opwieurposiu3 days ago
If you are out in the woods and you come upon a roughly circular area of crushed down grass, that is a deer bed. Try and avoid walking through it, deer beds are full of ticks.
The deer trails are a lot harder to avoid.
umpalumpaaa2 hours ago
I avoid grass all together- especially in the woods.
Insanity2 hours ago
Or avoid the trails all-together. Given the 30th anniversary of Trainspotting this seems relevant: https://youtu.be/xtbS_PdA198?si=8ba8Fp8_uzdpIq6J.
I’m pretty wary of ticks, when you go for hikes just do a body check after. Also, I tend to go with long pants (even in summer, I dislike bugs more than the sweat).
Plus a lightweight windbreaker can help to cover upper body. Plus it limits sun exposure which is also harmful.
topgrain2an hour ago
Linen clothes are awesome. Long trousers and long sleeves and almost as cool as short sleeves and shorts in shade, and cooler in direct sun.
littlestymaar16 minutes ago
Linen is the most underappreciated fabric. It's cool in both ways. I don't understand why so few people wear linen in summer.
twoWhlsGudan hour ago
And if you're wearing long sleeves and long pants, you can apply permethrin in a semi permanent way to your clothing to discourage ticks and mosquitoes: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/insect-repellent/is-p...
Dumblydorr16 minutes ago
Do not do so if a cat will be anywhere near the clothes or compound. It’s super harmful to cats.
Hnrobert4237 minutes ago
Calls to mind one of my favorite Simpsons moments.
washbasinan hour ago
Through a combination of two of my hobbies, I learned that pyrethroids are toxic to aquatic animals. Glad to see that they used "locations [that] were situated away from waterbodies". Pyrethroids are very powerful tools for insect control (and non-toxic to humans) but any place where you have runoff or ground seepage is going to be a problem. Aren't those places the ones most likely for ticks to thrive -- areas near bodies of water where animals like deer come to drink?
So hot take: this would only be useful in places where there are not a lot of ticks?
(PS: Permethrin-sprayed clothing is very effective.)
e28etaan hour ago
They’re also very toxic to cats, which is why dogs & cats have different flea & tick medicines.
MegaDeKayan hour ago
Deer ticks will go after pretty much anything warm blooded: coyotes, mice, dogs, etc etc etc.
Proximity to water doesn't seem to factor much either. Where I live, ticks this year are horrendous and everywhere.
pfdietzan hour ago
This reminds me I need to respray my tick pants. Thanks.
tamimioan hour ago
I got bitten by a mosquito in Ottawa a couple years ago that sent me to the hospital.. I stopped near the river while cycling to see a raccoon for few seconds, was more than enough for that lil sucker to do the job.
pfdietz40 minutes ago
There are some potentially very nasty diseases spread by ticks and insects. For example, flaviviruses like West Nile, Dengue, and Powassan (which debilitated and ultimately killed the wife of Canadian fantasy author Charles de Lint.)
beautiful_apple2 hours ago
> Twenty 50-m trail segments across two sites were randomly assigned to intervention groups: untreated woodchip borders, deltamethrin-treated woodchip borders, and ten assigned to untreated controls.
> Treated woodchips reduced I. scapularis adult and nymph density by 99 % (incidence rate ratio (IRR) = 0.01, 95 % CI: 0.001–0.08) relative to controls, while untreated woodchips achieved a 48 % reduction (IRR = 0.52, 95 % CI: 0.34–0.78).
aaron695an hour ago
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bluerooibos38 minutes ago
Another worrying proxy for how deeply climate change is bleeding into everyday life: coffee prices, orange juice prices, and now having to engineer huge trail areas with woodchips just so people can avoid being bitten by exploding tick populations.
mantas31 minutes ago
Ticks are a problem regardless. And they don’t like too much heat. So climate warming may even reduce their population in some parts. Or, more likely, move them up north. Giving relieve to some and headache to others…
Lyme disease vaccine would help a ton though. I’ve had Lyme 3 times by now. Thankfully encephalitis stab is a thing.
Dumblydorr14 minutes ago
They don’t like heat? That seems incorrect. If true, Then why are they a huge problem in TX and other southerly areas, and are only now spreading north?