Near death in Bangladesh
Have a repost you lovely people.

My friend John and I were in Bangladesh. We had planned on poking around a temple and then walking back to town, but we got lost in rare style. We found ourselves in a jungle (a jungle!) as the sun was setting. We decided that the only thing to do was cut down a bamboo tree with my two inch Swiss Army knife and use the foliage as a blanket. That was a bizarre night.

The next day was fairly nightmarish. No food, our 500ml bottle of water had been empty for a day, no change of clothes, no map, no compass, no real clue on how to survive in a strange country or indeed in anything other than an urban environment. We gave messages to each other to relay to our families if either of us didn't make it. That was the closest to the reaper we ever got.

To cut a long story short, two days later we, thank goodness, were in a hotel in Chittagong. We splashed out on some luxury, and even managed to receive Indian MTV. I was watching a particularly fine advert for shampoo when I decided to inspect my shoulder to see why it was so itchy. There was an ugly looking brown spot. Scratching it caused it to flake off, but one corner tenaciously clinged to my skin. Growing suspicious, I examined it with the lens in my knife. The thing had legs. I was supporting a tick. John and I compiled a tick inventory. I was infested on my shoulder, just above my nipple, the soft spot between my earlobe and my head and a few other places.

Tugging them with tweezers didn't work, as their heads gripped very tightly. John, damn him a thousand times, at that point "remembered" that the way to get rid of ticks is to burn them off. Out came the matchbox.

You know that little sulphurous puff you get when you light a match? It was an appropriate signal for the hell that was to follow. Holding a lit match to your skin is never fun at the best of times, but holding one under your earlobe is simply awful. The worst moment came when I thought I had finished, but then realised that a tick was in fact sucking on my scrotum. I was being teabagged by an insect, and the only way to stop its advances was to hold a lit match to my balls. The bathroom filled with the smell of singed pubic hairs (and howls of laughter from John).

The story isn't finished yet. The next day we happened to come across some doctors, to whom we told our story. They smirked and shook their heads. They told us that burning a tick leaves its head buried under your skin. We could look forward to some nasty infections, and sure enough for months to come the bites were gushing pus. The one above my nipple wept so much that one day four months later someone pointed out that I appeared to be lactating.

Just for reference, you twist and pull at the same time. Hurts, but you remove the head. Bear that in mind the next time you visit a temple.
(I grew it myself, Mon 23 Aug 2010, 15:02, 14 replies)

you could have just smothered them in vaseline
they die and drop off, no need for burning

well, that's what we were always told back in SA
( zulu eh?, Mon 23 Aug 2010, 15:05, closed)

^This^
I was going to post it myself but beaten to it, vaseline suffocates the fuckers. Whether any fellow backpackers would admit to carrying around vaseline in a hot country is another matter.
(bROKEN aRROW PUA HVI Master, Mon 23 Aug 2010, 15:46, closed)

Nope, they don't need much air so can survive for ages.
Tweezers as close as you can get with a steady pull is all that's needed.
(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Mon 23 Aug 2010, 16:54, closed)

Twist
When I had a cat he would often be sporting a giant tick on the side of his head. We got this little plastic hook from the vets which you just hooked under the body of the tick and twisted and the buggers would always come off. It was the only thing that ever worked for us.
(Tom Jones's Mojo Hasn't had any since, Mon 23 Aug 2010, 17:31, closed)

Teabagged by a tick?
German porn companies would pay heaps for a video of that...
(emadex thinks the world will end on, Mon 23 Aug 2010, 17:42, closed)

Getting them drunk
Soak a bit of cotton wool in vodka. apply to the tick for a couple of minutes and they fall right off. Use that method on the dog all the time.
(Freak on a Leash is jerking off to centre himself on, Mon 23 Aug 2010, 18:19, closed)

Yep.
Gin works too.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Mon 23 Aug 2010, 22:15, closed)

Nope, it causes them to regurgitate their stomach contents
which may contain all sorts of nasties.
(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Tue 24 Aug 2010, 11:02, closed)

I used rubbing alcohol
Cos I needed the vodak to wipe out the memory of swabbing and tweezing thousands (3,000, I'd estimate) off a poor little dog dumped by its owner. Don't know the breed, but it will forever be known as a Tickenese.

And yes, I'd put the flea/tick controller on him, which is why I had to swab-- I could not OD him with any more poisons.
( kila is reading clocks upside-down as usual, Tue 24 Aug 2010, 11:34, closed)

Any story involving parasites...
...gets a click.
(TheSnark oh, c'mon, like you didn't see me coming, Mon 23 Aug 2010, 18:46, closed)

A nervous tick...
click
(TwinkleFuckingToes Has a ingrown toe nail, Tue 24 Aug 2010, 9:09, closed)

Not vaseline
Toothpaste kills 'em quicktime.
(DownhillGardener no-one does it like that anymore, Mon 23 Aug 2010, 19:32, closed)

You're not supposed to actualy burn them...
Just hold a hot object very close and they let go - then you squash the bastards. Worked fine in the US. The one I did just pull out gave me Lyme's disease. I've never felt so ill...
( Colonel Boris "...a desperate Buzzfeed imitation...", Mon 23 Aug 2010, 22:38, closed)

I just pull the buggers out...
As evident in the other replies there are about a million theories on how to get them out - special tweezers, twisting them clockwise while pulling, vaseline, alcohol, heat and probably many, many more...

So far I ignore all of that and just pull them out... grip them as close to your skin as you can with tweezer and pull them smoothly out which has so far worked fine for me and leaves them with their heads attached (unless you do it too roughly).

Ah, the joys of camping in the Highlands...
(442, Tue 24 Aug 2010, 12:16, closed)