Bug Repellents That Work

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Speaker 13 The symptoms of Lyme are very tricky. They're just these sort of general flu-like symptoms, muscle stiffness.
Personally, I feel it in the neck. I get a really stiff neck.

Speaker 14 Can you get it more than once?

Speaker 15 Yeah, I've had about five times. I've been treated about five times.
So basically, there are no limits to how many times you can get it? Unfortunately, no.

Speaker 15 I'm Christine Zeer-Clissette. I'm Kyra Blackwell.

Speaker 14 I'm Rosie Guerin. And And you're listening to The Wire Cutter Show.

Speaker 14 This episode is called Bug Repellents That Work.

Speaker 15 Hey, pals. Hey.

Speaker 14 So I'm really excited for this episode. Today is all about how to repel ticks and mosquitoes.
Weird thing to be excited about. I know, but it's going to be practical.

Speaker 15 That's right. We're doing the good work here.

Speaker 14 Mosquitoes are annoying. They keep us inside sometimes in the summertime.
They can ruin an evening on the patio. But honestly, they also transmit diseases like malaria, dengue fever, Zika.

Speaker 14 These are problems that exist in this country and they're getting more prevalent year after year. So

Speaker 14 while this is not terribly sexy stuff, I think with our guest today, our friend Doug Mahoney at the helm, I'm going to learn and hopefully walk away with some practical advice from him. Absolutely.

Speaker 14 This is actually Doug's third time on the show. He's a wirecutter senior staff writer who previously schooled us on how to fireproof your home and how to get rid of mice and rats.

Speaker 14 So you can go back and listen to those episodes if you haven't already. They're really riveting.

Speaker 15 That's right. Doug is a wealth of information.
He also happens to live on a hobby farm in the woods of New Hampshire. So testing insecticides and repellents is not just part of his job.

Speaker 15 He's really living it day in and day out with his family. He actually has to really deal with these bugs all the time.

Speaker 14 Like method acting.

Speaker 15 That's right. He's a true method actor.

Speaker 14 But you don't have to live on a hobby farm to know that everybody can be tormented by mosquitoes at one time or another. And many of us have had to check ourselves, our kids, or our pets for ticks.

Speaker 14 Spring is here and summer is on deck, which means this is the time we spend outside and it's going to need to include sunscreen and bug repellent.

Speaker 14 So after the break, we're going to get all the tea from Doug.

Speaker 14 The difference between a repellent and and an insecticide, which repellents work, which ones frankly don't, plus the one cheap product hack that works every time.

Speaker 15 Stay tuned. We'll be right back.

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Speaker 15 Welcome back.

Speaker 14 Our guest today is Doug Mahoney, and he's a staff writer on the home improvement team who specializes in reporting on tools, plumbing, outdoor power equipment, and pest control.

Speaker 14 And we always love having him on the show.

Speaker 15 Doug, welcome. Hi, how is everybody?

Speaker 14 Good. We're great, Doug.
We're always happy to have you back.

Speaker 14 My first question and statement is that I hope Wirecutter pays you $600 million a year to test mosquito and tick repellents because that sounds like masochism or sadism. I think it's sadism.

Speaker 14 It's sadism. Yeah.
Is this testing ruining your life?

Speaker 15 You know, it's actually, it's not. Thankfully, I'm not required to do any field testing.
I'm not sticking my arm in a box of mosquitoes like they do at the EPA or anything like that.

Speaker 15 Is that like fear factor? No, no, nothing like that. It's most, it's mostly research.
Let's step back a sec and talk about how you can prevent mosquito and tick bites in the first place.

Speaker 15 So from your reporting, we know that how you treat mosquito and ticks is similar.

Speaker 15 But I kind of want to know what can you do in the first place to just prevent having mosquitoes and ticks in your yard, in your environment? Are there things you can do around the house, basically?

Speaker 15 Yeah, definitely. So the first thing you want to do as far as mosquitoes go is you want to get rid of any standing water that's around.

