Share you adventures from the field!
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Chicks With Ticks 
Well, let me be the first to welcome all you wild women warriors to the only site where you can vent about and share the amazing adventures you have! This site is your place….your world….and your voice!
BE HEARD!
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OK, go easy…I’m trying to get in touch with my feminine side here, gimme a break!
Tom
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That’s the spirit Tom! You won’t want to miss the posts coming soon – I just couldn’t wait to go LIVE…..thanks for being here with me – means a lot!
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This is brilliant ladies! I am confident it will catch on. I would love to be considered a Chick with Ticks, empowered by nature and the confidence to do things that typically might be considered manly stuff! Our family loves to be outside, trouncing through some state park or our favorite hunting grounds, batting at mosquitos, tormenting the children with the sweat and blood that the woods can dole out…can’t wait for more!
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You ARE a Chick with Ticks Alicia! You probably have some good war stories from the woods to prove it! Guess what? We want to hear at least one! Please? So glad you are here to witness the beginning of our journey – it’s only fitting.
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Here’s my most harrowing CWT field adventure:
I was out delineating a wetland in a wild and wooly Sarasota County cattle ranch with my mentor Tanya. She was showing me how to find and mark the seasonal high water line etc. on the base of a tree. As I bent down to get a closer look, I noticed a small snake just on the other side of the tree within about 8 inches of both of us. “Hmmm” I said to Tanya, “look at that cute little snake”. “Hmmm,” said Tanya, “What kind of snake is that?” “Hmmmm,” I said “I think that’s a dusky pygmy rattlesnake…” “Hmmm” said Tanya “I think so too” We backed away, but not before I took some awesome pics! That was the first of three of those buggers we saw that day!
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Wow – close call and it is crazy when you see them all around on a site! Makes you jupy some days! Thanks so much for visiting and sharing – that’s what makes it all worth it….connecting. Feel free to share more! Maybe consider a guest article!!!
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Hi, I probably qualify as an Australian Chick with Ticks, at least I am still a chick at heart. Since childhood I have loved mucking about the waters edge and now get paid to do it. How good is that.
I identify with you post on Mud. My worst experience was trying to sample in a deep drain in the wheatbelt of Western Australia. The drains generally have 3 meter walls and the water is saline and acidic. The mud was mostly sticky clay which sucked me in with my booted waders. Took me over 30 mins to extract myself and I can laugh about it now, but in the 35 degree centigrade heat of the day I felt otherwise. I now take a ladder and should take a ‘stick’.
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You are definitely a Chick with Ticks!! Sounds like you have had some rough days like we have! I am so excited that you shared your story. Thanks for being here and becoming a part of our growing family!
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Ok, fellow chicks, finally nervy enough to make a post about an experience…don’t laugh, ok, here goes it. As a young’un, my horse was boarded off of Fish Hatchery Road, so spent many days meandering on horse back around Saddle Creek and the railroad tracks west of there. On a freezing January day, I had dismounted to cross the railroad tracks and without a trusty ‘stick’ to test the ground in front of me….stepped into what appeared to be solid sandy soil with grass sprigging out…guess what!?!?…QUICK SAND!!! Waist deep in 30 degree weather and wearing the dreaded jeans with an extra layer under that….struggled to keep horse from going in, getting away and….saving my behind! I had always thought quicksand was something that occurs in those desolate places where ‘no man goes’…nope, right there in Polk County! After calming my nerves and settling the horse, had those heavy wet denim jeans to haul back up on that horse and about 5 miles to get somewhere to get dry…closest to frostbite in Florida I’ve ever been…be careful out there Chicks, and don’t forget your ‘stick’!
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Wow!! Nervy – holding this story back is nervy Alicia! I never knew there was quicksand here…that only makes it crazier! We are all lucky you did get out. Would be really cool to go see if it’s still there! Go figure – us chicks always getting ourselves into trouble! That’s just how we are….We Go Anywhere!!! Thanks for sharing this amazing and harrowing story…..got any more?? Maybe consider writing an article……??
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When I wander around the wilds of Florida, I always wonder how the state got settled … there’s so much that will poison you, eat you, destroy you, etc. Go, brave Chicks, go!
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You should really read A Land Remembered!! You will understand Floridians and Florida in general. It’s a great story. I am glad you came and hope you enjoy reading past posts as well!!
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Chicks with Ticks, you’ve got something good going here. I love it. AND I want a Chicks with Ticks shirt. Please advise how to contact you.
