Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Tick Tock Time For Tick Talk

Some uninvited guest hitched a ride home with us
after our little adventure into the woods 
on the weekend. 
The day after our outing,
hubby found this wood tick 
attached to his
forearm.

Wood Tick


Two days later,
I was sorting the laundry into piles before starting the wash
and I spotted this tick
...what I believe is a "deer tick"
or "black legged tick" crawling on the floor.

Deer Tick or Black Legged Tick

The picture is a little blurry so it's hard to get a good look at it. We picked up our little hitch hikers in Lunenburg County where ticks been a problem for years, but lately they have been quite prevalent here in Kings County as well. While I can manage to live with the wood ticks, the fear of Lyme disease, which is carried only by the Black Legged tick, has me freaking.

Black legged ticks live for about two years. They have three feeding stages: larvae, nymph and adult. When a young tick feeds on an infected animal, it picks up a bacterium called Borrelia burgdorferi. It's normally carried by mice, squirrels, birds and other small animals. The bacterium then lives in the gut of the tick. If you are the tick's next meal after it's ingested infected blood, you could show symptoms in three to 30 days. Most cases are reported in late spring and summer, when the young ticks are most active and people are outdoors more often.

Studies suggest that the incidence of Lyme disease in Canada is increasing. Lyme disease has become established in parts of southern and southeastern Quebec, southern and eastern Ontario, southeastern Manitoba, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia as well as much of southern British Columbia. 


If Lyme disease is not treated with antibiotics soon after infection, patients can suffer arthritis and neurological problems.
- CBC news report  Feb.25, 2011


I will certainly be taking a closer look whenever I come in from spending any time outside, not just from outings in the woods.

2 comments:

  1. I was going to ask if you looked for them b/c living out here, I know they're bad in the woods. I don't good in my woods at this time of year. I mostly see wood ticks, and have yet to see (or notice) black-legged ticks. Was out at the lake today which involves a short hike on a fairly clear trail, but now I'm paranoid and so I'm going to go jump in the shower!

    P.S. Clothes should go straight into the washing machine, not the laundry pile!

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  2. I had to read the title of this post a few times. I thought I was misreading it. Clever!

    This has been a surprisingly tick-free year here in Nebraska. I've had two and my husband, just one.

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