It didn’t happen this year, but it sure has in the past. While out checking my tapped maple trees I’ve returned with ticks crawling on me. Sometimes they were deer ticks, which happen to carry the Lyme agent, while others they were dog ticks. Neither is pleasant. During this year’s late-February and early-March sap runs the conditions were prime for…
The tick-borne ailment has always lurked in the background in wooded northern Wisconsin, but now it’s on the rise across the rest of the state. The state DNR theorizes that ticks are multiplying faster than their natural predators.
Something – a biting insect for sure – had marched down my forearm and punched in a string of tiny bites. I never even noticed the minor “attack” until, overnight, a reddish-purplish blob about two inches long raised up on the skin. It was not sore, painful, or itchy, and I felt no symptoms of distress. So I watched it…
It is a little thing, easily ignored, overlooked, or forgotten, but potentially with big consequences – a bite from an infected tick. And while disease-bearing ticks can be a problem year-round, deer hunters should be especially wary. We spend long hours in the woods, deep off trails, often in heavy cover, and often with back and head propped again a…
(Photo by Bob Drieslein)CONCORD, N.H. — Moose calves are dying at unprecedented levels in New England, mostly because of the hordes of winter ticks – as many as 90,000 on one animal – that latch onto their bodies and drain their blood. Those are the findings from a new study in the Canadian Journal of Zoology that looked at moose…
Researchers have found that ticks that were once isolated to southern Illinois are now being found in the northern part of the state and vice versa.
“It’ll seem like there’s a lot more because they’re coming out in full force all at once instead of a little at a time.”
It’s unclear if it will be a bumper year for ticks; some experts say a lot depends on if spring will be a wet one.
What may be true in one part of the country – or even one part of a county – may not be true in another. And there are signs that the most common tick-borne illness – Lyme disease – may be occurring at roughly usual levels.
Numerous products now available to aid in both keeping ticks away and tick removal.
Alaska has had types such as vole and squirrel ticks that are found on wildlife, but newer to the state are two kinds of dog ticks.
The state had about 40 confirmed cases in 2000. By 2010, the number increased to 200 confirmed cases. And the provisional total for 2016 is nearly 350 cases.
Residents in Maine are complaining they are finding as many as 30 ticks at a time on their clothes, and public health officials in Vermont are reporting an above-average rate of emergency room visits for tick bites in the last three weeks.
It seems as though this is a bad year in the Northeast for the pesky arachnids. Actually, it seems like that every year. On top of that, national news stories are surfacing about other tick-borne diseases like Anaplasmosis, Babesiosis and the Powassan Virus, which have everyone on high alert.
Experts are telling us that much of what we thought we knew about both is wrong.
Dry weather reportedly tends to suppress the number of ticks. But a shot of moisture — along with warmer weather such as in February — can re-energize the tick world.
Experts blame a warm winter and a large population of white-footed mice, which can carry the Lyme disease bacterium and spread it to ticks.
There were less than 30 human cases of Lyme disease reported in Michigan in every year between 2000 and 2004, but the number had jumped to 90 reported cases by 2009, and by 2013, it was nearly 170 cases.
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