Speaker 15 The problem with standing water is that it's the breeding ground for mosquitoes. If you have a tarp and it has sort of like a puddly area on it, you want to get rid of that.

Speaker 15 If you have a bird bath, you could put these little products in it that actually change the pH of the water. You can also change out your outdoor light bulbs.

Speaker 15 They're called bug bulbs. It's a slightly different hue that doesn't necessarily attract insects.
As far as ticks go, keeping your lawn mode fairly short can help.

Speaker 15 They prefer the tall grass over shorter grass. So basically you're trying to create a very uninviting environment around your home for bugs.
Make the mood lighting terrible. Know nothing to drink.

Speaker 15 Only overhead lighting. Yeah, right.
So, okay, great.

Speaker 15 So once you've kind of taken care of some of those things around the house, you've changed your lights, you've gotten rid of the standing water, you're keeping your lawn nice and mode, let's talk about the other options for dealing with these bugs, repellents and insecticides.

Speaker 15 Repellents first. How do they work?

Speaker 15 So repellents, that's like DEET and Picaridin. They can be applied to your skin.
They can be applied to your clothing.

Speaker 15 And the way that they work basically is that a mosquito, they see the world through this huge array of receptors.

Speaker 15 Somebody described it to me once as like all of the microphones that would be in front of a politician from 20 years ago.

Speaker 15 They don't have it anymore, but and that a repellent will block a wide number of those receptors. And so it will basically confuse the insects.

Speaker 15 So they won't really understand that you're a food source.

Speaker 14 Okay, Doug, so you're not field testing. That's a relief, but how are you actually testing these products?

Speaker 13 So in general, we don't test for efficacy with really any bug-related gear. We actually rely on all the studies that are out there, and there are a ton of them.

Speaker 13 As far as testing ourselves, there's just too many variables. There's sort of all these different types of insects.
I think there's over over 200 types of mosquitoes.

Speaker 13 Things depend as far as like what season is it, like where are they living. So performing any kind of comparative test would be very, very incomplete.
Ultimately, it really wouldn't tell us much.

Speaker 13 What we do test for is we always get our hands on the products and we test more for usability.

Speaker 13 So for mosquito repellents, we look for how well they spray, if they have an extra like a safety cap, if they, what sizes they're available in, that sort of thing.

Speaker 14 I know a lot of folks who are concerned about spraying chemicals on their skin. Are essential oils an option? Is that a thing that will actually work, or are you sort of just perfuming yourself?

Speaker 15 Yeah, essential oils, they actually do not work very well as repellents.

Speaker 15 There are essential oils that certainly have repellent characteristics, but they, getting back to those receptors we were talking about, they only block a limited amount of those receptors.

Speaker 15 There are other problems with them. They're also extremely volatile.
So as soon as you put them on your skin, they could be gone within a half an hour or so or 40 minutes.

Speaker 15 They don't provide very long-term protection. There's also very minimal oversight from the EPA, so there's no efficacy testing.

Speaker 15 Looking at different products, you really have absolutely no idea what you're getting. You have no idea how long it's going to last.
You have no idea how strong it is.

Speaker 15 So it's just too much of a mystery. It's just not a category that we have any comfort in at all, and we don't recommend any of those products.

Speaker 14 Okay, so essential oils don't necessarily work. What are the repellents you've tried and tested that actually do work?

Speaker 15 The reliable repellents are the ones that have been approved by the EPA, the chemical repellents approved by the EPA. And there's really four as far as products you can get on the shelves.

Speaker 15 There's DEET, there's Picaridin, there's one called IR3535, and then there's oil of lemon eucalyptus.

Speaker 15 Okay, so let's break those down because I feel like I'm familiar with most of those names, but I'm not really clear on what the differences are. So let's start with DEET.

Speaker 15 What is it and why do you recommend it? Well, DEET is a synthetic chemical repellent. It was developed in the 1940s.
It is very effective against ticks. It's very effective against mosquitoes.

Speaker 15 And it is used on a global scale and it's considered a safe repellent.

Speaker 14 I remember as a kid, my mom was concerned about us using mosquito repellent with DEET.

