its head stays in there. We'll get into how
you can you can get rid of a tick appropriately,
right speedily, safely, Yes, with with um, the whole thing intact,
So you can do what I do and drop it
into a glass of bleach and alcohol and just let
it die. Oh, I've put mine in a ziplock so
(12:02):
I could take well, no, just in case I needed
to take it to the doctor if my vice had
a bull's eye rash on it. Well, yeah, I mean
you can take the glass of the doctor. But yeah,
that's true. Yeah, good point. You just wanted to kill
it in a cruel way. Okay, I hate those things, man, Well,
who likes ticks? So you'll notice then, um that you've
(12:22):
got the barbed hypostome, you have the hooked legs. Right. Um,
Everything these everything that has to do with ticks has
to do with like hanging on right and digging in
sucking right. As Tracy Wilson put it in this article, Um,
they are basically like a living blood pump. Yeah. The
(12:44):
all they feed on is blood, right, so gross, And
the entire point of their life is to eat so
they can grow up and reproduce and die like we said, right, yeah,
and when they eat, josh, their body their ideo suma.
If you want to get technical, it expands. A male
(13:04):
tick has the scutum or scoot them on the back.
I'm not I said scutum, but yeah, I couldn't tell
which way either way. We're both too lazy to go
onto mirriam webster dot com, aren't we. Uh So what
happens is the body of a hard tick male hard
tick can't stretch that much to hold the blood. Soft
ticks don't have the scut um, but they don't require
(13:27):
a whole lot of blood to live and lay eggs.
The real nasty one of the bunch is the female
hard tick. That's the one that goes from the science
of about a sesame seed to you know, something like
the right. Yeah, I saw one of my dog when
I was a kid, and that is stuck with me.
(13:48):
A big gorge tick that was I mean, it was
a big look like a big purple balloon. That was disgusting.
Their body is also very flat, so they can lay
flat while they're feeding. This is especially important for a
hard tick because the hard ticks are born, they feed,
they reproduce, and they die. Right, So a hard tack,
(14:08):
actually the hard tack female especially, we'll sit there and
feed for twenty four hours and that's that's really dangerous
as far as survival goes, because you're just sitting there
feeding hoping no one notices. Um, you get larger and yeah,
and you get bigger and bigger and bigger, and then finally,
if you make it until you're done with your blood meal, um,
(14:31):
you can fall off and lay some eggs after mating,
as many as eighteen thousand eggs. Yeah. Did you see
that picture. There's a picture in this article. It's pretty boss.
It looks like caviar coming out of the bottom of
a tick. You don't want to put that on the
tick just pooped out a bunch of caviar. That's what
it looks like. Can we talk about two amazing facts, Josh,
(14:54):
about how the tick um does its work when it
when it rips into your skin and die is in.
I thought we got the amazing facts out of the way. No, no, no,
these two are pretty amazing to Ticks do two things.
When they feed that blow me away. They excrete a
cement like substance into your body where they attached to
(15:15):
make it harder for them to fall off, and that
dissolves when they're ready to fall off. Fact number one,
I know they're like spitting up like that shot that
tastes like cement in your mouth. You know what I'm
talking about. Yeah, it's awful. And number two is they
have um, a substance to prevent your blood from clotting,
so they can just continually drink and it and it
(15:37):
won't heal. And that's all in your their saliva. And
this this happens from a tick's mouth. They have cement
and blood thinners basically, and their spit chuck. Let's talk
about the tick life cycle. All right, Clearly you weren't
as blown away by that's me no. Um, the tick
is born from caviare right after this stork brings it
(16:00):
to somebody's skin, maybe a lizard skin after the quest
and a latch onto your gene pant yes, right, your
pant leg Yeah, your gene pant your gene pant leg um.
So you're born, you are a tick larva. Yeah right.
And at that point you are about the size of
(16:21):
a period. And I couldn't find the font size for this,
but you're about the size of a period at the
end of a sentence twelve point five. Maybe there's a
big difference between ten and twelve point And I mean,
what if it's like a hundred and forty four point Yeah,
but that's you know, let's go with twelve standard. All right,
thanks for that. Um, you have six legs, remember, Yeah,
(16:44):
when you're born, you got six legs. If you've got
good genes, you're gonna have eight eventually. But first you
have to go find yourself a blood meal. And to
do that, you have to crawl along the ground and
maybe find a mouse with its tail hanging out or
lizard something with blood, And and the closer to the
ground the better because you can't really crawl that well yet, Yeah,
this is just before you can if you want to
(17:05):
grow up to be an adult tick. If you don't
get that first meal, you're done. Yeah, it's like a
sea turtles. Sure, after you get that first meal, right,
say you are a a soft tick. You get that
first meal, you're gonna do it pretty quick. And then
right you go back down to the ground. You drop off.
(17:26):
After you have your meal. You hang out. You're like, Okay,
I'm really that that mousetail was packed with energy. I'm growing,
I'm growing. I'm literally getting too big for my shell.
I'm gonna mold. And now all of a sudden, I
have an extra pair of legs. Look at that, and
you might call me a nymph. That's exactly what you
would be, right, And then you say, well, you know
(17:47):
what being a tick nymph? Now that I've molted and
a little bigger, it's kind of nice. I like a
six year a pair of legs, right right. Um, I'm
hungry again, so I'm going to go get another blood meal.
It's so grass Okay, So then you go you get
another blood meal. Um, and then you drop off again.
(18:09):
Sure you you stop hardening and clotting that your host's
blood from your you know, um saliva, you drop off,
you go grow again, you molt. Now you're an adult.
Now you're ready to reproduce. But first you give a
little tick bar mitzvah I guess sure, or bought mitzvah h.
(18:30):
But first you need a blood meal, so you go
get another blood meal. Right, and it's about here that
the life cycle of most ticks begins to end. Right,
Most ticks are three host ticks, is what they're called. Yeah,
but you know, Tracy pointed something out I thought was interesting,
is that a tick that does not get their blood
meal will die. But it could take like a year
(18:54):
to starve to death, to starve to death. So they
might be just um in nymph stage or adult stage
or whatever, just pining away on that blade of grass,
waving their little claw. No one ever walks by. And
they can't they can't reproduce, they can't lay eggs, they
can't uh, they can't do the bump with their little
female tick friends. They can't do anything if they don't
(19:15):
get their blood meal. So they just it's like on
the couch basically, right, And so you would think, well,
then ticks are just stupid for being questers. You know,
it's such a willy nilly way to go look for food.
But as we said, ticks do have eyes and they
can um differentiate shapes that kind of thing. So they
can technically hunt us as parasites, right but not really. Yeah,
(19:36):
and they can see colors, yeah, so Tracy said they can.
They they use that to get in on a good
blade of grass with a high likelihood of some schmuck
camper like me walking by. Uh. They also can sense
carbon dioxide that animals exhale. Yeah, so that's kind of cool. Actually. Um,
(19:59):
so let's say you are a tick that has you're
a female hard tick and you're engorged. You've just made it.
