Ticks
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I'm sorry to hear you got Lyme Disease, wtg.
Last year we had barely any ticks at all. The year before, I got a bullseye rash and had a course of antibiotics. This year is a bad tick year. Loads of them. I was coming in from the garden with 4 or 5 ticks on me. It abates somewhat as the summer progresses, but I'll often come in carrying a tick somewhere.
The worse is, having found a tick on oneself, the rest of the day is spent feeling them all over one's body when in fact, they aren't there.
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The antibiotics worked for me, too. I guess others aren't so lucky. I read Russ Douthat's book about his case of Lyme. OMG, what a horror story.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/01/ross-douthats-wrenching-lyme-disease-battle/
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More bad news re ticks.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/29/lone-star-ticks-increase-climate-crisis
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That is terrifying. We found a bug in our entryway a week or so ago, it was big enough to be visible so I thought it was a spider, but looking at the photo of the lone star tick, I'm now sure it was a tick. It didn't have the marking so I assume it wasn't a lone star tick, but nevertheless.
Ugh. Very disconcerting!
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Free tick identification
https://www.ticklab.org/identify-my-tick
Not sure your photo is of sufficiently good quality, but you could give it a try.
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Free tick identification
https://www.ticklab.org/identify-my-tick
Not sure your photo is of sufficiently good quality, but you could give it a try.
Free tick identification
Thanks!!
Not sure your photo is of sufficiently good quality,
It may not be, I think I took four photos and all of them are a bit on the blurry side. It was small enough that it was very hard to get a good photo and we didn’t want to let it get away, so I eventually gave up!
I will try sending it in though!
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They identified the tick we found on the floor in the dining room in 2022 (I just looked it up!). As I recall they got back to me pretty quickly. It was a fully engorged American dog tick and it probably had latched onto Raffi when he was outside; there's no way it could have been on us without us noticing it. It was huge!
I didn't pay to have the tick tested (that lab offers the service) but we did take Raffi in and had a blood test done on him. He had no tick-borne diseases.
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Well it means you have ticks in your yard. It might just be a stray, or it could be that this is a bad year for ticks in your area. Dog ticks prefer dogs but can latch on to humans. I think repellents work. In the woods I used to pull my socks over my pant legs.
https://momgoescamping.com/tick-types-pictures/
The university might have more info on how tick season is progressing in your area.
When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie Aumônier
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Things you can do, from WebMD:
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Well it means you have ticks in your yard. It might just be a stray, or it could be that this is a bad year for ticks in your area. Dog ticks prefer dogs but can latch on to humans. I think repellents work. In the woods I used to pull my socks over my pant legs.
https://momgoescamping.com/tick-types-pictures/
The university might have more info on how tick season is progressing in your area.
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Keeping the grass short helps keep tick populations down. They cannot complete the life cycle with frequent mowing.
Keeping the grass short helps keep tick populations down.
I wonder if our grass is short enough. We mow once a week and keep it just a touch long — I mean, it doesn’t look long but the deck isn’t on the shortest setting, doing it this way is supposed to help prevent non-grass weeds…
