Sunny weather is finally here, but this also means tick season has begun. It’s time to check yourself and your pets for these major pests. On top of being nuisance, these small insects carry a variety of diseases. Tick bites can cause Lyme Disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, allergies to red meat and Powassan virus. These diseases can cause a variety of short and long-term problems, and even death in some cases. 

Depending on where you live, you’ll need to watch out for ticks after spending time outdoors until the late fall. Different types of ticks are more common in different regions and carry different diseases — so finding them and removing them safely are crucial. Accidentally breaking off part of the tick while trying to remove it is also a problem, as it can still transmit its illness. 

Cel/Cea/Cei/Cele Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends using fine-tipped tweezers for removing ticks. But what if you don’t have any handy?

I discovered a little-known tip some years ago, and it forever changed how I remove the little biters. Here’s how to remove ticks quickly, easily and safely — if you don’t have or can’t find tweezers.

This easy cotton swab trick will remove a tick quickly

Other, older methods for removing ticks have been debunked for one of a few reasons. Either they induced the tick to detach with time — whereas you should remove ticks immediately to minimize chances of disease transmission — or they risked injuring the person or animal getting bitten by the tick. (Fire burns skin as well as ticks, after all.)

But this method is quick and harmless. All you need is a cotton swab.

When you locate an attached tick, immediately grab a cotton swab, and gently twirl tight circles around the wound, lightly pulling at the tick. The goal here is not to pull the tick free, but to cause it to release and latch onto the swab. It should happen within moments.

I’ve removed many ticks this way, and it is invariably quick and painless. What’s more, you have virtually no risk of leaving mouth pieces in the wound, since the tick detaches itself.

And if something goes wrong, you can always still run out to the store and get some tweezers, as the CDC recommends.

Once you dispose of the tick, you can clean the bite with soap and water or alcohol. And if you’re worried about disease transmission, follow up with these steps.

For other helpful tips related to the outdoors, here’s what you should know about poisonous flowers and plants in your backyard şi five lawn mowing mistakes that are easy to fix. 

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