Seed Ticks Are a Thing You Probably Didn't Know You Need to Avoid

You probably already know about ticks and aim to avoid them as much as possible. Well, allow us to introduce you to seed ticks: a tiny form of ticks you probably never knew you needed to watch out for.

Beka Setzer wrote a disturbing Facebook post last summer that she shared again this year on the Love What Matters Facebook page about how her daughter Emmalee came in from playing outside, covered in little black dots. At first, Setzer thought they were seeds, but she realized when she tried to wipe them off that they were actually tiny ticks…on her daughter’s body. They were super small, easy to miss, and left red splotches all over Emmalee's body.

"She must've been playing in or near a nest of tick larvae and was covered," Setzer wrote. "I spent nearly an hour and a half picking over 150 minuscule baby ticks off of her, gave her a long Dawn dish soap bath with repeated washing, washed all bedding, clothing, and toys she came into contact with afterward and administered Benadryl. This morning she woke up with a low-grade fever, these spots on her and a hard, large marble-sized swollen lymph node."

Luckily, the ticks weren’t carrying a tick-borne illness, but it can happen, which is why Setzer wrote her original post. "They're not as easy to see as the ticks you're likely looking for on yourself or children," she wrote.

“Seed ticks resemble poppy seeds with six legs,” Mark Beavers, Ph.D., an Orkin entomologist, tells SELF. Of course, if you're not a bug expert, it can be tough to know the difference between these and other bugs, but Dr. Beavers points out that these baby ticks don’t have antennae or three body segments like other insects. And they have six legs rather than the eight that adult ticks have.

It's very common for someone to get seed ticks after being in grass, like Emmalee, entomologist Roberto M. Pereira, Ph.D., a research scientist with the University of Florida, tells SELF. Tick eggs are laid on soil or grass (often near woods, where ticks prefer to live) and when they hatch, the seed ticks move to the top of grass blades or other plants to wait for a host to pass by. “If that is a human, they will get on that person,” Dr. Pereira says.

Luckily, they don’t usually latch onto you right away and start sucking your blood. Doug Webb, pest expert and manager of technical services at Terminix, tells SELF that seed ticks will “walk around for a little while” until they find a place to attach. He’s actually had seed ticks on him in the past and says they can look like a brown patch moving up your leg because there are so many of them. It’s not uncommon to find a lot of them at once, either—Webb says female ticks can lay several hundred or a few thousand eggs.

Dr. Pereira recommends washing with water and soap (it can be regular bath soap), which should remove them if they haven’t been there long. If they’ve attached themselves, unfortunately Webb says you have to remove them with fine-tipped tweezers. You’ll want to pull upward with steady even pressure (jerking or twisting them can cause the mouth-parts to break off and remain in the skin), clean the bite area with rubbing alcohol, iodine, or soap and water, and dispose of each tick by submersing it in alcohol or flushing it down the toilet.

Since seed ticks are still ticks, it’s possible to catch a tick-borne illness from them, including Lyme disease and Powhassan virus, Webb says. But, he adds, just because you’ve been bitten by a tick doesn’t mean you'll definitely catch an illness from them. That’s why he recommends watchful waiting, i.e. keeping an eye out for signs of a tick-borne disease, like a fever, rash, and swelling, and calling your doctor if you notice any of them after a tick bite.

Seed ticks are more likely to latch onto small mammals like rodents, cats, or dogs, Webb says, but they’ll climb onto humans if one happens to cross its path at the right time. Judy Black, BCE, vice president of North America Technical Services for Rentokil Steritech, tells SELF that ticks are most commonly found in wooded areas, especially along trails and the edges of forests, which is why it's especially important to be mindful of ticks in those areas. If you have a yard, she says you can limit its attractiveness to ticks by keeping it mowed short, keeping bushes trimmed, moving play equipment away from the edges of the yard, and putting away pet food overnight, which can attract ticks.

Of course, you shouldn’t avoid grass or ban your kid from playing in it out of a fear of seed ticks, but Webb recommends wearing DEET if you're going to spend solid time in or near a wooded area and checking yourself and family members after you come in from playing outside. “It’s realistic to be concerned about ticks, but you shouldn’t panic,” Webb says.

See Setzer's Facebook post below.

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• This Popular Video Shows the Absolute Wrong Way to Remove a Tick
• Lyme Disease Cases Have Tripled in 20 Years—Here's How to Stay Safe

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