After all those hours of hard
work, it is that time of year again when you are enjoying your garden and truly
appreciating what you have created. Not to be enjoyed however, is the hidden threat awaiting you
in your garden – none other than that seemingly harmless deer tick. Not only do the bites of deer ticks put
you at risk for Lyme disease, but also other potentially debilitating diseases including
babesiosis, anaplasmosis, bartonella, tularemia, and deer tick virus.
Ticks are parasites which survive
by feeding on the blood of a variety of hosts including people. The peak of the deer tick’s activity
begins in May and continues throughout the summer. It is during this time that the very tiny nymphal deer tick
(about the size of a poppy seed) is most likely to crawl onto you, bite you,
and infect you with Lyme disease and/or other diseases.
Deer ticks seek hosts by a
behavior called “questing.” They
do not jump or fly. Questing ticks
crawl up the stems of grass or small bushes, or perch on the edges of leaf
litter with their front legs extended. They also wait for you on fallen logs,
stone walls or in vegetation along grass/woodland edges. When your body or clothing comes in
contact with the extended legs of the tick, they grab onto you in a split
second, and search for a suitable place on your body to attach and take their
blood meal. Nymphal deer ticks will remain attached for a few days until they become
fully engorged with your blood and then drop off. Because they inject a pain killer in you when feeding, most
often you will never know they were there.
Removing ticks promptly can help
prevent the transmission of Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases. And that is why regular tick checks,
both after gardening activities and at the end of the day, are so vital to your
continued good health.
If you discover a tick
attached to you, you should remove the tick using pointed tweezers to grab the
tick as close to the skin as possible. You should pull the tick straight out,
taking care not to twist or squish it. Finally, you should wash the bite site
and apply an antiseptic. If at all
possible, you should save the tick in a zip lock bag so that it can be sent to
a tick testing lab for identification and a determination as to whether it is
infected with any disease organisms. You should also seek the advice of your health care provider regarding
timely prophylactic treatment.
If you are going to be
gardening, it is strongly advised that you take personal protection measures by
wearing clothing treated with the synthetic chemical permethrin, which repels
and kills ticks. Permethrin has been
approved by the EPA as safe for use on clothing apparel. With permethrin spray you can treat
your own footwear and clothing (good for 5 washings), or purchase pre-treated
clothing (good for 70 washings) with the proprietary Insect Shield label from
suppliers such as: REI, LLBean, ExOfficio, Orvis, etc. Wearing an EPA-approved
insect repellent on exposed skin parts will also provide added protection, but by
itself does not work nearly as effectively as tick repellent clothing.
When managing your property
to make it as tick safe as possible, you need to concentrate on those portions
of your property that are most frequently used by you, such as lawns, gardens, play
areas, eating areas, walkways, etc.
Within these areas, keeping the grass mowed short, reducing leaf litter,
eliminating ground cover such as pachysandra, using hardscape and xeriscape
landscaping practices, keeping trees and shrubs trimmed, providing gravel
pathways, using wood chips and mulch in flower beds, using plantings that do
not attract deer, installing deer fencing, etc. will all contribute towards reducing
the number of deer ticks on your property.