Ticks are closely related to spiders (both have eight legs) and sit in trees, ferns and blades of grass waiting for a warm blooded animal to pass by. The scent and warmth of the animal wakes them up and then they quickly burrow their heads into their host and feast on warm blood.
On our recent trip to the Masai Mara, Murray and Adam each picked up a tick. Whilst they are both nature lovers, the thought of having their blood drained was not for them. In the field there are several ways of getting rid of ticks. DO NOT immediately pull the tick out; you will leave its mouth parts embedded in your flesh and this will cause an infection. It is far safer to kill the tick and a few hours later, the head can then be pulled out with the body attached, wthout the risk of breakage.
In the right hand photograph above, Murray is killing the tick with a lighter. Whilst effective, it can burn your flesh! In the second photograph, our Masai guide killed a tick by piercing its body with a thorn from a bush. Very effective, and painless!
Since then we have researched the subject and found that the lighter method is not recommended. Apart from the risk of burning yourself, there is apparently a risk that the stress will cause the tick to regurgitate the contents of its stomach into the host .... yuck!
Thankfully ticks have not been common on our trips.
Julie and Adam
Tips on ticks - 23 September 2007
In memorium ... in the Mara - 9 September 2007
We spent two full days with a Cheetah mother and her cub during our August 2007 expedition to the Masai Mara. We spent the first day watching them sleep and play together. The second day we watched the mother kill three young Thommies.
Unfortunately the cub suffered from either congenital glaucoma or cataracts in both eyes which gave both eyes a deep opaque blue colour and a vacant stare. Cheetahs and other wild cats often develop cataracts following injury, often a thorn but this cub was only weeks old and of course both eyes were afected. It was presumably congenital. Surgery is possible, and indeed has been perfomed on Lions in other parks. We were told that a vet had looked at our Cheetah but had judged it too young for treatment.
Shortly after our return to London, we heard from the park that Lions had killed the cub. Whether this was because the cub had poor vision is not known, but it cannot have helped. This was very sad news however it does demonstrate the balance of nature and the means of survival. We found the following from Richard Dawkins....
"Nature is not cruel, pitiless, indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous -- indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose"
All the best,
Julie and Adam