Speaker 14 I always thought it was because of that Joni Mitchell lyric about putting away the DDT and that someone at some point conflated DDT with DEET.

Speaker 15 Is that why DEET has a bad rap or what's the deal? Well there's a couple things. One is that it is often confused with DDT.

Speaker 15 DDT was an insecticide developed around the same time, ended up being associated with a number of adverse effects. So it's no longer used, has the similar name, so I think it's confused.
And

Speaker 15 DEET is, these are considered safe, but there's no guarantee that there won't be some reactions at some point with some people. So that has been the case with DEET.

Speaker 15 I believe that most of those have involved the misuse of it. If used properly,

Speaker 15 these should be safe products.

Speaker 14 Repellents like DEET can come in different potencies. So how do you know which one to choose? Like, is DEET, I don't know, 100% better than 25%?

Speaker 15 They do come in different percentages. It's the percentage of the active ingredient, but it does not equate with effectiveness.
So 100% DEET is not twice as powerful as 50% DEET.

Speaker 15 The case with DEET is once you get to about 25 or 30%, the effectiveness levels off, but just the duration of protection gets longer.

Speaker 15 So 30% DEET gets you about seven hours, where 100% DEET gets you about 10 hours of protection. But the 100% DEET is not more repellent than the 30% deep.

Speaker 15 If you go with less than 25% deep, then you're not getting the maximum amount of protection that DEET can afford. So let's say you are camping and you're going to be out in the woods a lot.

Speaker 15 Maybe it would be worth wearing that 100% because you might want a little bit longer coverage or something. Why would you ever go for 100% when you could just be fine with the 25%?

Speaker 15 Exactly. It just would relate to how long you're planning on being out.
Well, I'm like, why wouldn't I wear 100% all the time?

Speaker 15 As safe as these are, I think it's a common sense thing to just stick with as just as much as you need, and that's it. Okay.

Speaker 15 All right. So we've covered DEET.
It is not DDT. It is fine.
You're going to be safe using it. But DEET is not our top pick.
We actually prefer repellents that have picaridin. Talk about what that is.

Speaker 15 Where does it come from? And why do you like it? Picaridin, it was developed in the 1980s by Bayer, and it's based on a compound derived from the pepper plant.

Speaker 15 And it has about the similar repellency as DEET, but it doesn't have a lot of DEET's drawbacks. For one, most people find the smell to be a little more pleasant.
It doesn't have the oiliness of DEET.

Speaker 15 And it's also, it's not a plasticizer. So DEET, one major drawback of DEET is that it can actually melt certain plastics and synthetics.
So if you have a camera lens, you don't want to get DEET on it.

Speaker 15 Certain outdoor clothing, you may not want to get DEET on it. Sunglasses, DEET can damage those.
So Picaridon does none of these.

Speaker 14 If DEET melts plastic, why should we feel okay putting it on our skin?

Speaker 15 Like I said, DEET has a long track record of safety in studies with people. I mean, I think that question is certainly one of the reasons why we would choose picaridin over there.
It's 40 years newer.

Speaker 15 So it has 40 years less research on it, right? Correct.

Speaker 14 So repellents with DEET, picaridin, the things that you have tested, how long are they meant to stay on your skin? How long are they meant to actively be working?

Speaker 15 Well, at 20% concentration of picaridin, which is what we recommend, that provides about,

Speaker 15 I think about 10 hours of protection. Oh, wow.
Okay. For ticks and mosquitoes.
And it also, it's notable that it works for both ticks and mosquitoes. They're very different sensory systems.

Speaker 15 So like essential oils, they may work pretty well for mosquitoes, but they may not work very well at all for ticks.

Speaker 14 So, Doug, another repellent that you already mentioned before is IR3535, and I've seen that combined in sunscreens sometimes in the past, but can you just talk us through that product and what is it?

Speaker 15 That's definitely probably the most little known of the EPA approved repellents.

Speaker 15 And like you said, it typically is sold in sort of an all-in-one product with a sunscreen, which generally isn't a great idea. Sunscreen and the repellent sort of have different application rates.

