We have (had?) some ticks in our backyard and I came across these which I thought was a clever attack angle: tick tubes.
Permethrin-soaked cotton balls in a tube, mice find them and build nests out of the freely available cotton, ticks that the mice have gathered while walking around die when they come back to the nest.
It does work a little, but it's even more effective to just get some chickens. I did find permethrin works great on clothing - when I used to go hunting a lot I'd get ticks on me every time, and the thing is they climb off of your boots in the car and go under the seats or wherever so you don't get bitten until three days later when you're driving back from grocery shopping or whatever. After I started using permethrin and sprayed the floor of my car with it I never saw another tick again.
If you are out in the woods and you come upon a roughly circular area of crushed down grass, that is a deer bed. Try and avoid walking through it, deer beds are full of ticks.
I’m pretty wary of ticks, when you go for hikes just do a body check after. Also, I tend to go with long pants (even in summer, I dislike bugs more than the sweat).
Plus a lightweight windbreaker can help to cover upper body. Plus it limits sun exposure which is also harmful.
Cost, more complicated in the laundry, prone to wrinkling, and air-conditioning. Linen used to be a more popular clothing fabric before AC was invented.
Some people don't like the scratchy feel of linen compared to cotton, although there are now linen-synthetic blends which ameliorate this almost entirely.
I have not come across linens that are scratchy. They can be coarse but not scratchy. Blends can be fine fibers. Coarse wool I do find scratchy, unless it’s cold then the scratchiness goes away. Seems like Belgian linen is good.
Lethal dermal exposure is somewhere near 100mg/kg.
I probably wouldn’t wear permethrin treated pants and let a cat sit on my lap, but “anywhere near the clothes” is a pretty big exaggeration of the danger.
Through a combination of two of my hobbies, I learned that pyrethroids are toxic to aquatic animals. Glad to see that they used "locations [that] were situated away from waterbodies".
Pyrethroids are very powerful tools for insect control (and non-toxic to humans) but any place where you have runoff or ground seepage is going to be a problem.
Aren't those places the ones most likely for ticks to thrive -- areas near bodies of water where animals like deer come to drink?
So hot take: this would only be useful in places where there are not a lot of ticks?
(PS: Permethrin-sprayed clothing is very effective.)
I got bitten by a mosquito in Ottawa a couple years ago that sent me to the hospital.. I stopped near the river while cycling to see a raccoon for few seconds, was more than enough for that lil sucker to do the job.
I got bitten by a tick at a cottage near Ottawa and got a fever then bell's palsy a month later. I didn't even notice I got bit at all at the time. A year later, I went to the hospital for a swollen knee and had surgery done, and ended up being tested positive for lyme disease. The doc says you're too young to have bell's palsy and arthritis. Careful out there!
There are some potentially very nasty diseases spread by ticks and insects. For example, flaviviruses like West Nile, Dengue, and Powassan (which debilitated and ultimately killed the wife of Canadian fantasy author Charles de Lint.)
> Twenty 50-m trail segments across two sites were randomly assigned to intervention groups: untreated woodchip borders, deltamethrin-treated woodchip borders, and ten assigned to untreated controls.
> Treated woodchips reduced I. scapularis adult and nymph density by 99 % (incidence rate ratio (IRR) = 0.01, 95 % CI: 0.001–0.08) relative to controls, while untreated woodchips achieved a 48 % reduction (IRR = 0.52, 95 % CI: 0.34–0.78).
Another worrying proxy for how deeply climate change is bleeding into everyday life: coffee prices, orange juice prices, and now having to engineer huge trail areas with woodchips just so people can avoid being bitten by exploding tick populations.
Ticks are a problem regardless. And they don’t like too much heat. So climate warming may even reduce their population in some parts. Or, more likely, move them up north. Giving relieve to some and headache to others…
Lyme disease vaccine would help a ton though. I’ve had Lyme 3 times by now. Thankfully encephalitis stab is a thing.
