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Your Weekly Electronic Gardening Guide Practical Horticulture for Busy People. |
All About Ticks
How to Avoid Them in Your Garden
Gardening season is well underway, and so is tick season. Ticks can attack when you are out mowing your lawn or digging weeds. Even your pets can harbor them and bring them inside your home. Knowledge is your best defense against these critters.
Some Facts on TicksTicks are members of the spider family (arachnids), and there are many species found all over the US. They are blood-sucking creatures that attack humans, dogs, cats, and other animals. They can be found in wooded, grassy, or brushy areas, and can transmit diseases such as Rocky Mountain spotted fever, tularemia, ehrlichiosis, and Lyme disease. |
![]() To find their next meal, most species engage in "questing." A tick will crawl up the nearest grass blade, weed stalk, or shrub, anchor its hind legs, and wave its other legs in the air. When a suitable host passes by, it latches on. Some species can sense the carbon dioxide exhaled by a host. After climbing aboard, ticks often wander around on their host and may even have a quick taste before settling down. Then they attach themselves by sinking their heads and mouth parts into the host's flesh. As they feed, their mouth parts become anchored with a cement-like chemical that makes them difficult to remove. |
Deer ticks in the East and black-legged ticks in the West both transmit Lyme disease, which is caused by a microorganism inside the tick. The nymph stage in its life cycle is the most likely stage at which they carry the spirochete. Research indicates that to transmit the disease, the tick needs to feed on you for at least 24 hours. So, it's important to find the tick and remove it promptly. Unfortunately, adult deer ticks are tiny - about the size of a sesame seed - and the nymphs are even smaller, about the size of a poppy seed. Iowa State University has an image of Ixodes scapularis (the black-legged or deer tick) at various stages of life, with a dime in the picture for comparison. |
Save Removal Procedures![]() It's a good idea to have an old pair of tweezers and rubbing alcohol or Betadine handy in your first aid kit, so you'll know just where to reach if you find a tick on yourself. If you suspect you were bitten by a black-legged or deer tick, save it in a small glass jar filled with rubbing alcohol, and take it to your county's cooperative extension office (look up their number in your phone book) to see where you can get it positively identified. |
A Checklist of Precautions![]()
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