The male you made it with just went off and
died right after mating. Yeah, well you both eat first, right,
and then you come together and you're like, hey, I'm
super full, and then you made That's what I called him.
The Philistines are like, let's go eat and then have
(20:21):
sex and then I'll die. So you're the female. Okay,
where where are you going? He said, I'm the female.
Oh and then after the guy goes off and dies,
you're like, oh, I better go lay my eggs and
then there's all this caviar that comes out, and um,
now you're dead, and then the life cycle begins a
new right. Generally, I don't think they always die, but
(20:43):
generally the female dies after they lay eggs, and the
male dies after they do do that thing, do the
thing that thing? Um yeah, so chuck, that's the life cycle.
I wish we had some sort of applause, right, is
that was riveting? Um? If at any point, let's say,
remember I said that most ticks are three host ticks. Yeah, uh,
(21:06):
if at any point one of those hosts, especially the
first or second host, happens to be a disease host,
then ticks become their disease vector. There a disease vector, right, Yeah,
But you can also, I don't even think you said
you can be a one host tick. If you find
a very gracious host, you might stay there your whole life. Right.
If you are a hard tick, yeah, you can be
(21:27):
a one or two host. But if you're a one host,
like you said, you're born and then you go start
feeding wherever you're born, and you reproduce and die and
you're like, this is this interior thighs? Nice? I think
I'll just stay here for my whole life. Yeah, so
chuck um if they do become a disease vector. And
by the way, ticks are the number one disease vector
(21:49):
in the animal world and among humans they're number two
only to mosquitoes as bugs that spread disease. Yeah. Um,
if you are a disease tick, how what what are
some of the things that you're going to spread? Well, Josh,
you can, um spread. I know everyone's sort of Rocky
Mountain spotted fever, that is if it started out obviously
(22:11):
in the Rocky Mountains, but now it's kind of in
many places in the US because of animals at migrate
and move around. Uh, you can get if you're in Australia,
you can get Queensland's tick typhus or Finlander's Island spotted fever. Yeah,
or uh, you know the big one is lime disease, yes,
(22:32):
which um Jordan has. I think he got the kind
that goes away with some antibiotics. You can I think
you can get it for life. If I'm not mistaken.
I think I didn't do a whole lot of lime
disease reacharch research, but I worked with a director one
time that um did a short film online disease. No, No,
he had lime disease I think forever and needed to
(22:54):
take like a little afternoon naps because it would wear.
He was just a lazy, So lime disease. The big
giveaway for that one is a bull's eye rash. It's
an inflamed raised area wherever the bite was. That's the center.
So it's real red and then kind of pale skin
or regular skin color and then real red again like
(23:16):
a ring around it, right or bull's eye all right, exactly,
So if you have that, you are um in big trouble.
And uh, Rocky Mountains spotted fever, I don't think lime diseases,
but Rocky Mountain spotted fever is a Ricket seal Rickett
seal um illness, and I looked this up. So basically,
you have a fever, general malaise, headaches, muscle cramps, you're tired,
(23:39):
it's just not you're feeling lousy. Yeah, you can actually
die from Rocky Mountain spotted fever if you don't get
anything treated. If you're like out, you know, doing the
Ted Kazinski thing and you never get treated for anything,
you could die. That's the second time today you mentioned
Ted Kazins know he's coming back? Are you bringing up
He's not really coming back? Don't worry. Um, if you're
(24:01):
bitten by a tick that's say, is spreading a protozoa
or a bacteria that's going to give you some sort
of infection. Um, you are not necessarily going to get
it immediately. Apparently. The rule of thumb is it takes
about four hours for a tick to transmit a disease, right, Um,
And it does so in a number of ways. The
(24:22):
first way is through its saliva, all right. Another way
is if you squeeze a tick, it can regurgitate blood
back into your skin. Oh that's what I was doing, right, Okay,
And um, either one of those ways could spread the disease. Again,
it takes about four hours. Um. So a good way
(24:42):
to combat ticks, if you're in a tick combat situation
is to look every couple hours. And you want to
look around your scalp. You want to look in the
folds like your armpit folds. Your neck you have like
one of those hot dog packs like for a neck,
back of your neck. You know I'm talking, um, around
your collar, the band of your whitey tidies that kind
(25:05):
of stuff nether regions, which you know, we don't need
to get back to that story, but that is those
are dark, spooky, damp places, and ticks like to go there. Um.
So if you find a tick, there's a certain way
that you want to get rid of it, right, only
one way. Pretty much. All those wives tales are no good. Yeah,
(25:29):
if you hear the you know, put a nail polish
on it and it'll suffocate it, or put a hot
match on it and it'll it'll release from you. All
that stuff is gonna make it do is and it
will vomit, disease, blood into your body. So none of
those things are right. What you want to do, Josh,
(25:51):
you want to get some tweezers, and you want to
grasp the tick very firmly, right as close to where
it attaches to your skin as possible. What you don't
want to do is twist it or yank it out
real fast. You want to pull firmly and really slow
and straight up and straight back or straight up from
your from your body, straight up, and you want to
(26:12):
pull it. Remember a tick, a tick's body is flat,
so it can lay flat. This is straight up. If
you if you were holding the tick up by its
bottom and its head was going straight down. Pull straight
up from where its head is burrowed into your skin. Yeah.
So if he's flat on your skin, you need to
get up under him and pull him right like a
(26:34):
perpendicular and then out. But you want those tweezers making
contact with his mouth parts right, not his head or
his body, because you're gonna pull his body right off
of his head. Yeah. Or you can squeeze the abdomen
and that will make it go right. So you don't
want to squeeze at the belly of the tick. Uh.
Immediately afterward, you want to wash the area with soap
(26:55):
and water. Oh you left out a step. You want
to drop the tick and glass of alcohol and bleach.
But like I said, don't do any of those other
stupid home remedies. There's really only one way to get
the tick out. Um. And you know we mentioned the
cement like substance in the saliva. It uh, it actually
(27:16):
works better the longer it feeds. So if the tick
has been in there a little while, it's gonna be
harder to remove for that reason, because the cement is
is you know, working right, because you have the cement.
You have the barbed hypostome, you have the the hooked
legs that the thing doesn't want to let go until
it's ready to, So you have to you have to
(27:36):
make it want to with your tweezers, right, yes, So
there are some ways to protect yourselves from ticks in
the first place, light colored clothing helps because ticks show
off against them very easily. Um. And if you see
some ticks crawling on your light colored clothes, take some
packing tape and make a ring around your four fingers
and then just like you're getting hair off you. Yeah,
(27:59):
that's the the cheap lin roller, Yes, poor man's lit roller,
right yes, um, or in this economy, just about everybody's
lint roller, am I? Right? Um? You want to wear
long sleeves And the rest of the sentence is the
best visual that I got from this entire article. You
want to look like a Doric basically where long sleeves comma,
(28:21):
and tuck your pants into your socks or boots. Can
you just see Tracy Wilson working out in the yard
with like her pants tucked tinder socks with a hat. Yeah,
where I had some number three? And you should wear
a hat and wear gloves and you can use insect
repellent with deet. And if you're interested in learning more
about deep I wrote a pretty interesting article about deet,
(28:41):
not long enough to do a podcast, but I would
recommend reading it. Eats nasty though, Dude, check out my article.