They don’t like heat? That seems incorrect. If true, Then why are they a huge problem in TX and other southerly areas, and are only now spreading north?
Different species I belive. Ticks in Texas are differnent from ticks in Ottowa. Most lyme disease in the US is concentrated in the northeast and northern great lakes states and into Canada (though it is spreading over the past few decades).
They seem to be much less active on hot days compared to cooler days in my experience - though I can't say why. I've definitely observed a difference over the years though.
That said, whether it is hotter or cooler doesn't make much of a difference in terms of how you go about your day - you pretty much have to assume you can encounter them regardless.
Norway is projected to have growth in ticks and new tick species because of climate change (warmer and more humid climate), so that's one example of it moving north (though ticks seem to always have been in Norway?)
There has been a vaccine for dogs and cats for a while now, not sure why it hasn't been released for humans yet. Lyme can be really horrible. Some people we know have a 30-something son who was very active (camping, hiking, rock climbing, etc.) until he was bitten by a tick. Now he's quadriplegic.
We have (had?) some ticks in our backyard and I came across these which I thought was a clever attack angle: tick tubes.
Permethrin-soaked cotton balls in a tube, mice find them and build nests out of the freely available cotton, ticks that the mice have gathered while walking around die when they come back to the nest.
It does work a little, but it's even more effective to just get some chickens. I did find permethrin works great on clothing - when I used to go hunting a lot I'd get ticks on me every time, and the thing is they climb off of your boots in the car and go under the seats or wherever so you don't get bitten until three days later when you're driving back from grocery shopping or whatever. After I started using permethrin and sprayed the floor of my car with it I never saw another tick again.
Some birds eat ticks including guinea fowl of all things.
If you are out in the woods and you come upon a roughly circular area of crushed down grass, that is a deer bed. Try and avoid walking through it, deer beds are full of ticks.
The deer trails are a lot harder to avoid.
I avoid grass all together- especially in the woods.
Or avoid the trails all-together. Given the 30th anniversary of Trainspotting this seems relevant: https://youtu.be/xtbS_PdA198?si=8ba8Fp8_uzdpIq6J.
I’m pretty wary of ticks, when you go for hikes just do a body check after. Also, I tend to go with long pants (even in summer, I dislike bugs more than the sweat).
Plus a lightweight windbreaker can help to cover upper body. Plus it limits sun exposure which is also harmful.
Linen clothes are awesome. Long trousers and long sleeves and almost as cool as short sleeves and shorts in shade, and cooler in direct sun.
Linen is the most underappreciated fabric. It's cool in both ways. I don't understand why so few people wear linen in summer.
Cost, more complicated in the laundry, prone to wrinkling, and air-conditioning. Linen used to be a more popular clothing fabric before AC was invented.
Some people don't like the scratchy feel of linen compared to cotton, although there are now linen-synthetic blends which ameliorate this almost entirely.
I have not come across linens that are scratchy. They can be coarse but not scratchy. Blends can be fine fibers. Coarse wool I do find scratchy, unless it’s cold then the scratchiness goes away. Seems like Belgian linen is good.
And if you're wearing long sleeves and long pants, you can apply permethrin in a semi permanent way to your clothing to discourage ticks and mosquitoes: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/insect-repellent/is-p...
Do not do so if a cat will be anywhere near the clothes or compound. It’s super harmful to cats.
Lethal dermal exposure is somewhere near 100mg/kg.
I probably wouldn’t wear permethrin treated pants and let a cat sit on my lap, but “anywhere near the clothes” is a pretty big exaggeration of the danger.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10822630/
My body helps me with this goal by being ridiculously allergic to all grasses.
Calls to mind one of my favorite Simpsons moments.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NGv6RASFsY4&t=26s
Through a combination of two of my hobbies, I learned that pyrethroids are toxic to aquatic animals. Glad to see that they used "locations [that] were situated away from waterbodies". Pyrethroids are very powerful tools for insect control (and non-toxic to humans) but any place where you have runoff or ground seepage is going to be a problem. Aren't those places the ones most likely for ticks to thrive -- areas near bodies of water where animals like deer come to drink?
