Tick, Tick, Tick

Tick, tick, tick…. That seems to reflect my outdoor life lately, and I am not talking about a clock or a bomb.  Ticks have always been a challenge on the farm and finding a tick or two on myself after spending a day in the field working the bees was not unusual, especially in the late spring and early summer during “tick season”.  Once tick season was done, tick spottings/removals declined and were generally rare by end of summer.  Historically, the ticks I found were dog ticks.  Dog ticks are not without risk.  They can and do transmit some diseases, but they are easy to spot, easy to feel, and we have gotten very good at finding them and removing them.  Plus, they do not transmit Lyme disease. Deer ticks, the Lyme disease vector, are smaller, so harder to see and feel, but they were not as abundant in our area.  We rarely had encounters with them (in 6 years I had only seen one, and one of our hunters reported another). 

So, you can imagine my dismay this past fall, which is normally a relatively tick free season, when I was combing 10 or more deer ticks off the dogs at the end of most days.  I was also regularly collecting deer ticks from Gary and myself, although thankfully not as many as the dogs were contributing.  And let me tell you, if you miss them and they attach, for some reason those little deer ticks are ever so much harder to get off than dog ticks.  Not to mention the worry about how long they had been there, as being attached for more than 24 hours raises a Lyme disease concern.  Through the fall we were regularly on the watch for the Lyme disease associated red bullseye pattern around a bite, and Gary was also prescribed one full course of precautionary treatment when one of his tick bites got ugly.  

Since the dogs were the ones consistently running through the underbrush and tall grass, we suspected that many if not most of our ticks were brought home by the pups and generously shared.  This idea was supported by the fact that Gary was finding as many on him as I was on me, despite his nursing a bum knee, and rarely walking on the farm at that point.  Although both dogs were up to date on their oral flea and tick preventative, both the oral and topically applied preventatives only kill ticks after they have taken a blood meal, giving the little buggers plenty of opportunities (and incentive?) to jump ship from the dogs to us, where they could more safely dine.  Thankfully, our vet did a bit of research and suggested we try a flea and tick repelling collar (Seresto) that had a good reputation in endemic Lyme disease areas.  After putting the collars on last fall, I rarely found ticks on any of us, thank goodness.  Then, with the arrival of winter, we were able to completely relax regarding ticks for a bit.

As spring approached, who would have ever imagined I would be longing for the “good old days” where I spent a couple of weeks in the spring and summer “just” plucking a few dog ticks off at the end of each day.  But after last fall, that is exactly what I was hoping for.  We had a nice long cold stretch this winter.  What better to kill off lots of those pesky deer ticks, right?  Unfortunately, we also had plenty of snow.  Although it seems hard to imagine (snow is COLD, right?), that layer of snow provides a nice insulating blanket to help the ticks stay warm enough to survive in the leaf litter below the snow. If I was skeptical about that, it took only one warm, sunny, snowless late winter day to prove it correct, with deer ticks spotted and removed by a neighbor from both herself and her dog.  Since than I have found a few of my own, fortunately still infrequent for now, and only one on the dogs, despite their regular journeys through the underbrush.  (The collars are still working!) Unfortunately, when the grandkids were here this past week, joyfully shuffling through the leaf litter to collect and hold a garter snake and a spring peeper, they both also unsuspectingly collected deer ticks.  URGGGHHH!  Although I think the ticks were found and removed in a timely manner, making Lyme disease risk very low, I don’t like even a remote risk for my grandkids, so I want those deer ticks to JUST GO AWAY!  Unfortunately, experience so far this spring suggests I will have no such luck.