Isn't it like really harmful? Just read the article. Just
type in D E E T in the handy search bar.
So that's you know. Obviously, the gloves thing is if
you're working in the yard, and that's where you're to
find a lot of ticks around wood piles and uh high, Well,
(29:04):
they say to keep your yard in shape because if
you have like a well kempt mode lawn, you're not
as likely to have ticks as if you've got weeds
and piles of garbage. Because remember the an adult um
hard tick quests right high up on unmod you know,
grass or whatever. Um, so you want your hand, you're
(29:25):
waiting for um. So yeah, keep your mar yard mode.
You're all set um and chuck. You know what you
need to do? Check my dogs. You need to go
around your yard with like a piece of white cloth
and just drag it. And if you see a bunch
of ticks, on it, you got an infestation. If not,
you tell Jordan then he's a liar. Right, Yeah, that's scary.
(29:49):
I I've had a flea infestation and that was awful.
When I was in l A dude, we were infested
big time. And uh, it was one of those deals
where I couldn't find they were coming from. So I
went out in the backyard with bare feet one day
in shorts on because I had a feeling they were
coming from outside. And I just kind of walked around
the yard really slowly, looking down. And we had this
(30:11):
shed in the back for a yard with about a
two ft gap between the shed and the fence that
no one ever goes. Obviously went around there. As soon
as I walked around the corner, I looked down and
I had about two hundred fleas on my legs. Oh yeah,
And I freaked, obviously, and then I destroyed them with
chemicals and fire. Nice fire just kind of puts the
(30:34):
exclamation point on things. Ton. I can't imagine a tick
infestation though, that's like, that's even worse. Yeah, No, I
can't even then fleas, But I don't think it looks
like a flea infestation. I think if you have like
five or six ticks on your white cloth. That's an infestation.
I couldn't tell. I thought it might be like hundreds
of ticks on your No. I think like, if you're
(30:54):
dragging your cloth through your yard, there shouldn't really be
that many kicks. All yeah, like there should be a
chance that there's no ticks. But if there's some. I
know you're talking about the fleas and it is disconcerting
because I've looked at my leg and seeing that too. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
we have very similar backgrounds. Are you wearing that? What?
Trashy backyards and infestations? Chuck? You and I are going
(31:18):
to come up with a T shirt design that says
I listened to the Tick episode and we have to
figure out a way that people can prove that they
listened to this entire episode, and if they did, we
need to come up with a T shirt because they
deserve one for making it through this one with us. Yeah,
this was sort of scabies esk in the itch count
stay more interesting. I'm saying, like they made it through
(31:40):
it like they are hardcore devotees, you know what I mean?
I thought this is good? Okay, Uh, if you want
to learn more about ticks or get a visual of
um Tracy Wilson with her pants tucked into his socks.
You just tight ticks into the handy search bar at
how stuff for dot com? And now it's time for
(32:02):
a new segment, an occasional segment. Don't freak out. It's
not like listener mails going anywhere. We'll still do Facebook stuff,
but every once in a while we have to say
thank you. So this is what we call so, yes, Chuck,
this is a new segment. Right, every once in a
(32:22):
while we get stuff UM mailed to us, all sorts
of awesome stuff, and it just piles up. Um, I
should say the thank you's pile up and we just
need to knock him out every once in a while. Yeah,
because we are very grateful for everything. Right, Yeah, I
would have called this fan appreciation or fan thank you,
not administrative detail. But you weren't raised in a skinner box,
(32:45):
were you. Okay, Josh, Well we'll split these up here.
We we've had a lot of wait, what are we doing?
We're doing the thank yous? Right, Okay, Um, We've had
a lot of people send us things over the past
what is this past six months or so? You want
to start with stuff. Yes, stuff, yes, because like ticks,
(33:05):
administrative detail, thank you's can be divided into two groups, right,
and even stuff can be divided into books. We got
a lot of books we did UM from the authors themselves, right,
including our buddy I Inspector. He created the Chuck Norris
fact Generator, right, and he just came out with his
new book, Chuck Norris Cannot Be Stopped, and he sent
(33:28):
his copies of that. He's milking it. I was disheartened
that he sent it to the tech stuff guys too.
I tried to talk him out of it. He's like, no,
I'm too nice a tool him. I would Uh. We
also got how to Speak Pirate, a treasure chest of
seafaring slang by Jordie Telfer, and we got one called
Revolutions for Fun and Profit Ryan Shattuck. I have not listen.
(33:49):
I have not read that one yet, but I'm very
much looking forward to that absolutely. I'm also looking forward
to Molecular Gastronomy, a book by Harvey tests Um and
Harvey US did not give us this book, but Liz
from little Bit of Sweets dot Com did, remember, Yeah,
l I D D A B I T sweets dot com.
(34:10):
If you have two brain cells that you can muster up,
go there and order her any of the candy bars,
but order the peanut butter and jelly candy bar and
thank me later. I didn't have that one, dude, it
was so good. I had the King It was peanut
butter and banana. I had one. I had that one too,
and a small one. Well it's yeah, it's several candy bars,
(34:32):
didn't you. I had two. I didn't have several. She
also makes this um beer and nut um caramel that's
really good. And didn't get any of that either. What
you got the popcorn? Right? Yeah? I did. The popcorn
was awesome. It had bacon fat and and you could
tell it was gorgeous. I mean it's seriously like handmade
(34:55):
in New York City with like really nice ingredients. So
if you see like six dollar for a candy bar,
just shut up and get it. Trust me, it's the
best candy bar you'll ever have in your life. Yes,
So thanks Liz for all that stuff. Keep it coming. Um,
And we also got a Catcher's Companion, The Hidden World
of Holden Caulfield by Sean McDaniel. And I've just kind
(35:16):
of browsed it. I haven't given it a sit down
and read yet. Um, but Sean put together basically like
an annotated catcher in the Rye. It's pretty amazing stuff. Um.
And I don't know. I'm pretty sure you could probably
find most of these on Amazon. I don't know some
of the search. Yeah, definitely. Some of them might be
(35:37):
self published, but I think people should support self published books.
And there was one more book. We mentioned it briefly once,
but we didn't mention the whole thing, The Zombie Combat Manual,
A Guide to Fighting the Living Dead by Roger May.
It is really really awesome. And uh, here's when you
don't know about Chuck. I want to say thank you
to um Stephanie, who I went to high school with
and was in children's theater with. We used to car
(35:59):
pool there together. Sweet um. Way back in the day,
she and her fiance Steve um listen. Steve turned her
on to us. He heard us mentioned Sprayberry and he
was like, wait a minute, didn't you go to Sprayberry
and made her listen. She's like no way, so yeah,
she Uh. Fortunately for us we got more than just
(36:20):
a high. Steve makes hot sauces and he sent a
bottle of big smoke and I'll give you half of
it eventually, like he's half of it. Yes, So thank
you too, Stephanie and Steve for that. And hey, Stephanie,
hope it's gone. Well, that's nice. Just look at you
when your birthday being kind. I know it feels dirty.
