Ticking off ways to stop the pests that tick you off

My favorite spot to sit and think — or sometimes just to sit — is in a lawn chair on the berm at the back of my yard, where the ridge rolls down through the oak trees to the meadow below. Because the ridge is shaped like an airplane wing, a gentle breeze always flows up through the shady oaks. The nearest homes are a half mile distant, past the meadow, which is home to deer, coyotes, pheasants, and other wild-welcome neighbors.

But this summer, other less-welcome neighbors have moved into the ‘hood and have limited my sitting and thinking berm time.

By all accounts, this year is shaping up to be “the year of the tick,” and my back yard is living proof. The first day in early May when I plunked my lawn chair on the berm, I found three ticks crawling on my clothing in the first five minutes. By the end of the week, I had counted no less than a dozen encounters with ticks, including one I found crawling on my bedstead.

And judging by how much press ticks have gotten lately, from the Chicago Tribune to the AARP bulletin and everywhere in-between, my yard is no exception.

According to a Trib column, it’s no surprise my sitting spot beneath the oaks would be tick-central, because the life cycle of ticks is tied closely with — of all things — acorns.

For whatever reason, autumn of 2019 was a banner year for acorn-bearing oaks. When those acorns fell to the ground, small critters like mice found abundant food for the winter. Well-fed and sassy, they produced babies in record numbers in 2020, and those babies grew quickly into baby-bearing adults. A female mouse gets pregnant 5 to 10 times a year, gives birth each time to 3-14 pups, and each pup itself can breed less than two months later.

And that, in turn, is a boon to ticks, whose babies are so tiny that they cannot suck blood from large critters like dogs, deer, or humans—at least not at first. Instead, they depend on tiny animals like mice to feed them with their blood, until they can grow large enough to be a nuisance to larger hosts. A single mouse may be host to as many as a hundred baby ticks, each growing slowly into adulthood.

And so this year — two years after abundant acorns, and one year after abundant mice — we now find ourselves wallowing abundantly in ticks.

Feeling itchy and twitchy yet?

The most common ticks in this area are the American dog tick and the black-legged, or deer tick. The latter is a nasty one, capable of transmitting Lyme disease, which afflicts nearly a half-million humans yearly. Early symptoms are flu-like, and if not treated with antibiotics can progress to severe headaches, neck stiffness, facial droop on one side, joint pain and swelling, and inflammation of the brain and spinal cord. Neurological damage could be long-term.

Thanks to global warming, a new arrival here is the Lone-star tick, which is capable of inflicting a new disorder—alpha-gal syndrome, which leads to rashes, hives and GI distress three to six hours after eating red meat. For now, the only “treatment” is total avoidance of red meat, dairy, or gelatins that contain animal products.

Ticks hate full sun, and they don’t fall from trees, so the most likely place to encounter a tick is in tall grasses, shrubs or gardens, especially near acorn-bearing oak trees, where they cling to low foliage with their front claws extended, just waiting for humans and other animals to stroll by to be grabbed. Once aboard, they usually start climbing, seeking soft, blood-rich flesh in the upper body, neck and head.

Itchy and twitchy, right?

Fortunately, ticks don’t jump and are slow-moving, so there’s usually time after a stroll through the shrubbery to discover them before they burrow in. Wearing light-colored clothing helps, as they show up more clearly. Stripping naked after a nature jaunt is a good idea, with a full-body mirror scan to catch them early. You probably have at least a couple hours before a tick can find an ideal spot to burrow in.

Insect repellents with DEET help to deter ticks, and sprays with Permethrin not only repel ticks, but also kill them.

And if you really want to go on the offensive, consider the tick tube, designed to kill ticks at birth, available through Lowe’s, Amazon, or other distributors. Or, for fun, you can make your own tick tubes, which I did just a few days ago.

Start with a bundle of lint from your clothes dryer. In a cardboard box outdoors, spray the lint with Permethrin spray. Let it dry, turn it over, and spray it again.

And then—here’s the fun part—stuff the poisoned lint into toilet-paper tubes, and place the tubes around your property wherever they might be discovered by mice. Rock piles, shrubs or woodpiles might be good places to start.

It turns out that mice love to use soft, cottony lint to line their nests. The Permethrin doesn’t hurt them or any other animals (except cats, when it’s wet), and when a mouse beds down in a nest packed with the treated lint, it kills all the ticks and tick babies that might be hitching a ride.

I made and deployed three or four DIY tick tubes, and when I checked on them the next day, I noticed that the fluffy lint had been pulled from one and shredded. I pumped my fist in celebration.

Line your nests, my wee mousy neighbors! Let’s tumble those itchy, twitchy, tick terrorists!

Besides, what’s more fun than a practical project made of dryer lint and toilet paper tubes?

Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.

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