Avoid Ticks
It may be cold in early April but deer ticks are starting to emerge. They have evolved (and have survived) by seizing the daylight and the newly active spring mammals. Prepare yourself every time you venture out into tick territory.
Bitten by a tick? Capture it and send to analysts at TickReport.com. an independent tick testing laboratory in Amherst, Massachusetts. They will help help you learn more about what pathogens it may be carrying. That’s TickReport.com
Best way to avoid tick bites is still prevention:
Recognize where ticks are most likely to hang out.
They position themselves along frequent mammalian ‘highways’. These are often tall grass areas abutting dense woods. Human hikers who keep to cleared paths are less likely to pick up the tick hitchhikers. But we wander and our pets wander.
Ticks walk up.
By layering from the ground up– by tucking pant legs into socks, and shirts into pants you prevent these pests from finding their way to your folds of skin where they intend to latch on for a meal. Light colored clothing is ideal because you can see the tick as it crawls, making it easier to capture.
Be cautious if you venture into tick territory – that is, wherever gardeners go!
Tuck pants into your socks and spray clothing with permethrin (a synthetic pesticide derived from naturally poisonous chrysanthemum). Once dry, the permethrin will not affect you or your pets but will kill the ticks. Deet or picaridin repel the ticks through irritating their feet and lighter concentrations can be used on your exposed skin (but are also useful on clothing).
Other repellents that rely on essential oils have less testing or regulation to confirm the efficacy and may cause skin irritation. Test before overdosing!
Shed your gardening clothes immediately after time outdoors and do a thorough body check for ticks.
When & where?
Deer ticks carry the most pathogens and are most active April into June and again in September through November. Be diligent. Remove any tick that has latched on, plop into isopropyl alcohol and send to TickReport.com. They analyze the tick for pathogens. The earlier the detection, the better chance you have of treating whatever the tick has “shared.”
Consider these steps to reduce ticks around your home:
Avoid creating the ideal habitat. Position bird feeders out in the open far from where mice can find cover. If you encourage a mouse colony by positioning feeders in your flower beds, the ticks will show up, too. Tick habitat has three ideal features:an insulating layer of leaf litter next to or below tall grasses or brush (12”-30”) along frequent animal paths like edges of shrub borders or woods. Eliminate one of these three ideal features and you’ll reduce the tick activity in your landscape.
Tick Control Tubes can be effective. These paper tubes have a cotton batting soaked in permethrin. By placing the tubes in vole or field mouse habitat, we encourage the rodents to bring the fluffy nesting material to their den where the permethrin will kill the ticks. Note: All works great unless your landscape has other competing nesting material – like fluffy tops of phragmites, cattails, or abundant clumps of cottonwood. So keep that in mind!
Warning- curious family dogs may discover these ‘tube toys’ and could destroy your efforts!
But, they do work to reduce tick populations.
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