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Inside Out

The ticks are here

Jeanne Sager
Posted 5/2/23

I’d only just stepped into the shower when I noticed it. The bright orange body of the thing embedded in my left calf was unmistakable.  

On a rainy Saturday morning when I’d …

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Inside Out

The ticks are here

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I’d only just stepped into the shower when I noticed it. The bright orange body of the thing embedded in my left calf was unmistakable. 

On a rainy Saturday morning when I’d yet to even leave the house, and the temperature was cold enough to call for a winter coat, I’d just found my first deer tick of the season. 

A set of tweezers made quick work of the body, and he was soon swirling down the drain, but not before I had a minor panic attack over the threat of Lyme Disease. After all, as much as 50 percent of the adult deer ticks in our area are estimated to carry the debilitating disease. 

We don’t expect ticks to start showing up when it’s still cold enough for a frost, and you certainly don’t expect to find one digging into your leg when you haven’t even left the house for the day. 

My assumption is that one of my dogs had brought the tiny troublemaker in, despite sporting collars designed to keep the nasty creatures at bay. 

As for the seasonality, well, many of the scientists out there say we can thank climate change for the rising rates of deer ticks and the diseases they carry. 

Rates of Lyme Disease for example, have effectively tripled since 1991, in part because warming temperatures have made it easier for ticks to thrive. 

These days the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) actually uses the number of cases of Lyme Disease as an indicator of climate change.

Perhaps most alarming of all? The Hudson Valley and Catskills have the dubious honor of leading the state in number of Lyme Disease cases in the state. 

It’s not exactly the sort of thing we want to lead in. And yet here we are; living in a time when you can wake up on a chilly, rainy, miserable morning, spend an hour reading through the news and catching up on your Instagram, hop in the shower and realize somehow you’ve become a tick’s morning meal when you’ve yet to step out your front door. 

So here’s your simple reminder: Tick check. 

Not just when you’ve been tromping through the woods, and not just on those hot summer days. 

Tick check through spring, summer and fall, each day, no matter where you are. 

The sooner you remove a tick, the better your chances are of not contracting Lyme. 

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