(36:42):
So those are the books and candy bars and things. Um.
We got a bunch of CDs from a band in
New Jersey called the Wag and we want to thank them.
Are best bud in the world. Martin ban Nostrin has
He's always in the sons of stuff like bacon based things.
Wesley is Lee Willis c D. Yeah, yeah, all sorts
(37:02):
of CDs. The wood House Gang, Yeah, Woodbox Gang, Wood
Box Gang. What I say, wood House anyway? Van Astri
and you sick puppy, We love you. No, it's time
for postcards. They yeah, we got a bunch of postcards.
We got one from Vanessa in Japan. Todd from the
Anne Frank House. Sorry about your umbrella there, todd Um.
And they're a there's a small group of conspirators found
(37:26):
deep within the bowels of the Brigham Young University Library
thank you for listening. Interesting, I don't even know that
is Janelleen Traversity, Minnesota, Michigan, Michigan Traverse. We want to
say check out shutter cal dot com. Yes, um Rocky
and his girlfriend from Hawaii via hurst Castle, Kate and
(37:49):
Stewart who we met at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn when
we were there. Uh, they independently wrote let us letters
to us on the same day. Isn't that weird? Yeah?
But Kate was way better? Was that because Stewart like
spent his whole letter taking us to task over the
traffic podcast. Yeah, And Kates was all like, I'm so
glad we got a chance to meet you. You guys
are awesome. And Stewart's like, hey, hey, yeah, it's I
(38:11):
hope you guys are doing well. It was nice to
meet you. And here's everything that was wrong with the
traffic podcast. So kids later definitely one. Oh, and the
fellows from New Belgium Brewery send us some delicious fat
tire ale Yes, and the mail. So thank you to
everybody who's ever sent us anything. If we forgot you,
we apologize. You can shoot us an email actually and
be like you fat jerks, or just send us what
(38:33):
you sent us before again, refresh our memories trying. If
you want to send us something, you can get our
mailing address by sending us an email. We don't expect anything,
so if you just want to say hi, that is
awesome in and of itself. You can correspond with us
at stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For
(38:58):
more on this and thousands of about our topics, visit
how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the how stuff works dot
com home page. M hmm brought to you by the
reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know?
From house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuckers Bryant
(00:21):
and that makes this stuff you should know. If you
didn't know, now you know. Happy birthday, Josh, Thanks Chuck,
it's your birthday. It is my birthday. Four. Uh, you're
closer to me an age now for about a happy year.
And I'm six months older than Umi, which makes me
(00:41):
a year older than Umi right now? Oh she your age? Yeah,
I think it's so funny. It's okay when you say
that because you are way way older than me. But
it's funny when people say that about people who are
like a year or two different. They're like, you know somebody, um,
who's they're almost our age. It's like our age is
(01:02):
a year, maybe a year and a half on either
side of your age, maybe two years. But often think
we're the same age until you do something that reminds
me it's because we both act like we're eight. That's
where we're that's where we're on the same page. Case
in point, where's the worst place you've ever had a take? Well, Josh,
(01:22):
I know you know, because we share a commonality, and
I should a side from the show, I should warn
you I'm not going too fest up to anything on
this one before you do. I just want to give
you fair warning. Well, since I said that we share this,
I don't know what you're talking about, dude, Josh and
I have both had a tick in a very unfortunate place.
If you're a man, it was. There were different ticks though, Okay,
(01:47):
as far as we know, they good, well years apart.
Mine was last summer. This is the worst birthday? When
was your? Oh? Mine was years and years ago. Two
ticks last summer? Did you really horrible? Well, no one
was on my thigh and it's still itches and like
swells into a little bump every now and then look
(02:08):
at year later. You want to get that checked out there,
it's fine. I read up online. Sound fine? Now? I
read and they said tick bites can still bother you
for like years, evidently without lime disease or something like that. Yeah, okay,
well we're talking about ticks. Oh can I say the
inspiration for this real quick? Sure? Because I'm curious myself.
(02:31):
As you know, Josh are an official house fan the
Henry Clay people out of y Infested. They came through
town about a month ago, stayed at my house. About
a week and a half later, I get a call
from Joey, the lead singer and songwriter guy, and he said, hey,
you got ticks in Georgia. I said, sure, there's ticks
(02:51):
all over the place in this country. He got ticks
in l a And he said, Jordy, our keyboard player
has lime disease. Holy cow. He thinks he probably got
it from your house because you know, I live in
a wooded section of Atlanta, of Yeah, actually most of
Atlanta's wooded. Yeah, I think george is one of the
(03:11):
most wooded states in the country from what I understand. So,
Jordy got lime disease, and I am very sorry. Uh, Jordan,
if you got that from my house and residents, it
is likely, but although you were on tour, dude, you
could have gotten it from anywhere. Yeah, it's likely because
he's like, you know, the eighth or ninth person this
(03:32):
year to get lime disease. After you're like it, maybe
you know what that would make your house chuck a
infested haven of disease, a disease vector. Yes, let's not
get ahead of ourselves here. Here was my original intro.
You're ready. That was great, Chuck, thank you, that was great.
I was gonna say, Chuck, Josh, there is a tick
(03:56):
species called Epanoma comemodo, and say komodo wins. Eponoma komodo wins.
This is fascinating. It is a tick and it looks
almost completely like the scale of a Komodo dragon. It's
only host, the only animal that it feeds on is
(04:18):
the komodo dragon. Right. If it's sucking the life out
of a Komodo dragon, you can't tell just by looking
at it that it's a ticket. Looks like a scale.
That is the most interesting thing anyone has to say
about any tick anywhere. Okay, that's it. Uh. Does that
(04:42):
explain why the komodo dragon attack Sharon Stone's husband? Yeah,
it does. That's what I read it was mad with
in the Daily Mail. Disease. Yeah. Um, well, since we've
already gotten the most interesting part of this podcast out
of the way, Chucks um ticks story. The Henry Clay
People's lyme disease drummer, Right, keyboard player, keyboardists. And I
(05:03):
should mention you can buy the album somewhere on the
Golden Coast. You're such a chill how much what percentage
are you getting of growth sales? Nothing? Um, And and
then we've got the Eponoma Commodo ents story. Yeah, so
we're gonna get to explaining ticks just because you know,
(05:23):
what we're doing here is explaining every aspect of the universe, right, Yeah,
ticks are a part of it at a time and
everyone stuff you should know, lovers, we have to trudge
through this together. Yeah. And I kind of see this
as sort of a half kind of interesting and half
public service announcement. Yeah, because the summertime and ticks are everywhere.
