Tick season has arrived

“Out here in the grasslands that’s where you’re most apt to pick them up, although people do get them in their backyards, especially if you have any type of rodent around there, so those marmots and mice, they also carry ticks, but also deer,” says Provincial WildSafeBC Coordinator Frank Ritcey.

With the snow starting to melt, and spring weather officially here, people and their pets are taking every opportunity to enjoy the outdoors. But the change in weather means ticks are active, ready to feed on the blood of humans and animals.

“When you’re walking along and your pant leg brushes beside a blade of grass or a sagebrush, they jump on, they’ve got very sharp claws and they’ll get on your pants, they tend to climb up.”

Ticks are typically found in wooded areas, in the grasslands and along trails, not in trees. They wait on blades of grass or shrubs for a warm host to pass by, and can pass along some serious diseases.

“The Rocky Mountain Wood Tick is the primary tick we have, it’s not been known to carry Lyme disease, there’s things like Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, which is a horrible disease to get and you can even get paralysis from some ticks.”

So if you don’t want to bring home more than you bargained for when taking in the great outdoors, cover up. Tuck your pants into your socks, wear gators, spray your pants with a repellant high in deet, and make it a priority to check yourself and your children.

“Check around your hairline and any place in your armpits and in your groin, they’ll get to a place where they feel they can’t be easily picked off, so you want to check there, and with your clothing it’s important to shake it out.”

And don’t forget about your pets. Dog owners should be vigilant, some wood ticks have toxins that can cause temporary paralysis and while it’s rare, if your pet goes untreated, the outcome could be fatal.

Most tick bites don’t result in illness however, it can often be hard to detect. Symptoms of Lyme disease include fatigue, fever, headaches and skin rash. Experts say if you do find a tick on your body, act quickly.

“It’s really important to remove it properly and that requires very thin tweezers, you don’t want to squeeze the tick because if it’s engorged and you squeeze it, you’ll put the blood in its stomach contents back into you, and that’s when you get the bacterias that cause all the diseases,” says Ritcey.

by Tanya Cronin

Tick season has arrived

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