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I will be honest – sold the last of this batch last week BUT – will place another order JUST FOR YOU!!! Let me work on it this weekend and will get back with you via email and then post the new batch online!! Thanks for being interested – I thought it was just me who like to wear my very own awesome Chicks with Ticks T-shirt and decals!!!
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I totally need a t-shirt. Sing me up when they come in!!! I’m the only chick I know who isn’t grossed out when I pull ticks off myself, my kids, my dog, etc. I’m a naturalist, but have spent the past 3+ years working as a challenge course manager, which means working at heights of 40 – 60 feet off the ground, connected to trees and poles on my own – no ground belays when I go up to do repairs and replace equipment! But my favorite outdoor story is getting bitten by a shrew (they have the same venom as cobras – less of it, but it still really hurts!) in a class when I was studying for my degree in con. bio.
This is a fabulous site – so thrilled to hear other’s stories and read about all that awesome field work going on out there. You all rock!!
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It’s people like you who make it all worth while!! I am placing an order for white shirts that will be dyed with natural materials!!!! Will keep you posted.
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H!
I have just encountered Chicks with Ticks! (It seems like the sort of site that you don’t passively find but have an encounter with!)
My little field adventure I am sharing was trailing through some scrub, (which is dense non tree vegetation to non Kiwis or Aussies). I wanted to get to the other side of a slip.
So for a couple of hours I pushed through gorse liberally tied together with a vine called muehlenbeckia. For those of you that don’t know gorse, it is a woody shrub up to 3m tall that doesn’t bother with leaves, because it is clad entirely in green thorns or spines. Very pleasant, but it doesn’t kill you. Hah 😉 I am a human pincushion now, but the splinters only take a week or so to come out!The gorse was so dense at times I could see as far as 300mm ahead of me. In all directions.
Well after an hour or so getting less than 100m I ended up climbing on top and walking over the gorse. It was growing densely enough that this was easy. Silly me for pushing through it earlier, although knowing where the ground is on a steep slope is quite handy. heh.
The only problem with this method is trying to reuse the trail…it isn’t that obvious.
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Wow – sounds familiar! I know a coworker (and fellow Chick with Ticks who has moved to Georgia) spent a day cursing vines and ended up walking suspended over them on a horrid day – to this day the worst field day ever!! She is a trooper!! Will never forget that day as long as I live….never heard of gorse but am going to research it and thank god I don’t have to walk over it = Great story – keep em coming!! We all need to vent here.
So glad you found us – the adventure continues!
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Hee hee – Gorse is a pain here in NZ. It was introduced by European settlers as a handy hedge plant. Well our winters don’t slow it down, so it now covers any grassland that is not grazed hard.
I must admit in other ways we have it easy. It is hard to admit on this site but we have NO ticks where I live. SO I am not really a Chick with Ticks oops!
We have No snakes, crocs, bears, wolves, big cats or or other hazardous eaties either! Just the flea, mozzies (mosquitoes) and our special very hungry midge known as a sandfly.
We have a semipoisonous spider, but it is endangered and shy, so bites are very rare, and we have an amazingly toxic tree nettle too, but that has only ever killed one person.
The weather is the killer here! It changes from stinking hot to freezing fairly quickly so we always carry gear for all weathers.
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I would love to see a pic of you in the middle of some GORSE!!
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I know gorse…a real nasty invasive plant…. spent a lot of time cutting and pasting them. Pretty awesome that it was dense enough to trot on top of… next time I run into that situation I will remember your post.
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LOL! What a thing to see that others also have these experiences! My field experiences include kicking a cobra (accidentally), sprinting away from 5 youths intent on attacking me in the middle of almost nowhere (surveying a wetland on my own) – I still have NO idea how I managed to get away nor how I landed up on the other side of a barbed wire boundary fence in my efforts to get away, almost taking a puff-adder (venomous African snake) sample instead of a plant specimen (apparently I managed to leap roughly 2 metres backwards from a crouch), being bitten to pieces by sweat beeson a survey of a river, being punctured to the point of tears by reeds (Cyperaceae – Juncus ) in an estuary survey, and learning to stamp my feet every few steps to chase away black mambas (seriously venomous African snake), etc. etc.
Would I give up field work – bloody hell – never! It is just the best!
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WOW!!! And we thought we had it bad dodging the crazies we do!! Please share details on at least ONE of those stories….better yet – consider writing a 300-400 word article and be our first ever GUEST BLOGGER!!! Sounds exciting….I want more!
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Hey hey, I blush! Would be honoured. Just need to finish two deadlines and I’ll get cracking…
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I simply want to mention I am new to blogs and really liked you’re blog site. Likely I’m likely to bookmark your site . You surely have outstanding stories. Regards for sharing with us your website page.
