Ticks
 

Has anybody else noticed an incredible boom in the tick population this year? I never EVER saw a tick until a few years ago. This year, I can't seem to go outside without picking up 1-3 of them. And I'm not going into the woods, I found one crawling up my leg after cutting across about 15 feet of frequently mowed grass in an island surrounded by pavement.

Yikes
 

We are building a home in Tuftonboro and have found the amount of ticks to be ridiculous. This being our first year here, I hope someone confirms that this is an unusual year. The thought of having the problem this bad every year is a little frightening. :( I am assuming these to be brown ticks, not deer ticks. I always understood that deer ticks are so small, they are hard to distinguish, unlike their larger cousins, the brown tick. Is it only the deer tick that can cause Lyme disease? :confused:

Ticks
 

Unfortunately ticks in Tuftonboro and I assume elsewhere are a signifigant problem. In my opinion since I have been living in Tuftonboro for over 40 years, this year as well as the last 39 have been tick city, especially in the spring.

The ticks I assume you are finding are the common wood tick. They do not transmit lime disease, at least that is what I have been lead to believe. I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong on this.

Check yourself often when you are out and about and use a quality bug spray such as cutters.

This past week, I pulled more of the little suckers off me than ever before. But I atributed this to the fact that we were working in the woods. And they all were common (wood) ticks -- big as buttons and not the little deer ticks. Check yourself often -- and DON'T FORGET ABOUT YOUR PETS.

Check your pets
 

I second that. Our springer was infected with lyme last year. The good news is that it is much more easily treated in dogs. It was very tough to find her lame one morning put she was back to 100% after one dose of antibiotics.

One thing the vet told us is that frontiline (drops behind the head) don't work if the fur gets wet and remains useless until the dog dries. For a water dog at the lake........ We now use a tick collar and keep her fur very short.

It's the grass
 

I picked up one deer tick and one wood tick on a single day last week. I had assisted my neighbor who has a sunny clearing with scraggly grass. (My lot has only woods, and no grass).

It's a guarantee you'll get a tick when walking through sunny clearings with scraggly grass. Even parking lots -- paved or not, but bordered with grass -- will get you a tick, too.

The wood tick was easy to detect while crawling, but the deer tick (my first-ever) snuck up and latched on just above my sock. Deer ticks are the Lyme Disease tick.

Wood ticks, thankfully, just carry Rocky Mountain Fever. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/rmsf/Signs.htm


:rolleye2:

Ticks
 

Wow, this is really bizarre......... I was just reading this thread when my son's friend (who is here for a playdate) all of a sudden said "I just found a tick on me". It was crawling on his neck, luckily hadn't lodged into him yet. I was wondering what a tick looked like - now I know for sure, yech! :rolleye1:

Knock Em Down
 

I have found by treating the lawn with Ant, Tick and Flea killer using a spreader like the kind you put lime, grass seed etc.... it will cut the number by 75% or more. Wait a few weeks and hit it again and you'll find very few if any. Read the precautions on the stuff i.e. cannot have pets for x time after spreading. It does work. Used it last year and again this year….

Treating your lawn with Ant, Tick and Flea killer? Whatever you spread on your lawn will eventually find it's way into the lake(even if you're not on the waterfront). And people wonder why the water quality in Winni has been declining steadily... Please stop poisoning the lake.

I side with the lake on almost every set of circumstances, but my personal health and safety comes first in this case.

Anyways...I'm going to try to treat around my gardens where I spend a lot of time. Having to fuss about ticks has really zapped some of the enjoyment out of it.

Whatever you do, don't type ticks into google and read too much. Some of the horror stories and stuff I've learned has only served to leave me rather paranoid and waiting for winter.

