Wildlife Wednesday: Seed Ticks

I already hated ticks.  To me, they're spiders that won't brush off (and we all know how I feel about spiders). After this weekend, I have a renewed disdain toward the parasitic arachnid.

The boys and I woke Friday morning and emerged sleepy-eyed from our tent.  I built a fire, made breakfast and packed our daypacks. By nine we were headed for the Pocomoke Park Quest in Milburn Landing.

We easily found the park and the starting point for our quest.  We opened the lid of the wooden chest containing our quest equipment and instructions.  The lid was heavy and it opened with a crash. I jumped back with a squeak.


Not a seed tick. Very big wolf spider.

We quickly grabbed our gear, checked it for other eight-legged friends, and hit the trail.  All three of us were coated in bug repellent, but it was the natural stuff.  Deet makes me sick and I've always figured, unless we're hiking in malaria prone areas, we'll forego the chemicals.  I may revise this thought process.

We completed our quest (a sort of combination letterbox/activity deal) with ease.  But somewhere between the oversized Wolf Spider, the cyprus swamp, and the Pocomoke River, Matt walked through what others on the Internet call a tick bomb.

We didn't know until he used the restroom post-quest.  He opened the stall door to show me a spattering of bug bites in the area of his shorts.  At first, I thought he got an ant in his shorts, but by the time we got back to our tent, he had over a hundred bites on his torso.

"What are these little black things?" he asked.  I looked closer and realized they were teeny tiny, smaller than a pinhead, ticks!  We stripped him naked and began picking the things off.  I did my best to squish each one with my fingernails and deposited them in a ziplock bag.

The blurred dot by my thumb is the tick.

BugGuide has a clearer image.

I lost count of how many we pulled off Matt, but the real problem came when we realized twenty-four of the evil things had attached themselves where no boy should have ticks attached. My boy was not letting me anywhere near that area with my tweezers.  I didn't have vaseline with us, but I tried a thick first aid cream to see if they would release. No luck.  We tried a long soak in the chlorinated water of the pool. No luck.  In the end, we went to the emergency room.

The E.R. staff was very sweet.  The nurses tried several applications of vaseline and a special soap (which it turns out, is the wrong thing to do), but still no luck. The doctor saw us for less than a minute and was convinced the boy had chiggers. She sent us home just before midnight with a prescription for an antibiotic and instructions to get some lice shampoo, kill the little buggers and use sticky tape to remove the carcasses.

I did not buy the chigger diagnoses, but the lice shampoo worked to some degree.  A day in the ocean got rid of even more. A conversation with a sympathetic ranger at Jane's Island pointed me toward the seed tick diagnosis.  As soon as we got home, I hit the Internet and confirmed her suspicion.

According to my research, chiggers leave flat, welt-like bites.  Ticks leave raised, hard bites.  Chiggers are nearly microscopic and difficult to see with the naked eye.  Seed ticks are extremely small, but I was able to make out legs even without my bifocals.

Seed ticks are not a specific kind of tick, but are "baby" ticks. They hatch in the thousands.  Walking through a newly hatched nest is like being sprayed with tick shrapnel. Hence the term "tick bomb." Matt was lucky in that he picked up a hundred or so, but not a thousand.

I'm scratching just thinking about them.

In the end, I waited until he fell asleep and got the last two with my tweezers.  Hopefully, the kid hasn't been traumatized for life by the great ... or rather tiny outdoors.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Sources and Further Reading

"First Aid for Tick Bites," Oklahoma Poison Control Center
http://oklahomapoison.org/general/tick.asp

"Seed Ticks: The Devil's Spawn," Mayaland
http://mayalassiter.com/2009/08/seed-ticks-the-scourge-of-the-earth/

"Seed Ticks," Flea and Tick Control
http://www.flea-and-tick-control.info/seed-ticks.htm

Martinak

I parked our car in Martinak State Park and the boys looked out the windows at the steady drizzle.

"Okay, let's go," I said.  They looked at me like I was crazy. Normally, I told them to stay out of the rain. But they complied and with a few giggles, we set off across the parking lot.

The Martinak quest was another letterbox quest. I carried the clues in a plastic sleeve and we were able to find the first three boxes in twenty minutes. Somewhere between the first and second boxes, the rain slowed to a drip.  It allowed us to take a little time to walk around the remains of a boat found in nearby Watts Creek. Matt liked the idea that it may have been sunk by pirates.

The fourth box required a walk along the creek.  Despite the rainy haze, it was beautiful.

 

We struggled finding the fifth and final box.We actually gave up and got in the car. We were about to leave when we spotted a park ranger walking across a soggy field.  We bolted out of the car and across the parking lot to beg for asssistance.  She pointed us in the right direction and within minutes, Park Quest #6 was complete!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Quest Summary

both boys liked:  walking in the rain

both boys disliked: searching for letterbox #5

Up Two Creeks With Just One Paddle

During this month's camping trip, the boys and I completed two Park Quests, each involving a paddle. 

Let me say that again, slightly rephrased. 

I, the opposite of athletic, paddled a canoe a total of four miles with an extra 120 pounds in my boat!

I'm still walking around with a Matt-like swagger.

I'm not exactly a stranger to the canoe.  As a teenager, I went on a youth group trip where we paddled canoes down the Colorado River: from Blythe, California to Yuma, Arizona (at best guess, 85 miles).  It sounds impressive, but there was more floating and playing than paddling and we took an entire week.

Me on the Colorado, circa 1986
(I must have lost my mind to share my dorky sunburned self with the world)

Last summer, I successfully canoed three miles with just Matt in my boat (the photo in my new header is from that adventure). At the time he weighed all of 32 pounds.  Gabe rode with my cousin and her teenage son (that's their boat ahead of us in the header photo).

So, canoeing with the two of them (both having grown several inches this past year) was part of the whole going solo extravaganza.

The first quest at Tuckahoe was a challenge.  Not only was I the lone paddler, but I also had to pull the canoe off the rack, drag it to water, gather gear, load up boys and launch the whole mess into the water.  I took a breather to take a picture.

Matt sat in the middle of the boat on a cushion.  I put him in charge of the map.  He likes being the "bossy."

Gabe sat in the front of the boat.  It was his job to let me know of any debris in the water.  He was kept busy. It was a rare stretch that we could canoe a straight line.  We had to zig zag around fallen trees.  We got stuck on underwater logs more than once.  Halfway to our destination, I had to get out and drag the canoe (with the boys in it) across a sand bar.

It was rough, but worth it.  I had the best view.

And we saw hundreds of turtles.  The painted turtle below was the largest.  Gabe decided she was the mama. 

His/her shell was nearly two feet long.

We/I paddled for about an hour before reaching a point in the river where trees and debris blocked our way.  We had to turn around without reaching our prescribed destination.

When we returned to the park office to let the staff know we weren't lost in the swamps, the friendly park staff took pity and stamped our book anyway.

Even without the stamp, the quest was a success.  It showed us just what we could do!