The notch is the useful part; it lets you lift the tick off your body without squeezing it. Skillful use of good tweezers does the same. (The ones on a Swiss army knife dont really work for this)
Had a friend tell me about using dental floss to wrap around as close to the skin as possible, tighten, and pull the tick off. Haven’t tried it, but seems like it might work
Won’t that just cut off its head and leave the parts behind? I thought that was the general problem with using tweezers.
Luckily we don’t generally get ticks but the last time I tried to remove one I completely screwed it up, so I always take my kids to urgent care to have it done. It wouldn’t take much for that to become ruinously expensive
I think the idea is to get the floss just tight enough to not slip over the body.
I have this mental image of you as a govt agent choking someone out with a wire and then years later as a civilian trying to remove ticks off kids. “Dang it, cut it in half again. Why does this keep happening to me?”
Pick up some of those plastic tick spoons. I ordered a three-pack real cheap and keep one in the truck and one in the kitchen.
Not trying to be funny, but would a plastic spoon also suffice? I’ve never had a tick before.
The notch is the useful part; it lets you lift the tick off your body without squeezing it. Skillful use of good tweezers does the same. (The ones on a Swiss army knife dont really work for this)
So what you’re saying is my dad held a smoldering match against my leg while I screamed for fun?
Or he didn’t know how to do it without that. The match-as-best-approach was conventional wisdom for a lot of people for a long time
According to this video, the important part is a V-shaped notch with bevelled edges, cut into some thin piece of plastic.
So if you had a plastic spoon and an exacto knife to modify the spoon, only then would you be all set.
Had a friend tell me about using dental floss to wrap around as close to the skin as possible, tighten, and pull the tick off. Haven’t tried it, but seems like it might work
Won’t that just cut off its head and leave the parts behind? I thought that was the general problem with using tweezers.
Luckily we don’t generally get ticks but the last time I tried to remove one I completely screwed it up, so I always take my kids to urgent care to have it done. It wouldn’t take much for that to become ruinously expensive
I think the idea is to get the floss just tight enough to not slip over the body.
I have this mental image of you as a govt agent choking someone out with a wire and then years later as a civilian trying to remove ticks off kids. “Dang it, cut it in half again. Why does this keep happening to me?”
Pick up some of those plastic tick spoons. I ordered a three-pack real cheap and keep one in the truck and one in the kitchen.
That’s hilarious, thanks for the image! Not the first time I’ve been accused of not being gentle enough
I bet with practice you could cut a notch in a spoon with a knife that would do the same thing