Speaker 15 So you're probably always going to be in a position where you're either not protected by one chemical or you're over applying the other one.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I have noticed in sunscreens, like you have to apply so much to get the right application of anything else that it's combined with.

Speaker 15 Also, IR3535 does not roll off the tongue. It is not.

Speaker 15 It's not like you want to put on your skin. I don't know.

Speaker 14 What is, so is IR3535, does it exist outside of the sunscreen combination?

Speaker 15 Yeah, I've seen one or two products.

Speaker 14 It's just not that common.

Speaker 15 It's really not. Deet and Picaridin are really the main movers.
And then also oil of lemon eucalyptus.

Speaker 14 Right. So the last one, that's the last one that you mentioned, which I would have assumed was an essential oil.
So explain just what oil of lemon eucalyptus is and why it works.

Speaker 15 Yeah, this one, it's commonly confused with an essential oil because there's oil of lemon eucalyptus and then there's lemon eucalyptus oil. And they're very different things.

Speaker 15 So oil of lemon eucalyptus, OLE, it's called, is not an essential oil. It's actually, it's an extract from the lemon eucalyptus tree.

Speaker 15 You can also find it under the name PMD, which is the synthesized version of it. So as similar as they are, it is not an essential oil and it is not lemon eucalyptus oil.

Speaker 14 Does it work similarly in terms of repellency where it's also blocking receptors on mosquitoes? Yep.

Speaker 15 It has very good repellent capabilities. The repellency duration is typically less than that of DEET or Picaridin.

Speaker 15 DEET and Picaridin can do the full 8, 10, 12 hours, whereas oil of lemon eucalyptus is typically a little less. Some people do like it.
They feel it's a more natural product.

Speaker 15 It has a very, very strong odor. It's an unmistakable odor, which I know some people don't like it.
Some people do like it. But it's certainly a consideration when putting it on.

Speaker 15 Are there common brands that use this that people might recognize? Yeah, Rappel is probably the most well-known one. Okay.

Speaker 14 Does it work for both mosquitoes and ticks the same thing?

Speaker 15 It does.

Speaker 15 I am curious because you have oil of lemon eucalyptus, right? It is coming from a tree. You have picaridin, which comes from a pepper plant.
So these are plant-based, right?

Speaker 15 I'm just curious what the difference is between those and an essential oil. These are based off of plant.
Like picaridin is based off of a compound found in a pepper plant.

Speaker 15 So it's not an essential oil. It's not extracted the same way as an essential oil is extracted from a plant.

Speaker 15 Adietin and picaridin, they are synthetic chemical repellents, whereas oil of lemon eucalyptus is not.

Speaker 15 But oil of lemon eucalyptus also has a synthesized form, which is called PMD, which may also be in products.

Speaker 15 And that's opposed to something like an essential oil, which is a chemical, but it's a naturally derived chemical. Yes.

Speaker 14 Okay, so if there's some good news in here, there are, in fact, ways to repel mosquitoes and ticks. We're not doomed.

Speaker 15 That's right. There are four options that you recommend, Doug.
DEET, Vicaridin, IR3535, and oil of lemon eucalyptus.

Speaker 14 Right. Not to be confused with eucalyptus oil.

Speaker 15 That's right.

Speaker 14 So we'll be right back after a quick break, and then we're going to talk with Doug about another successful way to keep mosquitoes and ticks at bay, insecticides.

Speaker 14 Plus, why you might want to stay away from bug zappers. Stick around.

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Speaker 15 Welcome back to the show. Our guest today is Doug Mahoney, Wirecutter staff writer and expert on home improvement and pest control.

Speaker 15 We're talking about how to save yourself from the irritation and risks from mosquitoes and tick bites.

Speaker 14 And Doug, you said that repellent options that are most effective are DET, Picaridin, IR3535, and oil of lemon eucalyptus. And repellents are applied right to the skin and clothes, right?

Speaker 14 But is there specific guidance for how you should apply these and reapply these repellents?