It's always good to be informed about Deer ticks. Working in the outdoors I had been a participant in a study in the 1980's of office workers vs outdoor park workers. This is when the ticks were mostly confined to the coastal areas of NE. Now they are practically everywhere. Of the four stages the larval stage is by far the tiniest tick. Two years ago at a party I looked at the back of my mom's leg and she had the perfect well known red bullseye. I told her she needed to see a dr. Fool dr told her it wasn't a tick bite it was a spider bite. I told her she needed to see another dr as she kept getting more tired and sicker. Finally she saw one that gave her a test that she tested positive for. But the medicine he gave her was too little and too light in strength and she got even worse. Finally I took her to an infectious disease dr at Lahey clinic in Burlington and she has been successfully treated. However for some reason the ticks like her and she got bit a second time by a deer tick last year and then again already this spring. Even though she treats the cat with frontline, I believe they come in on the cat and drop off before it works on them. They told her she will always test positive as it will be in her bloodstream. Not all deer tick carry the Lyme disease. Our daughter was bit by one years ago and she never got it. We had saved the tick and brought it to the dr. It was his first deer tick. He didn't know much about them and after I talked to him he did more research on them and called me back requesting she get the blood test. He has now become very informed on the culprits.

Ticks "peak" every other year
 

A statistic like 75% sounds suspicious when tick populations vary from year to year. The "Precautions" label usually states that poisons should not be used near water. IMO, lawns should not be near Winnipesaukee.

I suspect lawns will have fewer ticks to start with. It's scraggly wild grass that's their lair -- not lawn grass. (Think of "bug-logistics" of a poor, hungry tick :( in a vast lawn).

Ever seen a wood tick "in the wild"? :look:

I knocked one off a blade of "scraggly grass" next to a paved road. It crawled fairly rapidly up an 8-inch blade of grass, moved around a little bit, and stretched its four forwardmost legs upward, as though praying to the sun! Its rear four legs were grasping the blade of grass. (Tick yoga?)

It just waited there to grasp anything walking by -- four-legged victim or two-legged victim. You've got to feel sorry for them.

(The victims, the victims).

Well Scott, maybe you should take up a safer hobby like chess or stamp collecting and buy your vegetables at the store instead. Don't think for a second that getting bit by a tick = Lyme's disease. I've been an outdoor enthusiast my entire life, pulled hundreds of ticks off myself, and I don't have Lyme's disease. Instead of poisining OUR lake, why don't you just wear a hat, long sleeves and pants, apply some bug spray around your cuffs, and check yourself often when you're working outside(or better yet, have someone else check you). Do you truly believe that YOUR health and saftey is more important than the health and saftey of a huge ecosystem like Winni? How about all the fish, insects and other marine life that have to ingest YOUR poison because you're afraid of getting a few bug bites? It's elitist attitudes like yours that will slowly contribute to the decline of this beautiful ecosystem.

Alton Bay Resident, thanks for sharing your technique for poisoning the lake with everyone, you should be proud of yourself. C'mon people they're bugs. Please stop polluting our lake with your poisons. Think of it this way, the more chemicals you dump in the lake, the quicker your property value is going to delcine. Some people just don't understand biology, but when it affects their wallet, suddenly, it all makes sense.

Stamp collecting does sound like fun. It's doesn't feed my elitist attitude and ego as much as I like, though. :rolleye1:

I believe ones health and safety should come first. Flame away, but I'm sorry that I value my health more than a fish's. Regardless, I really don't think the sprinkling of this stuff will bring the lake to it's knees unless an overwhelming majority of people do it, which is highly unlikely.

Sorry to ruffle any feathers.

As for your hundreds of bites, 50 percent of deer ticks carry Lyme disease, among several other awful disease, in areas not all that far from here. It will eventually make it here, and those odds will catch up to everyone eventually.

Hats, pants and long sleeves do nothing to protect you from ticks. They only serve to increase the chances of the tick finding a spot in you hair where they are nearly impossible to spot until it's engorged. I prefer the complete opposite, shorts and short sleeves so that I can spot them before they find a suitable spot to feed.

I wouldn't put too much faith in bug spray...I've still watched ticks crawl across treated skin (35% deet) unless you've recently applied.

This type of thinking is exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah, you might not see a change in the lake this year or next, but when you grandchildren are swimming in a polluted, lifeless lake, and everyone's property value hits rock bottom, we'll all have you to thank. Do you throw trash out the window of your car when you drive down the street? After all, it's only one soda can or burger wrapper, it won't make a difference right? Some people will never learn...

