Of course, walking is not entirely safe. There are numerous dangers on the trail, such as hostile animals. Few of these dangers remain in the walking areas available to most pedestrians, at least, the larger animals such as wolves and bears. But there are plenty of small invertebrates such as mosquitoes, chiggers, and ticks waiting to afflict you. They have no evil intention; it is just that you are, along with other mammals, their major source of food.
Ticks like to wait on the tips of leaf blades near paths. This is where they have the maximum chance of an animal brushing against them. This happens mostly in areas where lots of animals roam, therefore they are unlikely to do this in the middle of your yard. But in a forest or field, where deer and people are likely to pass through, there can be lots of ticks.
A tick bite by itself may not be a major concern, but various disease microorganisms use ticks as a vector to get from one animal to another. A major example in North America is Lyme disease (caused by the bacterium Borrellia burgdorferi and spread mostly by deer ticks). But it is not the only example.
Whenever the weather is warm, some people like to hike. This includes amateur walkers who have little experience with hiking outdoors. As you might expect, it is advisable to wear pants rather than shorts if you plan to leave the trail. During peak vacation times, health authorities often warn people to check themselves for ticks after brushing against grass. Authorities such as the U.S. Forest Service advise a “full body tick check” after you get home from your hike.
A full-body tick check can be done alone when you are naked in front of a mirror. Although this is better than not doing one at all, it is best done with a significant other. (I told my students about this one time. One student asked, where do we find a significant other? I think he must have been a social loser… If I’d been thinking, I would have said, “You can get anything on Amazon,” but I didn’t think of this snappy response until it was too late.) Reasons for this include:
- Ticks love to insinuate themselves into the deepest, warmest crevices of your body, and they will crawl a long ways to find such places. The reasons should be obvious. In deep crevices, they are protected from being scratched or brushed away. This is a real danger to ticks when they get on primates, with dexterous fingers. There is not much a cow or deer can do to scratch away a tick.
- It is difficult for one person to bend around and look in a mirror at their dorsal surfaces and nether regions. You would probably be in a physically uncomfortable position looking closely at your own butt in a mirror.
A mutual tick-check is a good test for the intimacy of a sexual relationship: Do I trust you enough for a tick-check? The standards of trust for a tick check might even be higher than those for sexual intercourse. Unlike sex itself, the tick-check forces you to look closely at body regions where one seldom looks during sexual intercourse. If you are worried about bad smells, take a shower first; showers seldom dislodge ticks. In the sexual regions of the body, especially if hair is present, there are more surfaces for a tick to hide than you could imagine. And it is not just the nether regions. Ticks—some of which are very small and require close observation—can also hide in the folds of flesh underneath female breasts. But don’t ignore the back, neck, shoulders, and legs, as well as armpits and behind the knees. See the website here.
In earlier centuries, people had so many parasites that a walk in the woods would make little difference in their parasite load. Those days must have been wonderful for ticks.
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