Ticks are blood-sucking leeches that hide in your body, while possibly transmitting infections of a serious matter. They can hide between your toes or behind your knees or in your groin, under your armpits, in the back of your neck or behind your ears.
To discover the location of such a bite, check your whole body carefully while taking a hot shower, as well as your children and pets afterwards. Always remove the tick promptly with a pair of sharp tweezers, gripping around the neck and pulling it straight out. Then mark the bite with a circle and date from where it was removed for your healthcare provider, especially should you develop a rash, headache, fatigue, or sore muscle there.
It is always a good precaution to get carefully dressed before going out in tick habitat by tucking your trousers into your socks and wear a long-sleeved shirt, making it easier to spot a new tick wherever it lands on you.
When going outside, always stick to the clear, well-worn pathways and centers of the trails you are going to take. The most common variety you may encounter at this time of year is the so-called Black Legged Tick, which is responsible for Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. You also may find at this season Adult Dog ticks the size of a watermelon seed and a Lone Star Tick causing an allergy for some people eating red meat.
In order to counterbalance the destructive nature of ticks throughout the environment, there is out there a wide selection of wild and domestic birds that keep the tick population under control. Wild turkeys, for instance, can each eat as many as 100 ticks a day, as do countless other wild species of song birds. Domestic chickens are also descended from dinosaurs and have the inherited capacity to find and consume a meal of ticks when let out of their pen into a free range of their own selection, as clearly illustrated in my drawing.
Mother nature subsequently has her own methods of counter measures of concern and caution that you may now have learned from, via my article and drawing, to evaluate and appreciate. Now the concerns and cautions for any member of the human race will be evident with the arrival of the contagious, tick-infested outdoor season.
Editor’s Note: Attendance at last Wednesday’s site visit to the Mattapoisett Transfer Station with the Board of Health led to a walk through some tall grass and into the woods, after which I discovered three ticks, the first within the hour during an appointment (it fell from my ear onto my forearm), the second on my back spotted in the mirror later that day, and a third discovered after doing laundry in the lint trap to the dryer. Be careful!
By George B. Emmons
