I've got a herd of a dozen or so deer romping around here daily. I got Lyme in '01 partly because of my bad habit of walking around my patch of woods barelegged and barefooted. Unwilling to change my "Daisy Mae" attire, I made my own tick repellants.
In a spray bottle half filled with water I put in a 'bunch' of drops of peppermint oil. Just to confuse the ticks, and amuse myself, I keep 2 other bottles, one with tea tree oil in the water, and the other with palmarosa. The last is because I actually read somewhere that palmarosa repels ticks. I use any one of these at a time. I keep these bottles near the door out of the garage which is where I exit to walk the dog around. That way, I figure, I have a better chance of remembering to spritz this stuff all over right before I go into tick heaven out there. So far, no tick bites, though I did find 3 on me last year but they weren't 'biting'. Considering that I've got at least 120 'barefoot days', I'm thinking my repellants work! Sharon/starshar