(05:43):
That is great idea and a lot of people there's
a lot of misinformation out there about ticks and how
to remove them. So we're gonna say straight yes, thanks Chuck,
way to frame that. Um, there is a lot of
misinformation out there, misunderstandings, uh, specifically with ticks being insects. Right,
they are not insects. They're arachnets. They have eight legs. Yeah,
(06:06):
well they're born with six like an insect, but they
will ultimately develop eight unless they're they're um disfigured. Uh,
they are not spiders, though they are in the same
group arachnets as spiders, but spiders have segmented bodies and
ticks is just one nasty, bloody lump of a body.
(06:28):
That's right. And um, there's about eight hundred and fifty
species of ticks in the world. And uh there I
didn't either. I thought it was just like I hate
you when I hate you more, right, um, And they're
generally you can divide ticks into two general types, the
hard tick and the soft tick. And the hard tick
(06:49):
I get the impression that if there is such a
thing as intelligent design, the hard tick was like version
one point oh and the soft ticks version two point oh. Yeah,
hard ticks are They're like the philis signs of the
arachnid world. They are an example of just the single
minded ruthlessness of genes to anthropomorphize, right, yea. Their entire
(07:11):
purpose in life is to suck blood so they can
reproduce and die so they can make babies that suck
more blood. Bloodsuckers are I'm a I'm a big animal, guys,
you know, as are you? And I even save insects.
You know. I won't kill a bee, you know, or
a spider. I will usher them out somewhere else. But flies, mosquitoes, ticks,
(07:34):
and fleas no use for him. You and I are
on the exact same page. Those are the only four
insects that all kill. I won't kill a roach. Um,
I will kill roach. I won't kill kill the hell.
Roach never did anything to anybody. It's just it just
happened to be unfortunately ugly and like scuttle. That's what
it is. Roaches scuttle. That's why we don't like them.
You can't kill something for scuttling, something for being a parasite.
(07:59):
If it moved at least slowly across the room, I
probably wouldn't kill it. But the fact that they run
like they've they're like they're looting exactly makes me want
to kill them. All right, So those are insects we hate.
I don't mind roaches, don't. I'm not going on record
with you on well, what does Umi do when she
sees a roach? I try to keep roaches out of
Umi sight. Think if we ever see him, I'm like, hey,
(08:21):
you look over here, and I'm like kind of brushing
it out like yeah, um, so Chuck, we're talking about
we were talking about the differences the hard tack and
the soft take. Right, let's talk about the commonalities. Takes
a pretty basic creatures, right, Um. They are one celled organisms. Right, No,
(08:44):
they're not. I'm just trying to jazz this up a
little bit. Okay, Um, they are. The commonalities are a body,
eight legs, I think eyes on either side. Generally most
of them have eyes. Um. And then the capitulum, which
is the mouth part. Right yeah, mouth parts is actually
(09:05):
a word, a single word, mouthparts, blood, sucking and gorge.
Everything about ticks are wrong blood meal, yes, um. And
then you've got on the hard tick a something called
a dorsal shield or a scutum, right um. And that's
pretty much it, unless you want to get into the
(09:27):
details of the mouth parts, which really just to add
a little more time to this podcast, we probably should.
Now they get in your body, that's what matters. What
it was interesting though, my friend, is the legs are
covered in little spiny hairs and it has the legs
have a tiny little pincher claw at the end, and
(09:48):
they use this too, you know, climb up grass blades
and vegetation, sticks, trees, and should we'll go ahead and
talk about questing, should we? Since we're right there, why
not ticks? How? This is how the hard tick feeds.
It goes on a quest and it literally will wait
on a blade of grass with this little pincher claws
(10:10):
up in the air for somebody to brush by them,
and then they'll go hack and then they'll latch onto
your pant leg or shoestring or whatever your face. Yeah,
and then it's all over. But we'll get into questing more.
But that's what they use, a little pincher. I don't
think there's anything more to questing. Well, yeah, you're right,
um we I I gotta vta you man. We should
(10:30):
talk about the mouth parts, right, Okay, So you've got
like the little what looks like their head, that's actually
their mouth parts, right right? Um. You have two flaps
on the side that are called palps. Yes, right, that's
a beautiful illustration. You have their color shiny um. Uh
(10:53):
So the palps when when a tick gets on you
right and starts digging in, the palps moved to the side. Yeah,
they're they're not part of the eating and digging in process.
Then you get the cellisera, which are too I guess,
kind of cutting boring mouth parts and not boring like
more like boring into your skin, right, um. And then
(11:17):
you have the hypostone, right, which is this um barbed
needle like protrusion that they just go room and start
sucking blood. But it's barbed in. The hooks curve backward
toward the tick, which makes it harder to pull out
if you if you pull a tick out the wrong way,
you just pull its body right off of its head
(11:39):
and its head stays in there. We'll get into how
you can you can get rid of a tick appropriately,
right speedily, safely, Yes, with with um, the whole thing intact,
So you can do what I do and drop it
into a glass of bleach and alcohol and just let
it die. Oh, I've put mine in a ziplock so
(12:02):
I could take well, no, just in case I needed
to take it to the doctor if my vice had
a bull's eye rash on it. Well, yeah, I mean
you can take the glass of the doctor. But yeah,
that's true. Yeah, good point. You just wanted to kill
it in a cruel way. Okay, I hate those things, man, Well,
who likes ticks? So you'll notice then, um that you've
(12:22):
got the barbed hypostome, you have the hooked legs. Right. Um,
Everything these everything that has to do with ticks has
to do with like hanging on right and digging in
sucking right. As Tracy Wilson put it in this article, Um,
they are basically like a living blood pump. Yeah. The
(12:44):
all they feed on is blood, right, so gross, And
the entire point of their life is to eat so
they can grow up and reproduce and die like we said, right, yeah,
and when they eat, josh, their body their ideo suma.
If you want to get technical, it expands. A male
(13:04):
tick has the scutum or scoot them on the back.
I'm not I said scutum, but yeah, I couldn't tell
which way either way. We're both too lazy to go
onto mirriam webster dot com, aren't we. Uh So what
happens is the body of a hard tick male hard
tick can't stretch that much to hold the blood. Soft
ticks don't have the scut um, but they don't require
(13:27):
a whole lot of blood to live and lay eggs.
The real nasty one of the bunch is the female
hard tick. That's the one that goes from the science
of about a sesame seed to you know, something like
the right. Yeah, I saw one of my dog when
I was a kid, and that is stuck with me.
(13:48):
A big gorge tick that was I mean, it was
a big look like a big purple balloon. That was disgusting.
Their body is also very flat, so they can lay
flat while they're feeding. This is especially important for a
hard tick because the hard ticks are born, they feed,
they reproduce, and they die. Right, So a hard tack,
(14:08):
actually the hard tack female especially, we'll sit there and
feed for twenty four hours and that's that's really dangerous
as far as survival goes, because you're just sitting there
feeding hoping no one notices. Um, you get larger and yeah,
and you get bigger and bigger and bigger, and then finally,
if you make it until you're done with your blood meal, um,
(14:31):
you can fall off and lay some eggs after mating,
as many as eighteen thousand eggs. Yeah. Did you see
that picture. There's a picture in this article. It's pretty boss.
