Smorster

How I Stopped Getting Tick Bites Completely - Everything You NEED to Know

Silver Cymbal · 12m 15s · Watch on YouTube · 16 sources

Decision Card

Effort: One evening of shopping and setup — order a bottle of permethrin clothing spray ($15) plus a set of Thermacell/Damminix tick tubes ($30), treat your shoes and toss tubes around the yard; the daily habit (body checks, keeping packing tape in the car) costs a couple minutes a day.

Honest take: The prevention tactics are sound and match published research, but the presenter’s signature advice — wear shorts and a t-shirt so you feel ticks crawling before they reach your hair — directly contradicts CDC/EPA guidance and hinges on his personal claim that he “always” feels them first; a numbing bite you never feel is exactly the failure mode that advice ignores, and he never treats bare skin as the tradeoff it is.

Concrete next steps:

  • Treat shoes/socks/pant cuffs with permethrin spray, dry outdoors on newspaper — 15 min active, protection lasts ~6 weeks/6 washings (EPA guidance).
  • Put tick tubes out where mice nest (stone walls, wood piles, shrub bases); plan to replace ~monthly through the season, not once — effectiveness drops off otherwise (Penn State).
  • Keep packing tape in the car/mudroom for crawling ticks, and buy a $5 tick-removal fork for embedded ones; do a full-body check every evening after being outside.
  • Skip if you live in an arid, tick-sparse region, have no yard, and rarely enter tall grass or leaf litter — the yard-treatment half of this is wasted effort for you (skin-level DEET/permethrin when you do travel is enough).

TL;DR

A tick-country homeowner walks through practical, low-cost tick prevention: permethrin-treated footwear, strategic clothing, tick tubes that weaponize mice against ticks, packing tape and removal tools for ticks already on you, and diligent daily body checks. Most claims hold up against public-health sources; the notable outlier is his advice to wear minimal clothing so you can feel ticks before they hide, which runs counter to standard guidance.

Key Points

  • More tick bites now happen in cities and suburbs than in deep forest, because ticks only need moisture, shade, and a passing host — not trees 00:51
  • There are essentially no meaningful tick predators; guinea hens eat them but aren’t native and bring their own problems, and claims that skunks/possums control ticks are overstated 01:32
  • “Deer ticks” are now spread mainly by mice, chipmunks, and other small ground animals rather than deer 01:55
  • Ticks don’t fly, jump, or drop from trees — they quest low and hook onto your feet and legs, then climb toward the head 02:49
  • Permethrin (derived from a chrysanthemum-type flower) sprayed on shoes gives ~30 days of coverage and repels ticks before they board 03:17
  • Contrarian clothing take: he wears shorts and a t-shirt so he’ll feel a tick crawling before it reaches his hair, arguing bulky sealed clothing just routes ticks straight to the scalp undetected 04:39
  • For a tick crawling on you indoors, don’t flick it (it survives in the house) — lift it with packing tape and fold it shut 06:00
  • Tick tubes are permethrin-treated cotton mice carry back to nests; the insecticide kills ticks on the mice without harming the mouse, and decomposes in a season 07:15
  • A short, dry, mowed lawn acts as a barrier — ticks dry out and retreat to the forest edge; they avoid hot asphalt and brick 08:52
  • Remove embedded ticks with a fork-style tool that slides under the body, never by squeezing; a tick’s bite injects a numbing agent so you won’t feel it dig in 11:00

Notable Quotes

“Ticks only need a location that can either be moist, damp, shady to really thrive and of course they need you.” 01:10

“Now that tick is frozen in the carbonite for eternity.” 06:35

“When they first bite you, they inject a numbing into your body. That numbing actually dulls your senses. You don’t even know that they’re biting and digging into you, kind of like getting Novocaine at the dentist.” 10:58

Verified Claims

Ticks don’t fly, jump, or drop from trees; they quest on low vegetation and grab passing hosts. 02:49

Permethrin is derived from chrysanthemum-family compounds, is safe for people, and treated clothing/shoes protects for roughly 30+ days. 03:17

Tick tubes work: mice line nests with permethrin-treated cotton, killing ticks on the mice. 07:15

“Deer ticks” are now sustained largely by mice and small mammals, not deer; white-footed mice are the key Lyme reservoir. 01:55

A tick’s bite injects a numbing/anesthetic agent, so you don’t feel it dig in. 10:58

Skunks/possums don’t meaningfully control ticks; there are effectively no strong tick predators. 01:19

Wear minimal clothing (shorts, t-shirt) so you feel ticks before they reach your hair. 04:39

Tools, Papers & Standards Mentioned

Follow-up Questions

  1. Does the video’s shorts-and-t-shirt approach measurably increase bite risk versus treated long clothing, and are there any controlled data comparing “detect-by-feel” against “cover-and-tuck” strategies?
  2. What is the real-world, whole-yard reduction in human tick encounters (not just ticks-on-mice) from tick tubes when other reservoir hosts like chipmunks, shrews, and squirrels are present?
  3. How does permethrin footwear/clothing treatment compare head-to-head with skin-applied DEET or picaridin for preventing tick attachment, and can they be layered safely?

Sources