Speaker 15 If you're putting it on your skin, you're going for just a very thin, even layer on your skin. There's no need to overdo it.

Speaker 15 These are synthetic chemicals, and I think it's just a common sense thing not just to have on as little as possible. So just the regular spritz on the arm and then just spread it around.

Speaker 15 If you're extremely cautious about these products, you can just spray them right on your clothing.

Speaker 15 If your shirt is well treated and your hat is sprayed down with the keratin that that should protect your face. And as far as reapplying goes, there's going to be guidance for that on the bottle.

Speaker 15 That depends on the concentration. If you have a product that lasts for eight hours, there's no need to reapply after hour three.

Speaker 15 You also take into account things like if you're swimming or if you're sweating a lot, you may need to apply more often.

Speaker 15 I remember um when my second daughter was an infant i went to mexico with my family went to mexico and that was when the height of zika was happening and i was freaking out because you know we're going to be in mosquito land with a two-month-old and our pediatrician recommended using bug spray and we use picaridin on her clothing We never applied it to her skin, but that was the first time I had even been introduced to the idea of just spraying your clothes.

Speaker 15 But that works for adults too. Yep, that works for adults too.
Picaridin also comes in a a lotion form, which actually provides longer protection.

Speaker 15 The downside with it is that it takes a little bit to sort of gain its effectiveness. So you can't just put it on and go right outside and be protected.
It takes a little bit to become effective.

Speaker 15 How long is a little bit? I think it's about like 20 minutes or so. Not particularly long.

Speaker 14 Do you recommend a specific Picaridin lotion?

Speaker 15 Well, Sawyer has one. Sawyer is sort of a big name in the Picaridin world.
Their spray is our top pick spray.

Speaker 15 Let's transition now to insecticides. What should we know about this option for bug control?

Speaker 15 As far as sort of personal protection goes, the most useful insecticide is called permethrin, especially if you live in tick country. It's very, very effective against ticks.

Speaker 15 So the way that permethrin is used is that you spray it on your clothes and then let it dry, and then that piece of clothing is protected.

Speaker 15 The things to know about doing that is that if you have cats, it's extremely toxic when it's wet to cats, so you never want to spray it when there's a cat around. Once it's dried, it's fine.

Speaker 15 You definitely want to concentrate on protecting your shoes and your pants if possible. One study showed that by just treating your socks and your shoes, you're 74% less likely to get a tick bite.

Speaker 15 Oh, wow. And the protection is long-lasting too.
If you apply it yourself, it's good for about six washes or so or about six weeks.

Speaker 15 So personally, what I do is like I'll line up everyone's shoes twice each summer and soak them down.

Speaker 15 I might also treat specific pants that I wear outside or if somebody in the family has a particular pair of shorts that they like to wear outside, I'll treat that.

Speaker 15 You can also have clothing professionally treated. And that actually lasts a considerable amount longer, usually about 70 washes.
Some people say the lifetime of the article of clothing.

Speaker 15 Or you can just straight up purchase prefabricated clothes. There's companies that offer that.
I know LL Bean has a lot of options.

Speaker 14 So when you're treating the clothes yourself, are you wearing gloves and just dunking them in permethrin outside? Like, how do you do that?

Speaker 15 Yeah, permethrin comes in a spray bottle. It's actually a

Speaker 15 fairly low concentration of permethrin in the bottle. And you just, yeah, you make, take common sense precautions.
You know, you don't do it in a windy day when the wind is blowing back at you.

Speaker 15 You definitely wear gloves and you just spray it down as if you were soaking anything from a spray bottle.

Speaker 14 I'm still not really clear on what the difference is between insecticides and repellent.

Speaker 15 Well, repellents just sort of confuse the insect. They just say, look, go away, you know, find something else to do.
But an insecticide can actually kill the insect.

Speaker 15 So if you have pants that are treated with permethrin and a tick gets on it, there's a possibility that the tick is going to be killed.

Speaker 15 So what we're trying to do at the end of the day is get mosquitoes and ticks to leave us alone. The repellents we discussed will do that.
The insecticide, permethrin, will do that.