It looks like caviar coming out of the bottom of
a tick. You don't want to put that on the
tick just pooped out a bunch of caviar. That's what
it looks like. Can we talk about two amazing facts, Josh,
(14:54):
about how the tick um does its work when it
when it rips into your skin and die is in.
I thought we got the amazing facts out of the way. No, no, no,
these two are pretty amazing to Ticks do two things.
When they feed that blow me away. They excrete a
cement like substance into your body where they attached to
(15:15):
make it harder for them to fall off, and that
dissolves when they're ready to fall off. Fact number one,
I know they're like spitting up like that shot that
tastes like cement in your mouth. You know what I'm
talking about. Yeah, it's awful. And number two is they
have um, a substance to prevent your blood from clotting,
so they can just continually drink and it and it
(15:37):
won't heal. And that's all in your their saliva. And
this this happens from a tick's mouth. They have cement
and blood thinners basically, and their spit chuck. Let's talk
about the tick life cycle. All right, Clearly you weren't
as blown away by that's me no. Um, the tick
is born from caviare right after this stork brings it
(16:00):
to somebody's skin, maybe a lizard skin after the quest
and a latch onto your gene pant yes, right, your
pant leg Yeah, your gene pant your gene pant leg um.
So you're born, you are a tick larva. Yeah right.
And at that point you are about the size of
(16:21):
a period. And I couldn't find the font size for this,
but you're about the size of a period at the
end of a sentence twelve point five. Maybe there's a
big difference between ten and twelve point And I mean,
what if it's like a hundred and forty four point Yeah,
but that's you know, let's go with twelve standard. All right,
thanks for that. Um, you have six legs, remember, Yeah,
(16:44):
when you're born, you got six legs. If you've got
good genes, you're gonna have eight eventually. But first you
have to go find yourself a blood meal. And to
do that, you have to crawl along the ground and
maybe find a mouse with its tail hanging out or
lizard something with blood, And and the closer to the
ground the better because you can't really crawl that well yet, Yeah,
this is just before you can if you want to
(17:05):
grow up to be an adult tick. If you don't
get that first meal, you're done. Yeah, it's like a
sea turtles. Sure, after you get that first meal, right,
say you are a a soft tick. You get that
first meal, you're gonna do it pretty quick. And then
right you go back down to the ground. You drop off.
(17:26):
After you have your meal. You hang out. You're like, Okay,
I'm really that that mousetail was packed with energy. I'm growing,
I'm growing. I'm literally getting too big for my shell.
I'm gonna mold. And now all of a sudden, I
have an extra pair of legs. Look at that, and
you might call me a nymph. That's exactly what you
would be, right, And then you say, well, you know
(17:47):
what being a tick nymph? Now that I've molted and
a little bigger, it's kind of nice. I like a
six year a pair of legs, right right. Um, I'm
hungry again, so I'm going to go get another blood meal.
It's so grass Okay, So then you go you get
another blood meal. Um, and then you drop off again.
(18:09):
Sure you you stop hardening and clotting that your host's
blood from your you know, um saliva, you drop off,
you go grow again, you molt. Now you're an adult.
Now you're ready to reproduce. But first you give a
little tick bar mitzvah I guess sure, or bought mitzvah h.
(18:30):
But first you need a blood meal, so you go
get another blood meal. Right, and it's about here that
the life cycle of most ticks begins to end. Right,
Most ticks are three host ticks, is what they're called. Yeah,
but you know, Tracy pointed something out I thought was interesting,
is that a tick that does not get their blood
meal will die. But it could take like a year
(18:54):
to starve to death, to starve to death. So they
might be just um in nymph stage or adult stage
or whatever, just pining away on that blade of grass,
waving their little claw. No one ever walks by. And
they can't they can't reproduce, they can't lay eggs, they
can't uh, they can't do the bump with their little
female tick friends. They can't do anything if they don't
(19:15):
get their blood meal. So they just it's like on
the couch basically, right, And so you would think, well,
then ticks are just stupid for being questers. You know,
it's such a willy nilly way to go look for food.
But as we said, ticks do have eyes and they
can um differentiate shapes that kind of thing. So they
can technically hunt us as parasites, right but not really. Yeah,
(19:36):
and they can see colors, yeah, so Tracy said they can.
They they use that to get in on a good
blade of grass with a high likelihood of some schmuck
camper like me walking by. Uh. They also can sense
carbon dioxide that animals exhale. Yeah, so that's kind of cool. Actually. Um,
(19:59):
so let's say you are a tick that has you're
a female hard tick and you're engorged. You've just made it.
The male you made it with just went off and
died right after mating. Yeah, well you both eat first, right,
and then you come together and you're like, hey, I'm
super full, and then you made That's what I called him.
The Philistines are like, let's go eat and then have
(20:21):
sex and then I'll die. So you're the female. Okay,
where where are you going? He said, I'm the female.
Oh and then after the guy goes off and dies,
you're like, oh, I better go lay my eggs and
then there's all this caviar that comes out, and um,
now you're dead, and then the life cycle begins a
new right. Generally, I don't think they always die, but
(20:43):
generally the female dies after they lay eggs, and the
male dies after they do do that thing, do the
thing that thing? Um yeah, so chuck, that's the life cycle.
I wish we had some sort of applause, right, is
that was riveting? Um? If at any point, let's say,
remember I said that most ticks are three host ticks. Yeah, uh,
(21:06):
if at any point one of those hosts, especially the
first or second host, happens to be a disease host,
then ticks become their disease vector. There a disease vector, right, Yeah,
But you can also, I don't even think you said
you can be a one host tick. If you find
a very gracious host, you might stay there your whole life. Right.
If you are a hard tick, yeah, you can be
(21:27):
a one or two host. But if you're a one host,
like you said, you're born and then you go start
feeding wherever you're born, and you reproduce and die and
you're like, this is this interior thighs? Nice? I think
I'll just stay here for my whole life. Yeah, so
chuck um if they do become a disease vector. And
by the way, ticks are the number one disease vector
(21:49):
in the animal world and among humans they're number two
only to mosquitoes as bugs that spread disease. Yeah. Um,
if you are a disease tick, how what what are
some of the things that you're going to spread? Well, Josh,
you can, um spread. I know everyone's sort of Rocky
Mountain spotted fever, that is if it started out obviously
(22:11):
in the Rocky Mountains, but now it's kind of in
many places in the US because of animals at migrate
and move around. Uh, you can get if you're in Australia,
you can get Queensland's tick typhus or Finlander's Island spotted fever. Yeah,
or uh, you know the big one is lime disease, yes,
(22:32):
which um Jordan has. I think he got the kind
that goes away with some antibiotics. You can I think
you can get it for life. If I'm not mistaken.
I think I didn't do a whole lot of lime
disease reacharch research, but I worked with a director one
time that um did a short film online disease. No, No,
he had lime disease I think forever and needed to
(22:54):
take like a little afternoon naps because it would wear.
