Fight the bite! How to handle and avoid tick bites

(WAND) - Summer is almost here, and tick season is already upon us. If you discover that you or someone else has been bitten by a tick, it’s important to act quickly.

"You want to get fine tipped tweezers and try and grasp the tick as close to the skin as possible. You don't want to squeeze or crush the tick, because that could release tick material into you," said Carla Rafferty, a family medicine physician at Carle Health.

To help prevent ticks from latching onto you, be aware of your surroundings. Ticks typically thrive in wooded areas with lots of trees and plants.

When you go for walks or hikes, try to stay in the center of the path. This way, ticks can’t jump off of brush and land on you.

"Especially if you're in a park or in a natural area, be to the middle of the trail and not go into all the grassy areas, because that's where ticks are," said Sulagna Chakraborty, a postdoctoral research associate in the ‘Department of Veterinary Clinical Medicine at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

When going outside, apply insect repellent containing DEET, as it is effective in preventing ticks from latching onto you. Additionally, even if temperatures are high, it’s important to wear long-sleeved clothing. Wearing long shirts, long pants, and long socks are other effective ways to protect yourself from ticks.

"You want to have socks on and you want to tuck those pants into your socks. If you can wear high ankle boots or good solid shoes, and then it's also a good idea to put some tape around your ankles with the sticky side facing out so that if a tick crawls up on your leg, it may get stuck on the tape rather than making it to your body," said Rafferty.

And for your furry friends, it's important to keep them safe as well.

"Folks who have like dogs and cats to make sure that they're using anti-tick prevention measures that could be in the form of tablets of chewables that are there. There are also tick prevention collars that can be used," said Chakraborty.

To see what the Central for Disease Control says about how to remove ticks, as well as more tick safety tips, click here.