Speaker 15 But there are other successful ways to get these bugs to leave us alone, right? What's another one that you would recommend?

Speaker 13 If you spend a lot of time outside on your back porch and mosquitoes are a problem, you can look into spatial repellents.

Speaker 13 There's really one company that works in this category called Thermacell, and they make little products. They look like little essential oil diffusers.

Speaker 13 And what it does is it heats up this little bit of repellent, which then sort of vaporizes into the air and theoretically protects this sort of 20 by 20 area around you.

Speaker 13 It may sound horrifying to enjoy your outside time in a cloud of insecticide, but that's really not the case at all. It's such an extremely low dose of this product that's being put into the air.

Speaker 13 And it's mosquitoes, as far as bugs go, are fairly weak. They're fairly flimsy.
And so the amount that the thermocell dispenses is tailored sort of just to mosquitoes.

Speaker 13 So it's, it's really not going to work against other bugs. The mosquitoes are going to sort of run into this sort of cloud and then they're going to turn around.

Speaker 15 And this category is called a spatial repellent, right? Yep. Okay.
So I also got a thermo. I think I told you this.

Speaker 15 I got a thermocell. I live in a swamp, which is otherwise called Brooklyn.
So we tried out the thermo a couple summers ago and it did not work at all for us.

Speaker 15 But I think it might have been because it was a little breezy or something. Like, what kind of environment is optimal for using these spatial repellents?

Speaker 13 So a similar product are those little mosquito coils, you know, those little green coils.

Speaker 13 So if you think about it as smoke or a little vapor, it's pretty easy to see that a little breeze is going to blow it away. So it could be because it's windy.

Speaker 13 It could be possibly that just the mosquito biting pressure was too high.

Speaker 13 You know, one thing that I've learned from all of my insect coverage is that there is no silver bullet with any of these insect products.

Speaker 14 What are the green coils you mentioned? I don't know what those are.

Speaker 13 It's a disc that's about the size of a bread and butter plate that's in a coil, and you light one end of it, and it burns down the coil slowly. So they last a number of hours, and it's also the same.

Speaker 13 It is a spatial repellent. So it just sort of creates the smoke, which has a chemical in it, which disperses into the air and theoretically creates a little zone of protection against mosquitoes.

Speaker 14 Sounds like incense.

Speaker 15 Yeah, it is outdoor incense. Is it okay to breathe these things in?

Speaker 13 Well, I mean, I wouldn't recommend putting your mouth right up to it and sucking it in.

Speaker 13 But in general, in the amount that the chemical is being dispersed, you're not going to have any adverse effects sitting five feet away from the thing.

Speaker 14 Do citronella candles work in the same way?

Speaker 13 No, they unfortunately don't. Citronella is an essential oil.
So any

Speaker 13 repellency you're getting from a citronella candle is probably coming from the smoke and not so much the citronella. So no, not really.

Speaker 14 So repellents, insecticides, the thermacel, and perhaps the coils are all worth a try. What other hacks do you have?

Speaker 13 Well, you know, before you get to any of that stuff, you could even just get a simple fan. If you're just enjoying a back porch or a patio, mosquitoes are very weak flyers compared to most bugs.

Speaker 13 So if you just set up a fan, get a nice breeze going, they will have a lot of trouble getting to you.

Speaker 14 What's the best way to employ a fan when you're trying to repel mosquitoes outside?

Speaker 13 Yeah, my recommendation, it would be to keep it low. There's a mosquitoes tend to fly low, sort of below knee level.

Speaker 14 Oh, so you just pop it up underneath your table while you're eating and and you're probably good to go? Exactly.

Speaker 13 Cool.

Speaker 14 Are there other fallacies folks should avoid when thinking about repelling mosquitoes and ticks this spring and summer?

Speaker 13 There are certain products you don't want to use. You know, you want to avoid anything that's going to affect a non-target insect.

Speaker 13 So you're really after mosquitoes, you're after biting flies, and you want to be careful with pollinators. So there's products like foggers.