He was just a lazy, So lime disease. The big
giveaway for that one is a bull's eye rash. It's
an inflamed raised area wherever the bite was. That's the center.
So it's real red and then kind of pale skin
or regular skin color and then real red again like
(23:16):
a ring around it, right or bull's eye all right, exactly,
So if you have that, you are um in big trouble.
And uh, Rocky Mountains spotted fever, I don't think lime diseases,
but Rocky Mountain spotted fever is a Ricket seal Rickett
seal um illness, and I looked this up. So basically,
you have a fever, general malaise, headaches, muscle cramps, you're tired,
(23:39):
it's just not you're feeling lousy. Yeah, you can actually
die from Rocky Mountain spotted fever if you don't get
anything treated. If you're like out, you know, doing the
Ted Kazinski thing and you never get treated for anything,
you could die. That's the second time today you mentioned
Ted Kazins know he's coming back? Are you bringing up
He's not really coming back? Don't worry. Um, if you're
(24:01):
bitten by a tick that's say, is spreading a protozoa
or a bacteria that's going to give you some sort
of infection. Um, you are not necessarily going to get
it immediately. Apparently. The rule of thumb is it takes
about four hours for a tick to transmit a disease, right, Um,
And it does so in a number of ways. The
(24:22):
first way is through its saliva, all right. Another way
is if you squeeze a tick, it can regurgitate blood
back into your skin. Oh that's what I was doing, right, Okay,
And um, either one of those ways could spread the disease. Again,
it takes about four hours. Um. So a good way
(24:42):
to combat ticks, if you're in a tick combat situation
is to look every couple hours. And you want to
look around your scalp. You want to look in the
folds like your armpit folds. Your neck you have like
one of those hot dog packs like for a neck,
back of your neck. You know I'm talking, um, around
your collar, the band of your whitey tidies that kind
(25:05):
of stuff nether regions, which you know, we don't need
to get back to that story, but that is those
are dark, spooky, damp places, and ticks like to go there. Um.
So if you find a tick, there's a certain way
that you want to get rid of it, right, only
one way. Pretty much. All those wives tales are no good. Yeah,
(25:29):
if you hear the you know, put a nail polish
on it and it'll suffocate it, or put a hot
match on it and it'll it'll release from you. All
that stuff is gonna make it do is and it
will vomit, disease, blood into your body. So none of
those things are right. What you want to do, Josh,
(25:51):
you want to get some tweezers, and you want to
grasp the tick very firmly, right as close to where
it attaches to your skin as possible. What you don't
want to do is twist it or yank it out
real fast. You want to pull firmly and really slow
and straight up and straight back or straight up from
your from your body, straight up, and you want to
(26:12):
pull it. Remember a tick, a tick's body is flat,
so it can lay flat. This is straight up. If
you if you were holding the tick up by its
bottom and its head was going straight down. Pull straight
up from where its head is burrowed into your skin. Yeah.
So if he's flat on your skin, you need to
get up under him and pull him right like a
(26:34):
perpendicular and then out. But you want those tweezers making
contact with his mouth parts right, not his head or
his body, because you're gonna pull his body right off
of his head. Yeah. Or you can squeeze the abdomen
and that will make it go right. So you don't
want to squeeze at the belly of the tick. Uh.
Immediately afterward, you want to wash the area with soap
(26:55):
and water. Oh you left out a step. You want
to drop the tick and glass of alcohol and bleach.
But like I said, don't do any of those other
stupid home remedies. There's really only one way to get
the tick out. Um. And you know we mentioned the
cement like substance in the saliva. It uh, it actually
(27:16):
works better the longer it feeds. So if the tick
has been in there a little while, it's gonna be
harder to remove for that reason, because the cement is
is you know, working right, because you have the cement.
You have the barbed hypostome, you have the the hooked
legs that the thing doesn't want to let go until
it's ready to, So you have to you have to
(27:36):
make it want to with your tweezers, right, yes, So
there are some ways to protect yourselves from ticks in
the first place, light colored clothing helps because ticks show
off against them very easily. Um. And if you see
some ticks crawling on your light colored clothes, take some
packing tape and make a ring around your four fingers
and then just like you're getting hair off you. Yeah,
(27:59):
that's the the cheap lin roller, Yes, poor man's lit roller,
right yes, um, or in this economy, just about everybody's
lint roller, am I? Right? Um? You want to wear
long sleeves And the rest of the sentence is the
best visual that I got from this entire article. You
want to look like a Doric basically where long sleeves comma,
(28:21):
and tuck your pants into your socks or boots. Can
you just see Tracy Wilson working out in the yard
with like her pants tucked tinder socks with a hat. Yeah,
where I had some number three? And you should wear
a hat and wear gloves and you can use insect
repellent with deet. And if you're interested in learning more
about deep I wrote a pretty interesting article about deet,
(28:41):
not long enough to do a podcast, but I would
recommend reading it. Eats nasty though, Dude, check out my article.
Isn't it like really harmful? Just read the article. Just
type in D E E T in the handy search bar.
So that's you know. Obviously, the gloves thing is if
you're working in the yard, and that's where you're to
find a lot of ticks around wood piles and uh high, Well,
(29:04):
they say to keep your yard in shape because if
you have like a well kempt mode lawn, you're not
as likely to have ticks as if you've got weeds
and piles of garbage. Because remember the an adult um
hard tick quests right high up on unmod you know,
grass or whatever. Um, so you want your hand, you're
(29:25):
waiting for um. So yeah, keep your mar yard mode.
You're all set um and chuck. You know what you
need to do? Check my dogs. You need to go
around your yard with like a piece of white cloth
and just drag it. And if you see a bunch
of ticks, on it, you got an infestation. If not,
you tell Jordan then he's a liar. Right, Yeah, that's scary.
(29:49):
I I've had a flea infestation and that was awful.
When I was in l A dude, we were infested
big time. And uh, it was one of those deals
where I couldn't find they were coming from. So I
went out in the backyard with bare feet one day
in shorts on because I had a feeling they were
coming from outside. And I just kind of walked around
the yard really slowly, looking down. And we had this
(30:11):
shed in the back for a yard with about a
two ft gap between the shed and the fence that
no one ever goes. Obviously went around there. As soon
as I walked around the corner, I looked down and
I had about two hundred fleas on my legs. Oh yeah,
And I freaked, obviously, and then I destroyed them with
chemicals and fire. Nice fire just kind of puts the
(30:34):
exclamation point on things. Ton. I can't imagine a tick
infestation though, that's like, that's even worse. Yeah, No, I
can't even then fleas, But I don't think it looks
like a flea infestation. I think if you have like
five or six ticks on your white cloth. That's an infestation.
I couldn't tell. I thought it might be like hundreds
of ticks on your No. I think like, if you're
(30:54):
dragging your cloth through your yard, there shouldn't really be
that many kicks. All yeah, like there should be a
chance that there's no ticks. But if there's some. I
know you're talking about the fleas and it is disconcerting
because I've looked at my leg and seeing that too. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
we have very similar backgrounds. Are you wearing that? What?
