Excited About Going Outdoors In Ellicott City, MD? Ticks Are Excited Too!
After weeks of staying cooped up indoors, no one would blame you for wanting to spend as much time outdoors as possible. And with the recommendations for avoiding crowds and indoor gatherings, parks and woods in Howard County have never been so appealing.
If the woods are your preference, it’s important to remember tick season is here and take the necessary precautions to keep yourself safe.
Dr. Sorana Segal-Maurer, director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at New York-Presbyterian Queens health care system, told CNN she’s worried that people who’ve been stuck at home will “explode into the outdoors. And there may not be the same thoughtful approach” to avoiding ticks.
“I’m a little nervous that their guard may be down just a slight bit,” she told the outlet.
Busy hiking trails could also push people to the edges of paths and into vegetation where ticks are common, she told CNN. Read more at The Kansas City Star…
Wear hats and long sleeves, tuck your pants into your socks and wear light-colored clothing so it’s easier to spot ticks. In addition, avoid brushes and leaf litter, and walk in the middle of the path. Once back home, inspect yourself for ticks, and get help if there’s an area you can’t see, like your back.
Another reason why you want to be especially careful about ticks is that one might easily mistake a tick-borne illness for the coronavirus.
Dr. Sims says tick-borne illnesses can have some similar symptoms to those from the coronavirus.
“Most viral infections like COVID-19 potentially cause muscle aches and pains, and fever, and tick-borne illnesses often have muscle aches and pains and fever. So there is an overlap of symptoms, but tick-borne illnesses as a whole don’t tend to give you respiratory symptoms,” said Dr. Sims. Read more at WXYZ Detroit…
It’s important to be careful to avoid tick bites as much as possible. It is equally important to seek medical attention should you notice symptoms of Lyme disease. That’s because left untreated, it could develop into a debilitating chronic illness.
On the bright side, some homeowners who actually live in wooded areas where these bugs rule have found a nifty solution to their tick problem. When this mother, a gardener, heard that guinea fowl had an appetite for ticks and would not peck at her garden greens like chickens, she went for it:
KOFF: Yeah, I just went on Craigslist and I pretty easily found… there were actually a lot of different ads for people selling guineas but we wanted a certain amount and we wanted them to be babies, so it was a perfect guy who had them and raised them and told me a lot about them.
[GUINEA FOWL CALLING]
DOERING: The Craigslist guineas got right to work.
KOFF: As soon as we started letting them out they were immediately interested in pecking, pecking and pecking. So yeah, they were just sort of tearing up all the bugs! [LAUGHS] Read more at Living on Earth…
Guinea fowl may have worked for this family, but they’re not for everyone. They also have their limitations, like the fact that they target adult ticks, but largely leave their nymphs. So the risk of Lyme disease remains pretty high.
If you’re in need of tick control services in Ellicott City, Backyard Bug Patrol is at your service. Call us today for safe and effective solutions that will get rid of any ticks in your yard.