Speaker 13 There are these sort of handheld foggers that you just sort of blast insecticide around your yard. We don't recommend those.
There are bug zappers, which we certainly don't recommend.

Speaker 13 The research on bug zappers is really negative. The bug zappers do not attract biting flies really at all, and they do attract pollinators.
And there are things like light traps.

Speaker 13 They almost look like a night light. Those aren't going to really do much outside.

Speaker 13 They may be a good option inside if for some reason you have a little like a fly infestation in your house for some reason. you could certainly set one of those up.

Speaker 14 So Doug, I've been bitten by ticks multiple times before in my life, and I am sure that they were never extracted in the right way. Can you walk me through what you should do if you get a tick bite?

Speaker 14 Because I know my go-to was lighting a match, blowing it out, and pressing it straight to my skin.

Speaker 13 Yeah, that's not really what you should be doing. So to take off a tick, there's a lot of little products out there, little little sort of gizmos, and they might work.

Speaker 13 I've actually tried some of them, and I find that they actually don't work that great. I found that a pair of sharp tweezers is the most effective way to go about it.
You want to be really careful.

Speaker 13 You don't want to squeeze the body, and you don't want to pull on the body because if you pull on the body, you can pull it out, and the head stays

Speaker 15 in your skin. Yeah, it's still on my neck.

Speaker 13 Yeah, you can't get rid of the head because it's in there.

Speaker 13 It's like battlefield surgery at that point.

Speaker 13 And so, what I do is I actually maneuver the tweezers kind of under the body and then just sort of grab the head and then you can fairly easily pop it off that way.

Speaker 13 I'm also pretty good at removing them just with my hands. I seem to be pulling them off the cats all the time.

Speaker 13 But you, you know, you've got to be really, really vigilant because the ones that carry lime, those are the little teeny tiny ones. They can be about the size of poppy seeds.
So

Speaker 15 and those are deer ticks, right? Those little, little tiny guys. Because I've had bigger ones hop on to my kids and to myself.
What are those? Those are dog ticks. Those are dog ticks.

Speaker 15 Dog ticks and deer ticks. Okay.
And the dog ticks are the big ones. The deer ticks are the little ones.
Yes.

Speaker 13 Okay. Yep.

Speaker 14 So what if you find a tick on you and you don't know how long it's been?

Speaker 13 Well, there's a couple things to do. So once they attach, they're likely to be there for a couple days.
What I recommend is just getting in the habit of checking.

Speaker 13 Like we check our kids almost on a daily basis. So then if you find something, you know how long it's been there.
You know roughly how long it's been there.

Speaker 15 All right. So if you have been bitten by a tick dog, you have a lot of experience with this.
What does Lyme present as on your body? Like, how do you know if you might potentially have Lyme?

Speaker 13 So Lyme, Lyme can be really tricky. The one fail-safe way to detect it is if you get the bullseye rash, which is exactly what it sounds like.

Speaker 13 It's a giant rash that looks like a bullseye centered right on the on the bite. Unfortunately, not everyone gets that, or you may miss it.
It could be.

Speaker 13 you know, someplace through your back of your leg or something like that, and you happen to miss it. So the symptoms of Lyme are very tricky.

Speaker 13 They're just these sort of general flu-like symptoms, muscle stiffness.

Speaker 13 Unfortunately, they're symptoms that can be mistaken for any number of other ailments. Personally, I feel it in the neck.
I get a really stiff neck.

Speaker 13 It seems to be something that presents differently in different people.

Speaker 14 Can you get it more than once?

Speaker 15 Yeah, I've had it about five times. I've been treated about five times

Speaker 15 for it. So basically, there are no limits to how many times you can get it? Unfortunately, no.

Speaker 15 And once you actually test positive once, I believe you'll always test positive, so it can be difficult to diagnose once you've had it once.

Speaker 15 I had a family member who had Lyme and it presented as like mono type symptoms. They were really, really tired of it.

Speaker 15 That's another one.

Speaker 15 Yeah. So it can really be any number of things.

