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