He let you do what to his body?!

First of all, this isn’t that type of blog. Get your mind out of the gutter.

For those that don’t know, my husband is a HUGE hunter. I’m talking gone for weeks at a time, rearrange your wedding date, we are literally out of wall space for mounts type of hunter. We have seen almost every injury you could incur, but none the less, Jeremy comes home successful.

Here’s the setting. Jeremy had our camper in the middle of nowhere elk hunting. He was going to meet up with some friends at another location, but when he got to them he realized he forgot something. He borrowed the friend’s ATV to go back and grab it. Little did he know, the last time work had been done on the ATV the brakes were accidentally installed backwards. When Jeremy got to the curve around the mountain (now you’re singing “Comin’ Round the Mountain” aren’t you), he hit the back brakes to slow down but it activated the front brakes.

You can see where this is going, right?

So there goes Jeremy, head over heels down the broad side of a mountain. What do they have a lot of in mountains around where elk like to live? You guessed it. Prickly pear cactus. Now, if you’ve never encountered a prickly pear before, they’re this thing…….

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And just to make sure you fully understand the extent of damage they can do, here are their needles. That dark red/brown part at the base of each needle is called a glochids, and those are even tiny needles that are almost impossible to get out. Almost.

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Picture yourself being ejected off an ATV down the side of a mountain toppling like Humpty Dumpty through those. This is where I come in.

I get a call from a few of the guys that Jeremy was with saying they had a little problem. Jeremy had been sent to the hospital, after he was found hours later from the accident, and they would be bringing him all the way back down to our house very late at night. Oh by the way, he has a lot of cactus in him.

I’m thinking….time for the tweezers. When Jeremy gets home I made a meal for the guys and sent them on their way. Thank goodness for backup and friends. Then I start examining Jeremy. It is way worse than I had prepared for. He tried to sleep with not much success because those needles were poking no matter which way he laid. I should also mention that when he was released from the hospital the doctor said he was a hopeless cause and he would just have to suffer until the needles came out on their own.

After hours of research and extra money spent, here’s what we tried.

1. soaking in an epsom salt bath – Supposedly it softens the needles, and then you can take a pumice stone and brush it over your skin to break off the tops. We tried this and Jeremy was writhing in pain. All it did was turn his skin red and solidify the fact that he hates baths.
2. black drawing salve – This is supposed to gently open up the infected areas and push out the object naturally. Wrong. It works if you have something like a splinter and there’s only 1 or 2. It doesn’t work when there are thousands, and it would also be really expensive to buy enough of those little tubes to cover an entire body.
3. tweezers – This is the most obvious. I spent a few hours tweezing out the biggest needles, but it’s incredibly painful doing it one by one and it doesn’t get out the baby fine needles (grochides).
4. rubber cement and pantyhose – The pantyhose are supposed to be gently rubbed over your skin. This is to attract and stick to the needles and pull out the smaller ones. Then you can put rubber cement on your skin. When it’s dry you peel it off and the needles come with it. First of all, I couldn’t even get a grip on the edge of the rubber cement because I kept bumping into the other needles. Also, no one wants their body covered in rubber cement and it takes a while to dry.
5. duct tape – For this technique, you are to make a loop with the tape and wrap it around your fingers. Then you simply put your hand over the needles and rip upward. This managed to pull off a lot of hair, but no luck with the cactus needles.

AND NOW THE WINNER!!! DRUM ROLL PLEASE

Desperate times call for desperate matters. After all the other experiments, I was starting to put together small things that worked and design a plan. Luckily, I’m a do it myself girl so I wax my own eyebrows. I had a whole tub of eyebrow wax and a new set of wax strips. I heated that sucker up and gave it a try.

I spread that wax across his leg first and laid the strip over. I let it cool as is instructed for any wax. I then pulled back his skin a little to tighten the area and RIIIIPPPP! His face was a mix of oh my gosh how do girls do this all the time and alleluia I can see the needles gone from that spot. He said he could physically feel the his skin relax from the irritant. It was as much painful bliss as you can possibly get. Plus, he got a free full body wax out of the deal.

See below for some samples. The first picture is the entire pile of strips it took. Don’t let it fool you. That pile is about 6 inches tall. The second is one of the pads ripped from Jeremy’s leg. If you zoom in and look around all the hair you can see how many needles are stuck to it. Gross, I know.

So there you go! The secret to getting those pesky cactus needles out is WAX AND WAX STRIPS! You can find them for quite cheap at any local store, but I specifically got mine at Sally’s Beauty. Don’t worry about the quality of the wax if you’re just planning on using them for cactus. Make sure that it’s the kind that melts and not the cold/sugar kind. If you have any other questions please shoot them my way, and don’t forget to subscribe to the blog to keep updated each time new posts are ready!