[pct-l] Ticks

[Diane at Santa Barbara Hikes dot com]

I did not see any ticks on the trail in 2008. I'm good at seeing  
them. I can see them hanging off the bushes waiting.

This is the tick that carries lyme disease:
http://images.google.com/images?q=western+black-legged+tick
The female has the red body and is the carrier. The male is all black  
and resembles a black sesame seed. The male is not known to carry  
lyme disease.

The regular deer tick is larger, light brown or gray, more round and  
is not known to carry lyme disease.

Still, no tick is pleasant. There's something primal and horrible  
about having an alien being latched on and embedded into you, eating  
your flesh. I've gotten them worse when wearing shorts than wearing  
pants. They don't hang on very well to nylon pants, and they can't  
figure out how to get past the zipper on zip-off pants. With shorts a  
tick was able to climb from the bottom of my shorts to my pubic hair  
and dig in near my femoral artery.

I've also had them fall from brush down my back and lodge under my  
backpack. I've also had them fall and climb into my bra and latch at  
the tip of my nipple. I've had them on my hand and my forearm, too.  
Sometimes they bite quickly and sometimes they wander around for a  
while before they settle in.

The key to finding them has been any time I find myself scratching a  
painful itchy place more than once, do a tick check. Do a tick check  
anyway of course, but the times I've written off little painful itchy  
spots as nothing they've been ticks.