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Comment by CamperBob2 | Hacker News Reader

We always covered them with coal-tar ointment (ichthyol / ichthammal) for a few minutes. They detached without a problem after that, with nothing more than a subtle hint from the tweezers.

Just breaking out the tweezers and yanking away was most emphatically not recommended. It can leave the mouth parts behind, if nothing else.

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In my experience it works the same way by simply using a drop of dishwashing detergent on them. After 30 seconds max they want to get out with wriggling legs. Works on me after jogging, on my cats, at the back of their neck. Any other place they can take care by themselves, and do.

On dogs my friend likes to strike a match, touch the extinguished tip to the back of the tick, and then pull it out with tweezers. Seems to work

From experience, you might end up with 2nd degree burns and burn the bugger into a hot crispy pile of ash.

Now that you say it...

Makes me wonder of what would happen when you'd use the tips of two blank wires connected to a 1.5V battery?

ZAP!

Could be made into a small USB-gadget, to have it always available? Zaptastick!

I like this. Better: ZapStick!

I actually searched for things like that after posting.

It's already a thing*, in many different variations. Some use piezo-electrics, advertised as 'battery free'. And countless other stuff, many with some variation of Zap(p) in their names.

*Sort of, didn't see small 'passive' ones powered by USB.

Edit: Thinking about it, one could abuse and modify one of the countless e-vapes for it? Small enough in most cases, and self-powered.

This is your ticket to $$$. All you need is a friend with Steve Wozniak-like capability and Bob's your uncle.

Not interested in $$$/€€€. Already have enough of those. As a personal project probably. But not commercially. That would be too much of a hassle. Which I also have enough of, already ;->

ZapsTick

OMG YES GENIUS!

Considering how often dogs in my area were covered with ticks, I am surprised we never got one as teenagers, we were running or biking in the same place.

30+ years ago we would use ether to remove them, and I enjoyed burning them afterwards, it was so satisfying...

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