Learn
How to kill a tick
Rubbing alcohol is the simplest reliable method. Never crush a tick with your fingers.
What works
Do
- Drop it in a small container of rubbing alcohol
- Seal it in a zip bag, or tape it to a card
- Wrap it tightly in tape before binning it
Do not
- Crush it between your fingers
- Flush it down the toilet: ticks can survive water for longer than people expect
- Burn it, or use a match on an attached tick
- Leave it loose in a bin where it can crawl out
Crushing a tick can push infected fluid onto your skin, and through any small cut. Always use a barrier or a container.
Regional differences
Most of this page assumes the tick is already off, dropped into alcohol or bagged after a standard tweezer pull. That order of events is not universal, and it matters which region you are in.
United States & Canada
Remove the attached tick with fine-tipped tweezers first, then kill it separately in alcohol or by sealing it in a bag. Removal and killing are two distinct steps, in that order.
Australia
ASCIA advises against grasping and pulling an attached adult tick, because disturbing it can trigger a severe allergic reaction in people sensitised to tick bites or with a mammalian meat (alpha-gal) allergy. The Australian approach reverses the usual order: kill the tick where it sits, commonly described as "freeze it, don't squeeze it" using an ether-containing spray for adult ticks, and let it drop out on its own rather than pulling it first. Seek medical help if there is a known tick allergy.
UK & Europe
As with the US and Canada, remove the attached tick with tweezers first, then kill it separately in alcohol or a sealed bag.
Australia’s reversed order exists because its principal tick concern is the paralysis tick and the allergic reactions it can provoke in sensitised people, rather than Lyme disease, which is not officially recognised as being acquired locally there. If you are in an Australian paralysis-tick area, do not default to the US-style pull-then-kill sequence without checking local ASCIA guidance first.
Why not just squash it
A tick’s body holds whatever it has fed on, and squashing it between bare fingers is the most direct way to get that material onto your skin, especially if you have any small cut or graze you are not aware of. Alcohol, sealing, or freezing all achieve the same goal (the tick is dead and contained) without ever putting pressure on the body with your bare hands.
If you do not have alcohol handy
A sealed bag or a length of tape wrapped tightly around the tick works almost as well if you do not have rubbing alcohol in the house. The goal is containment as much as speed: a tick wrapped in tape and dropped in an outdoor bin is no longer a problem, even if it takes longer to die than one dropped in alcohol. What matters is that it cannot crawl back out and cannot be crushed by accident before you get to a proper method.
Keeping it for identification
- Drop it in alcohol, or tape it to an index card
- Write the date and where you were
- Store it somewhere dry
A dead tick kept this way holds up well enough for a doctor or vet to identify it weeks later. If you would rather have an answer sooner, a clear photo through TickSentry’s tick identifier can help narrow down the species while the physical tick stays safely stored. Logging the encounter with the tick checker also gives you a dated record if anyone asks later how long ago the bite happened.
See also: how to remove a tick and removal mistakes to avoid.