BLOOD-sucking parasites are a highlight on any holiday and the paralysis tick takes the cake for creepiness.

Have you heard that they have no anuses (or is that ani?) and when they finish their feed, become engorged with blood to many times their size? Or that as a parting gesture they inject all their waste into you? This supposedly explains the various illnesses available to the unfortunate host, or at the very least the itchiness.

But my morning's research found no reference to such primitive plumbing on the creatures. They do squirt in a bit of saliva with anti-coagulants to keep the blood flowing and this contains the germs.

Well, we've had a ball with ticks the last week down the bush, it must be a very good year for them. We had a couple of the little black ones (apparently the nymph stage) on three of us, including the Blonde who is generally mysteriously untouched by things of an unpleasant nature.

Ticks prefer the softer regions of the neck, underarms, tummy and thigh but my friend finally scored a big adult female right next to his family jewels - which made the application of this year's amateur medication procedure all the more entertaining.

There's no telly at the hut and we are eager to be distracted. What better spectacle than the dripping of hot wax on to the delicate regions of the groin to kill, encapsulate or at least disconcert a tick the size of a small echidna?

Back in civilisation, I see the official advice is to simply remove them with tweezers firmly around the head-part and to generally not attempt to drown, suffocate, burn, poison, entomb or annoy them.

But what would they know?

We had plenty of candles, and kero, and time.

You hot-wax them and leave for a while then peel them off in a chunk. If that doesn't work, apply kero, lamp oil, two-stroke or possibly some canola oil that's past its use-by date.

If that fails, you can contemplate the bush from the camp-chair for a few minutes - then do it all again.

The worst you can get is Tularemia or Lyme disease, or Colorado tick fever.

But from my very thorough reading there's no need to panic until you've gone off your tucker and seem to have lost the use of your back legs.