Trashy backyards and infestations? Chuck? You and I are going
(31:18):
to come up with a T shirt design that says
I listened to the Tick episode and we have to
figure out a way that people can prove that they
listened to this entire episode, and if they did, we
need to come up with a T shirt because they
deserve one for making it through this one with us. Yeah,
this was sort of scabies esk in the itch count
stay more interesting. I'm saying, like they made it through
(31:40):
it like they are hardcore devotees, you know what I mean?
I thought this is good? Okay, Uh, if you want
to learn more about ticks or get a visual of
um Tracy Wilson with her pants tucked into his socks.
You just tight ticks into the handy search bar at
how stuff for dot com? And now it's time for
(32:02):
a new segment, an occasional segment. Don't freak out. It's
not like listener mails going anywhere. We'll still do Facebook stuff,
but every once in a while we have to say
thank you. So this is what we call so, yes, Chuck,
this is a new segment. Right, every once in a
(32:22):
while we get stuff UM mailed to us, all sorts
of awesome stuff, and it just piles up. Um, I
should say the thank you's pile up and we just
need to knock him out every once in a while. Yeah,
because we are very grateful for everything. Right, Yeah, I
would have called this fan appreciation or fan thank you,
not administrative detail. But you weren't raised in a skinner box,
(32:45):
were you. Okay, Josh, Well we'll split these up here.
We we've had a lot of wait, what are we doing?
We're doing the thank yous? Right, Okay, Um, We've had
a lot of people send us things over the past
what is this past six months or so? You want
to start with stuff. Yes, stuff, yes, because like ticks,
(33:05):
administrative detail, thank you's can be divided into two groups, right,
and even stuff can be divided into books. We got
a lot of books we did UM from the authors themselves, right,
including our buddy I Inspector. He created the Chuck Norris
fact Generator, right, and he just came out with his
new book, Chuck Norris Cannot Be Stopped, and he sent
(33:28):
his copies of that. He's milking it. I was disheartened
that he sent it to the tech stuff guys too.
I tried to talk him out of it. He's like, no,
I'm too nice a tool him. I would Uh. We
also got how to Speak Pirate, a treasure chest of
seafaring slang by Jordie Telfer, and we got one called
Revolutions for Fun and Profit Ryan Shattuck. I have not listen.
(33:49):
I have not read that one yet, but I'm very
much looking forward to that absolutely. I'm also looking forward
to Molecular Gastronomy, a book by Harvey tests Um and
Harvey US did not give us this book, but Liz
from little Bit of Sweets dot Com did, remember, Yeah,
l I D D A B I T sweets dot com.
(34:10):
If you have two brain cells that you can muster up,
go there and order her any of the candy bars,
but order the peanut butter and jelly candy bar and
thank me later. I didn't have that one, dude, it
was so good. I had the King It was peanut
butter and banana. I had one. I had that one too,
and a small one. Well it's yeah, it's several candy bars,
(34:32):
didn't you. I had two. I didn't have several. She
also makes this um beer and nut um caramel that's
really good. And didn't get any of that either. What
you got the popcorn? Right? Yeah? I did. The popcorn
was awesome. It had bacon fat and and you could
tell it was gorgeous. I mean it's seriously like handmade
(34:55):
in New York City with like really nice ingredients. So
if you see like six dollar for a candy bar,
just shut up and get it. Trust me, it's the
best candy bar you'll ever have in your life. Yes,
So thanks Liz for all that stuff. Keep it coming. Um,
And we also got a Catcher's Companion, The Hidden World
of Holden Caulfield by Sean McDaniel. And I've just kind
(35:16):
of browsed it. I haven't given it a sit down
and read yet. Um, but Sean put together basically like
an annotated catcher in the Rye. It's pretty amazing stuff. Um.
And I don't know. I'm pretty sure you could probably
find most of these on Amazon. I don't know some
of the search. Yeah, definitely. Some of them might be
(35:37):
self published, but I think people should support self published books.
And there was one more book. We mentioned it briefly once,
but we didn't mention the whole thing, The Zombie Combat Manual,
A Guide to Fighting the Living Dead by Roger May.
It is really really awesome. And uh, here's when you
don't know about Chuck. I want to say thank you
to um Stephanie, who I went to high school with
and was in children's theater with. We used to car
(35:59):
pool there together. Sweet um. Way back in the day,
she and her fiance Steve um listen. Steve turned her
on to us. He heard us mentioned Sprayberry and he
was like, wait a minute, didn't you go to Sprayberry
and made her listen. She's like no way, so yeah,
she Uh. Fortunately for us we got more than just
(36:20):
a high. Steve makes hot sauces and he sent a
bottle of big smoke and I'll give you half of
it eventually, like he's half of it. Yes, So thank
you too, Stephanie and Steve for that. And hey, Stephanie,
hope it's gone. Well, that's nice. Just look at you
when your birthday being kind. I know it feels dirty.
(36:42):
So those are the books and candy bars and things. Um.
We got a bunch of CDs from a band in
New Jersey called the Wag and we want to thank them.
Are best bud in the world. Martin ban Nostrin has
He's always in the sons of stuff like bacon based things.
Wesley is Lee Willis c D. Yeah, yeah, all sorts
(37:02):
of CDs. The wood House Gang, Yeah, Woodbox Gang, Wood
Box Gang. What I say, wood House anyway? Van Astri
and you sick puppy, We love you. No, it's time
for postcards. They yeah, we got a bunch of postcards.
We got one from Vanessa in Japan. Todd from the
Anne Frank House. Sorry about your umbrella there, todd Um.
And they're a there's a small group of conspirators found
(37:26):
deep within the bowels of the Brigham Young University Library
thank you for listening. Interesting, I don't even know that
is Janelleen Traversity, Minnesota, Michigan, Michigan Traverse. We want to
say check out shutter cal dot com. Yes, um Rocky
and his girlfriend from Hawaii via hurst Castle, Kate and
(37:49):
Stewart who we met at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn when
we were there. Uh, they independently wrote let us letters
to us on the same day. Isn't that weird? Yeah?
But Kate was way better? Was that because Stewart like
spent his whole letter taking us to task over the
traffic podcast. Yeah, And Kates was all like, I'm so
glad we got a chance to meet you. You guys
are awesome. And Stewart's like, hey, hey, yeah, it's I
(38:11):
hope you guys are doing well. It was nice to
meet you. And here's everything that was wrong with the
traffic podcast. So kids later definitely one. Oh, and the
fellows from New Belgium Brewery send us some delicious fat
tire ale Yes, and the mail. So thank you to
everybody who's ever sent us anything. If we forgot you,
we apologize. You can shoot us an email actually and
be like you fat jerks, or just send us what
(38:33):
you sent us before again, refresh our memories trying. If
you want to send us something, you can get our
mailing address by sending us an email. We don't expect anything,
so if you just want to say hi, that is
awesome in and of itself. You can correspond with us
at stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For
(38:58):
more on this and thousands of about our topics, visit
how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the how stuff works dot
com home page. M hmm brought to you by the
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