3 Safe Ways to Remove a Tick without Tweezers. They Will Work Anywhere!

The easiest way to remove a tick is to use tweezers. However, if you don’t have this tool at hand, you can remove the uninvited arachnid in a few other ways.

Ticks love soft skin areas with some blood supplied underneath. They can cling on to any part of our body, particularly enjoying the areas of neck, belly, chest, arm pits and the area under our knees. The moment you notice a tick, you have to get rid of it. Never put it off as ticks drink your blood and that poses a great risk of infection.

The best way to do it is picking it up with tweezers. If you don’t have them, there are a few other ways of removing the parasite.

I don’t know anyone who would take a pair of tweezers while going on a trip to the woods. So what you can do once you are out there? You can just pick a thread from your sweater or another piece of clothing, make a loop and put it on the arachnid. Make sure it is as close to your skin as possible. Then tighten it and with a quick vertical move remove the tick.

Another trick calls for a cotton bud. Wet it in water and use it to rotate the tick along its axis (counterclockwise). In this way you can remove the entire tick.

If there is nothing at hand, then there is your hand and your fingers. Hold it with your thumb and index finger. Gently turn the parasite left and right pulling it vertically up. Make sure you won’t break its body.

Once you take it out, immediately disinfect the wound with some alcohol or ointment containing iodine. If the red area around the spot gets bigger, you need to see the doctor.

The parasite needs to be put in a plastic bag or in between two pieces of paper and then smashed, for example using a glass. It’s just to make sure you don’t get exposed to its body fluids. Don’t flush it in the toilet as it might survive a long time in water.