Taking a Tick off a Human

Ticks are some of the most feared biting bugs, despite the fact their biting is only mildly irritating. Since they are parasites that feed on animal blood, like mosquitoes, they can be disease vectors which carry debilitating ailments like Lyme disease and tetanus. Removing a tick requires finesse, as it's easier to clean and sterilize the bite if the live tick is coaxed from burrowing under the skin.

How a Tick Bites

• Ticks attach themselves to the skin of various organisms by their hooked and barbed mouth parts, drinking their fill of blood before detaching. Larger ticks may feed for a while and are more easily noticed. Smashing or killing the tick while it is hooked into your skin makes it harder to remove.

Insect Spray

• Ticks should be sprayed with tick-specific or outdoor bug spray, which is usually citronella-based. This alternately irritates and suffocates the tick, which causes it to spontaneously unhook itself and back itself out of the burrow it has bit into your skin.

Tweezers

• Using tweezers to gently lift and brush or otherwise remove the tick is the best way to get rid of a tick that has burrowed into your skin. After using the insect spray, grasping the tick with tweezers can keep it from reattaching itself to your skin. Most ticks are the size of a sesame seed, so using tweezers is much more preferable to using your fingers or another tool.

What to Avoid

• Using certain kinds of adulterants on the skin, like acetone-based nail polish remover or glue to irritate and suffocate the tick, is more trouble than it's worth, as these chemicals also irritate the skin. Some treatments, like petroleum jelly, may actually make the tick burrow deeper, making it harder to extract.