This lake was here long before you and will be here long after you die. If you think your health and safety is more important than an ecosystem as large as Winni, YOU'RE WRONG. The lack of respect that you show for the lake illustrates how ignorant you truly are. I feel sorry for you and this is the last I will post on the subject.

Please people, don't spread chemicals around your property. Whether it's bug killer, weed killer or fertilizer, it's all bad for the water. It's only a matter of time before the effects will be seen, and by then, it will already be too late.

Well, ok, I would accept full responsibly if I single handedly destroyed your lake, but that won't be necessary. I've decided to not fight the ticks. Stamp collection here I come!

And this will be my last post too; our opinions just strongly differ. Besides, I've got a car to wash- by a storm drain that drains into the lake. Wait wait wait...now settle down, take a deep breath, put the gun away...I'm only using water.

;)

Found this site for an organic solution. Very impressive testimonials though they are mostly about mosquito control. (Worth it just for that!) I called the company directly and they said that in conjunction to taking normal precautions of short lawn etc. this products really works for ticks and other pests too.
If ordered by Monday it will arrive to you in NH - guaranteed by Friday via UPS for the upcoming holiday weekend.
Mosquito Czar
Also, I found a couple articles on giving garlic to your pets orally. A natural repellent for ticks. Worth looking into.

Ticks aren't just in grassy areas
 

Some people are of the opinion that ticks are just in the grassy areas and not in the "wild". As I stated in an earlier post, I am building in Tuftonboro, it is in the thick woods, no grass of any kind and we have tons of ticks. :eek:

A Tuftonboro tick is a happy tick.
 

I'm located at the south end of the lake, live in woods so thick I can't see my neighbors -- and average two ticks a season. Is Tuftonboro really "tick city"?

:confused:

Your "bible" for stamp collecting will be the Scott's Catalogue -- really!
http://www.stamps-auctions.com/frames/fr-bookh.htm

Ticks
 

Better than 80% of the ticks come out of the trees and we get most of them on us when the wind blows. Grass is really secondary to the trees. Ya, really! :liplick:

Maybe Minnesota ticks are different...
 

"Ticks search for a host from the tips of grasses and shrubs, not from trees."

http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/i.../guidline.html

Lawns are great - even if they have ticks
 

[QUOTE=madrasahs]IMO, lawns should not be near Winnipesaukee.
/QUOTE]

I don't understand your opinion. Lawns help prevent erosion into the lake. They are a good place to sit and walk in your bare feet. What is the problem with a lawn as long as you don't use fertilizer? The one at our place is a bit scraggley, but so what? I believe it has a positive impact on the quality of the lake.

There does happen to be EPA-recommended tick repellents, but they may only last for 8 hours.

-Alton Bay Resident never mentioned the type of repellent he was using, so don't blindly assume that he's polluting the water.

-For any of you with wells out there, the unsafe tick repellent will travel through the groundwater and probably end up in the wells. For those who use lakewater, you have far worse to worry about. Walk to an on-the-water gas station and count all the colors you see in the water. The surface is covered in gas.

-Alton Bay Resident never stated where they lived, and I didn't find a location on the profile, so it's also unfair to assume they live on the water. Having a lawn on the lake isn't necessarily bad; the lawn can actually stop some of the chemicals from flowing into the water, as oposed to dirt or rock, in which there is no way to stop the chemicals from flowing into the lake.

-However, if the lawn was by the lake at all, the chemicals WILL wash into it. The water in Meredith is cloudier than it was ten years ago. It's not just the fertilizer and the bug spray, it's the feeding the ducks and the heavy travel.

Besides the points made, looking after the lake should be everyone's #2 priority, just under y' know, the whole breathing deal. In all honesty it would be a shame to see a symbol of pride in New Hampshire slowly deteriorate. No matter what precautions are made, all of us have done something to the lake in some way, and I suppose the only way to repent about that is to get points across to tourists or new-time residents.


This wasn't meant to hurt anyone; it just shows that both sides of the points can be argued.

A garunteed way to rid of ticks: Surround yourself with fire on a beach until you feel the need to go inside. No trees should be abovehead :)


Goodnight