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yahoo led me here. Im happy i finally found this blog was recommend to me but i had trouble finding it lol
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great post keep it up cant find posts like this anymore.
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Real wonderful visual appeal on this website , I’d value it 10 10.
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Useful information. Lucky me I found your website unintentionally, and I am surprised why this coincidence did not happened in advance! I bookmarked it.
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I hate I have allergies
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Here’s a CWT story: several friends and I were backpacking in the Tetons and had just arrived at our chosen camp spot for the night next to a small lake named, according to the map, Mirror Lake. It was cloudy with suspended silt from glacial wash but we were hot and dusty after hiking all day. The guys just pulled off their shirts and jumped in but my friend Letha and I decided to set up our tent first so we would have somewhere to get out of our wet clothes after taking the plunge. About the time we hit the water’s edge, one of the guys came barreling out of the lake, screaming like a banshee. Everybody baled pretty fast, and we girls were really glad we took our time – the guys were covered with leaches. Letha has a pretty good sense of humor and immediately began yelling for all of them to strip so that medical personnel could check them (she is a nurse practitioner). You never saw a bunch of guys disappear into the brush so quick! So i guess, this time at least, we were the chicks without the ticks (or leeches)!
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Amazingly hilarious!! Thanks for the share….we need more funny stories from the field!!
Beeches with Leeches is funny too though!
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I must say this content was worth to read. I found this post through the google search and was rather astounded by your rank for this article.
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I once took a group of moms and their kids caving. The kids consisted of one girl and several boys, all around 8 – 10 years of age. The cave had two parallel passages connected by a ‘body tube.’ I crawled into the body tube to check it out before allowing the kids to enter, and that was a good thing. You see, the cave was also the cache of the plunderings of some local kids, with treasures like street signs and old tires heaped into a pile in the middle of the body tube. As I crawled slowly over the nearly floor-to-ceiling pile of junk, I noticed an old tire in the trash about 10 inches below my belly. Thinking nothing of it, I began crawling over it, but something was terribly wrong, Something didn’t jive. Then I realized what it was – that old ‘tire’ was not solid black. It also had yellow blotches. It dawned on me that I was suspended directly over a hibernating five foot long alligator! I backed slowly out of there and sat down in the passage from whence I had forayed, looked up at the expectant little crowd, and nonchalantly said, “Um, there’s an alligator in that passage.” All the moms started screaming and ran for the cave entrance, and all the little boys followed suit. But the little girl simply stood there, watched the commotion in amazement, and then turned to me and asked, “Can I go see the alligator.”
God, I love girls.
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what an incredible story!! I wish I had been there…thanks for sharing…you got anymore? Maybe you should consider writing an article for us!!!
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Ok, this is my best tick story, but it’ll convince you not to go into the field with me! I frequently post my nature adventures on my blogs, Florida Nature Adventures and On Rappel!
I was tapped to do the vegetation and wildlife work for permitting a new hospital in Florida. It was probably the most miserable place I ever worked, although an abandoned military base on the Delmarva Peninsula in winter rivaled it. Driving onto the clinic site in the dead of August, biting flies would descend on the vehicle as soon as I pulled onto the site’s dirt road. You could hear the tabanids banging against the vehicle’s windows long before stopping on the dirt ruts. And when the engine stopped, you could hear the whine of the mosquitoes and see them rising hungrily out of the wet grass. The site was adjacent to a salt marsh that spawned hideous clouds of no-see-ums. There were so many tiny blood-suckers in the air that you got a real sense of Brownian motion. It was the kind of day when temps at 8am were already in the low-80s after reaching 100 for the previous week. The site also had more ticks than any place I’ve ever been. A couple of times a day I would scrape them off my clothing with a pocket knife, several hundred each time. I even tried scorching them with a cigarette lighter (Fail!). You know how you get a swath of brown mud on your britches by inadvertently brushing your boots against the legs while walking over wet, peaty soils? Well, I was delineating a bayhead. I happened to look down and saw a brown spot about the size of a quarter and two swaths of brown each about an inch wide and three inches long. I thought nothing of them, momentarily passing them off as mud swipes. Then I saw the mud vibrating, and realized it wasn’t mud, it – they – were tick nymphs, thousands of them. I bet I got ten thousand ticks on that two-week job.
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WOW!!! Talk about ticks…..thanks again for sharing! We need more field stories from our fans! We know you all have a million – we know we do!!
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I am not quite sure how this relates but it is very informative….I will mull it over and might approve the post just for fun!!
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Cheers!
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I’m gonna have to write one of my tales…. 😉
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