Hidden threat

Happily, we don’t have too many menacing animals in our place. There are no poisonous scorpions, blood-thirsty crocodiles, no stealthy panthers — even the birds are peaceful. The only candidates to scare people are wolves, bears, and tigers. Most of them are tired of seeing Russians, and that’s why they avoid human contact while living on their own deep inside the forests. But it doesn’t mean that there are no threats at all. Some of them are so little that it’s even hard to notice them, but they can be more dangerous than a bear.

I’m going to show you the scary one: Ixodes ricinus. There are many varieties of them: Ixodes ricinus, Ixodes
persulcatus, Ixodes ricinus, Dermacentor reticulatus and others. But for simplicity let’s just say we have only one type and call them all “Ixodes”.

Why are they dangerous? Those tiny bugs are carriers for many fatal mortal diseases. Lyme disease, borreliosis, encephalitis are his “friends”. They need the blood of animals for their offspring, so they try to reach some animal or human after they wake up after winter. They are tiny; their bite is undetectable because they use some anesthetic during biting, so it’s really hard to protect yourself.
But there are a few tricks still.

1. They don’t bite immediately after contacting human skin. They crawl for a pretty long time trying to find the most prospective place to bite. So if you are in the forest, you’d better scan your skin more often that once in 2 hours.
   
2. After biting, they suck your blood for 5-6 days, enough time to notice them and to apply for medical help. But remember that it’s better to detach the bug immediately after detection.
   
3. Never throw away the bug after removing. Keep it and pass it to the medical center. They can determine if it is infected or not, and this can save your life.
   
4. To prevent getting bit, it is best to use special aerosols and special forest clothes.
   
5. If Half you are going to live in a place where there are many Ixodus insects, you had better get vaccinated.

 

Those bugs live not only in forests, but they can also spread into cities and parks. And there are many cases of biting inside the cities. Usually in my area local services do special manipulations, spreading chemicals that kill those bugs. All the territories where children might play are processed in a special way. We can even call that service and ask them to process our personal territories of houses, gardens, and summer houses, but I’ve never done it. It’s a real threat there, and I have many personal stories about those bad guys, but regarding all that amount of time I spend in the forest, it should be so, just a consequences of the law of big numbers.

I just read that in May more than 10,000 people were bitten by those bugs in my area. If you are a city boy and follow these simple rules of safety, perhaps you will never meet them anywhere but in this blog.