Beware of blood-sucking bugs in your underwear!

Ticks, the tiny creatures hardly visible to people, are in fact terrible monsters. These arthropods with strong jaws stick under the skin of animals and people in an instant. Ticks could probably be regarded as the most abominable beasts if they were as big as dogs. However, being that tiny, ticks pose a serious danger to all of us: tick bites often cause encephalitis, and even its fatal form. With the coming of spring and warm weather, ticks start attacking living creatures in recreation areas, in parks and in forests.

When walking in a forest or a park and enjoying the nature one can hardly notice such an abominable insect waiting for a prey on a fresh green leave of a tree. Ticks usually prefer leaves and grass standing not more than one meter above the ground. It is the best location for further attacks at animals and people's clothes. They first cling to the animal hair or people's clothes and then try to get to open skin. Neck, folds of the skin, underarms and buttocks are the loveliest spots for ticks. Be particularly careful when taking off clothes in the open air in summer: ticks may get into your underwear and hide there. Very often, the insect also reaches the head.

Experts recommend examining the whole of your body after picnics in the woods and pay special attention to children skin if kids also attended the picnic party. Ticks inject anesthetic when biting so that the victim could not feel any pain for several hours more.

Remember the old folk recommendation for fighting tick bites: if you find a tick bite on your body, just apply some vegetable oil to the spot. The oil will block access to air and the insect will get out of the wound. Modern medicine recommends using cotton, alcohol, forceps and a small box to extract ticks. Put a tick taken out of the wound in this small box to take it for an epidemiological expertise to find out if the insect was infected or not. Doctors say that the tick head is the most infectious part of the insect; that is why try not to behead ticks during extraction.

The best way to avoid tick-borne encephalitis is to be vaccinated against the disease. The measure is particularly recommended to those who plan to spend a great part of the summer out of town, in parks and forests.

Besides encephalitis, ticks can also carry borreliosis, the Lyme disease that is particularly dangerous for people's central nervous system and support-motor apparatus. Over seventy per cent of ticks in the central part of Russia carry the disease. There is no vaccine against borreliosis, unfortunately. Higher temperature and pain in joints are the first symptoms of the disease.

Pet owners must also take care of their cats and dogs and vaccinate them as soon as spring begins and every month till autumn.