Speaker 13 If you are bitten by a tick,

Speaker 15 you're not sure what kind of tick it is, what should you do? I've thought about like, should I keep it in a little bag and take it to get tested?

Speaker 15 Or what should you do if you are bit by a tick and you want to find out if you have Lyme?

Speaker 13 If you want to find out if the ticket has Lyme, then you can, yeah, I would just put it in a bag, stick it in the freezer, and there's places you can send it to.

Speaker 13 Or, you know, you maybe even to actually to just identify the tick and you can search online or a local extension office might be able to help you.

Speaker 14 Okay, so we're going to switch up our final question for you, Doug. What are three wire cutter picks that you would take with you if you were cast off to a desert island?

Speaker 13 Oh, man, this is tough. i mean if i was going for comfort i would take

Speaker 13 i would take like the finium like the little tea brewing basket okay oh i'd take the raincoat okay that's smart i would take a kitchen knife that's what i would say too yeah i would take one of the victorinox little uh serrated knives i'm the one who covers those

Speaker 13 i would take a multi-tool i would take i would take a multi-tool yeah a multi-tool there's like i'm gonna take tea and a raincoat i would only take one thing and it would be a leatherman

Speaker 15 That's what I would do.

Speaker 14 Doug Mahoney, one of my top 20 favorite New Englanders. You're the best.
Thank you so much for joining us and hopefully saving us some strife this spring and summer. Appreciate it.

Speaker 13 Sure. It's great to be here.

Speaker 15 Wow. Doug, he is so fun, even though the topics he brings us are not that fun.

Speaker 14 I know, but he makes them fun.

Speaker 15 He does his best. I do have a question before we get into our takeaways.
The next time you're at a party and a friend puts out an essential oil bug spray, how are you going to navigate this?

Speaker 14 I'm going to slap it off the table.

Speaker 14 I'm going to tell them that they need to read more. I'm going to shame them.

Speaker 15 Can you just like say nothing and bring out your own bug spray?

Speaker 14 No, I'm going to say stand up on that chair.

Speaker 14 How could you not know this?

Speaker 15 It is within certain circles a delicate, a delicate situation.

Speaker 15 But in all earnestness, I think my takeaway from this is that I'm going to give spatial repellents another shot. I have this thermocell.

Speaker 15 Listening to Doug, it made me realize maybe I was not running the thermocell long enough before I went outside. Maybe I need to try to create a plume and then go into the plume and see how that works.

Speaker 14 Also, maybe stay as close to the plume as possible without

Speaker 15 that. Yeah, that's right.
I'm not going to breathe it in. I'm not going to try to breathe it in.
Right, right, right.

Speaker 14 I think my takeaway, I never ever bother trying to wear bug spray in New York City. So I think this summer I'm going to try Picaridon.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 14 Just spraying a little bit on me before I walk out the door. Yeah.

Speaker 15 See how that goes.

Speaker 14 Certainly can't hurt. I'm going real, real, real low budget.

Speaker 14 And I'm going to get just a kind of cheapy fan, but as high powered as possible and hopefully have that just moving the air around to keep the mosquitoes from landing on me and us and hope that that provides some relief.

Speaker 15 Yeah, that's a good simple solution. I like that.

Speaker 14 If you want to find out more about Wire Cutter's coverage or if you want to check out any of the products or tips Doug recommended today, go to our website or as ever, you can find a link in the show notes.

Speaker 15 That's it.

Speaker 14 Kyra, Christine, till next time. See ya.

Speaker 15 Bye. Peace.

Speaker 14 The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddie Mazziello and Nick Pittman.
Today's episode was mixed by Katherine Anderson.

Speaker 14 Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Alicia Boot YouTube, and Diane Wong. Wirecutter's deputy publisher is Cliff Leape.
Ben Fruman is Wirecutter's editor-in-chief.

Speaker 15 I'm Kyra Blackwell. I'm Christine Sear Clissette.

Speaker 14 And I'm Rosie Guerin. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 15 Repellents and

Speaker 15 incesticides.

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