Smorster

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

Silver Cymbal · 12m 15s · Watch on YouTube · 17 sources

Decision Card

Effort: A weekend yard project plus a one-time gear setup — buy a bottle of 0.5% permethrin clothing spray (~$15, e.g. Sawyer), treat your shoes/socks/pants and let dry 2 hours, keep a roll of packing tape and a tick-removal tool in the car, and scatter Damminix tick tubes around mouse habitat in spring and again mid-summer.

Honest take: The prevention advice (permethrin, mowing, daily checks, tape capture) is sound and matches public-health guidance, but two confident claims are shakier than presented: the host’s “no animal eats ticks except guinea hens” dismissal glosses over that the real opossum-debunk is about opossums not eating them, and tick-tube effectiveness is genuinely mixed in the research — it works great on mice but often fails to lower overall yard tick numbers because squirrels, voles, and shrews carry ticks too. He also presents his “wear shorts so you feel them crawling” approach as a feature, which directly contradicts CDC’s tuck-pants-in-socks guidance.

Concrete next steps:

  • Permethrin-treat footwear/clothing — adopt (~20 min + dry time; ~$15). Spray shoes, socks, and pant cuffs; reapply every ~6 weeks or 6 washes per EPA. Treated socks/sneakers cut bite risk dramatically (study cited by Consumer Reports).
  • Packing-tape capture for crawling (un-embedded) ticks — adopt (free). Lift, fold, done — never squish on skin.
  • Tick-removal tool / fine-tipped tweezers for embedded ticks — adopt (~$8). But follow CDC: grasp close to skin, pull straight up, no twisting.
  • Lawn-as-barrier: mow short, keep grass/leaf litter back from the house — adopt (recurring; free). Well-supported drying-out mechanism.
  • Tick tubes — try (~$30–40/yr). Replace roughly monthly through the season (Penn State); expect mixed yard-level results.
  • Wear shorts + a T-shirt to “feel” ticks before they reach your hair — skip if you can’t reliably do frequent body checks; CDC recommends covering up and tucking pants into socks instead.
  • Guinea hens for tick control — skip (the host himself notes they bring more problems than they solve).

TL;DR

A tick-heavy-region homeowner walks through practical, mostly evidence-aligned tick prevention: permethrin-treat your shoes and clothing, use your lawn and tick tubes to suppress the yard population, and capture crawling ticks with packing tape rather than squishing them. His advice gets weaker on two points — his blanket “nothing eats ticks” claim and his counterintuitive “wear shorts so you notice them” strategy, which runs against standard cover-up guidance.

Key Points

  • More tick bites now happen in cities and suburbs than ever, not just deep forest, because ticks only need moist/shady ground plus a host. 00:51
  • Ticks have essentially no meaningful predators; “skunks and possums eat ticks” is dismissed as myth, with guinea hens the only regular tick-eater he knows of. 01:18
  • “Deer ticks” today are spread far more by mice, chipmunks, and other small ground animals than by deer. 01:55
  • Ticks quest by waiting on grass/leaf tips and latch onto your feet/legs — they don’t fly, jump, or drop from trees. 02:49
  • Permethrin-type spray on shoes (derived from a flower, relatively safe) gives ~30 days of coverage and blocks the main ground-up entry route. 03:17
  • He deliberately wears shorts/T-shirt so he’ll feel ticks crawling before they reach his hair, where they’re undetectable — rather than bulky tucked-in clothing. 04:39
  • For crawling (not embedded) ticks indoors, use packing tape to capture them — never flick them off, since they can survive and re-find a host. 06:00
  • Tick tubes (treated cotton mice carry into nests) use insecticide to kill ticks on mice and their babies, dramatically reducing the population. 07:09
  • A short-mown lawn acts as a barrier; ticks dry out and retreat toward the forest edge. 08:52
  • For embedded ticks, use a removal tool/tweezers to lift without squishing, call a medical professional, and remember a tick can travel ankle-to-head in 20–30 seconds and numbs the bite so you don’t feel it. 09:21

Notable Quotes

“Ticks only need a location that can either be moist, damp, shady to really thrive. And of course, they need you.” 01:09

“Once that tick is on the tape, that little guy is never getting out. Simply fold an unused part of the tape over. And now that tick is frozen in the carbonite for eternity.” 06:29

“A tick can crawl from your ankle to your head in about 20 to 30 seconds. That’s not a long time.” 10:41

Verified Claims

Ticks don’t fly, jump, or drop from trees — they quest from low vegetation and latch onto feet/legs. 02:49

Permethrin spray gives ~30 days of footwear/clothing protection, is derived from a plant, and is relatively safe. 03:17

  • EPA: Repellent-Treated Clothing, Consumer Reports
  • Verdict: Mostly Confirmed — DIY spray lasts ~6 weeks/6 washes (≈30 days is reasonable) and EPA deems it safe; but permethrin is a synthetic pyrethroid (modeled on pyrethrins from chrysanthemum flowers), not directly extracted from a flower as implied.

“Deer ticks” are now spread mainly by mice and small mammals, not deer. 01:55

Skunks/possums eating ticks is a myth. 01:18

Tick tubes dramatically reduce the tick population. 07:09

CDC-style removal: lift the tick out without squishing, using a tool/tweezers. 09:21

  • CDC: Tick Bite — What to Do (PDF), FDA
  • Verdict: Confirmed — CDC says grasp close to skin with fine-tipped tweezers and pull straight up, don’t twist or crush; the video’s tool achieves the same.

Removing a tick within ~24 hours greatly reduces Lyme risk. 09:42

  • FDA, American Lyme Disease Foundation
  • Verdict: Confirmed — blacklegged ticks generally need 24+ hours (often 36–48) attached to transmit Lyme bacteria, though shorter-window infections are occasionally reported, as the host notes.

Tools, Papers & Standards Mentioned

Follow-up Questions

  • For my specific region and yard, do tick tubes actually lower the number of questing ticks I encounter, or only the ticks on mice — and would a perimeter acaricide spray be a better investment?
  • Is the host’s “shorts so I feel them crawling” approach defensible for someone who does rigorous daily tick checks, or does CDC’s cover-up/tuck-in guidance win in all cases?
  • How does professionally pre-treated permethrin clothing (≈70 washes) compare in cost-per-season and effectiveness against DIY spray (≈6 washes) for someone outdoors daily?

Sources