Our Ixodes ticks can't be squished once they're full, either. They're called shellbacks, for good reason.
When difficult child 3 had that huge load on him, they began at his scrotum. There were about a dozen in that region. I had him lying on the kitchen floor with a strong light, while I went over him with very fine forceps.
Our tick season basically lasts all year. But the beasties are different sizes at different times of the year. January/February (late summer) brings the "grass ticks", or the nymphs. These are the first hatchlings and they're voraciously hungry. They're about pinhead sized. They have six legs, rather than 8. Later moults have 8 legs. These are the ones that loaded difficult child 3. We'd had a very warm summer with a sudden lot of rain over about two weeks, right before this time. This provided favourable conditions for maximum survival of hatchlings. The eggs lie dormant in the soil from about November to January, although there is a fair bit of overlap. Around Christmas time we have a few weeks' break from ticks, until the late summer storms set in during January.
Through the year the ticks feed, drop off, moult, hitch another ride/feed, drop off, moult again until we get to the adult, also known as a bush tick or a shellback. A full shellback can be the size of a thumbnail.
These are also known as paralysis ticks, because that's how they kill cattle and sheep. They inject saliva (anticoagulant) which also happens to cause nerve paralysis in the nerves nearest the tick. The paralysis tends to begin in the back legs and move forward. When it gets to the respiratory muscles the animal is in trouble. The paralysis does wear off after the tick is removed, but there is about a day's lag while the last lot of poison continues to work, until the body deals with it. The biggest problems come from the biggest ticks. These are at their worst in spring, which is of course lambing season. We used to lose sheep and lambs to ticks - it's murder trying to find the ticks in that fleece. Once a sheep showed a bit of back leg wobble, we'd have her in the pen and work over her meticulously, trying to find the tick. We found it about half the time. Some of the time the tick would drop off and the sheep would get better. Sometimes it wouldn't. We'd continue searching frantically, if the sheep got worse.
The shellbacks drop off and lay eggs (the females do, anyway). They then die and in a few weeks the next generation hatches out, especially if the weather is warm and wet.
I knew a kid at school who got a bit of tick paralysis. The tick had been embedded in her long hair, it was hard to find. because it was on her head, her voice was the first to be affected - she went a bit husky, it's a classic symptom, plus difficulty swallowing.
Generally the bigger the tick, the easier it is to remove. We used to be told to put paraffin on it, to kill it. Then it would be easier to remove. Now they say not to. Don't bother putting anything on it (although the vaseline is a good idea - don't worry about the peroxide until after you've got the tick out) because if you annoy the tick, or make it sick, it will pump out more poison. NEVER use insect spray or repellent directly on an attached tick, for that reason - they're not insects, they're arachnids like spiders, and all insect spray does to arachnids is annoy them.
The rule these days - get a grip on the tick as close to the skin as you can, right behind the head. Try to not squeeze the tick or you'll force more poison into the patient. Then pull, with a flicking motion. If you're lucky, you can even pull out the head. If the abdomen comes out but head breaks off, don't do digging. It will come out, but put a dab of antiseptic on the spot to reduce infection.
I remember watching an old farmer remove a tick from his cat - he just reached down with thumb and forefinger, gripped the tick and pulled it out. He probably left the head in there, but the cat would have dealt with that. The poison would have been stopped, that was the main thing. And the cat was fine.
Some animals exposed on a regular basis can become immune to the poison (like my uncle's dog). But loving animals to a new area, where they are exposed to ticks where they weren't before - that's when we lose livestock.
Here's a website for info about Aussie ticks.
http://www.tickalert.org.au/lifecycl.htm
Ignore any reference to Lyme Disease - this particular group are determined to prove we have it in Australia. I think if we have anything, it will be something different that maybe mimics Lyme. But Lyme itself - I don't think so. Not here.
Generally in Australia you only get ticks if you're out in an area where there are plenty of both ticks and vectors, AND you're brushing through undergrowth where the vectors also move around at times. It's not as bad as it sounds here - because we're aware of it, we recognise these things immediately and they get dealt with.
I like the duct tape - up til now, I've just been flushing the things.
Marg