So hot take: this would only be useful in places where there are not a lot of ticks?
(PS: Permethrin-sprayed clothing is very effective.)
They’re also very toxic to cats, which is why dogs & cats have different flea & tick medicines.
Also bad news if your dog is prone to seizures, as mine was.
Deer ticks will go after pretty much anything warm blooded: coyotes, mice, dogs, etc etc etc.
Proximity to water doesn't seem to factor much either. Where I live, ticks this year are horrendous and everywhere.
This reminds me I need to respray my tick pants. Thanks.
I got bitten by a mosquito in Ottawa a couple years ago that sent me to the hospital.. I stopped near the river while cycling to see a raccoon for few seconds, was more than enough for that lil sucker to do the job.
I got bitten by a tick at a cottage near Ottawa and got a fever then bell's palsy a month later. I didn't even notice I got bit at all at the time. A year later, I went to the hospital for a swollen knee and had surgery done, and ended up being tested positive for lyme disease. The doc says you're too young to have bell's palsy and arthritis. Careful out there!
There are some potentially very nasty diseases spread by ticks and insects. For example, flaviviruses like West Nile, Dengue, and Powassan (which debilitated and ultimately killed the wife of Canadian fantasy author Charles de Lint.)
> Twenty 50-m trail segments across two sites were randomly assigned to intervention groups: untreated woodchip borders, deltamethrin-treated woodchip borders, and ten assigned to untreated controls.
> Treated woodchips reduced I. scapularis adult and nymph density by 99 % (incidence rate ratio (IRR) = 0.01, 95 % CI: 0.001–0.08) relative to controls, while untreated woodchips achieved a 48 % reduction (IRR = 0.52, 95 % CI: 0.34–0.78).
Another worrying proxy for how deeply climate change is bleeding into everyday life: coffee prices, orange juice prices, and now having to engineer huge trail areas with woodchips just so people can avoid being bitten by exploding tick populations.
Ticks are a problem regardless. And they don’t like too much heat. So climate warming may even reduce their population in some parts. Or, more likely, move them up north. Giving relieve to some and headache to others…
Lyme disease vaccine would help a ton though. I’ve had Lyme 3 times by now. Thankfully encephalitis stab is a thing.
They don’t like heat? That seems incorrect. If true, Then why are they a huge problem in TX and other southerly areas, and are only now spreading north?
Different species I belive. Ticks in Texas are differnent from ticks in Ottowa. Most lyme disease in the US is concentrated in the northeast and northern great lakes states and into Canada (though it is spreading over the past few decades).
https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/data-research/facts-stats/lyme-dise...
They seem to be much less active on hot days compared to cooler days in my experience - though I can't say why. I've definitely observed a difference over the years though.
That said, whether it is hotter or cooler doesn't make much of a difference in terms of how you go about your day - you pretty much have to assume you can encounter them regardless.
They are a huge problem in Minnesota as well.
Norway is projected to have growth in ticks and new tick species because of climate change (warmer and more humid climate), so that's one example of it moving north (though ticks seem to always have been in Norway?)
So there's no natural immunity after having it once? How would a vaccine work then?
There are many strains. You will develop immunity to one strain, but not the others.
I assume a vaccine would try to be multivalent.
AFAIK there was a Lyme disease vaccine, but was discontinued, probably because it wasn't effective enough, I don't remember the details.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2870557/
Typically because it's rare enough that the cost/side-effect risk of the vaccine isn't judged to be worth it.
Humans generally aren't vaccinated for Rabies either, unless you are e.g. a veterinarian who might have a higher chance of exposure to it.
There has been a vaccine for dogs and cats for a while now, not sure why it hasn't been released for humans yet. Lyme can be really horrible. Some people we know have a 30-something son who was very active (camping, hiking, rock climbing, etc.) until he was bitten by a tick. Now he's quadriplegic.