By Chris Gajewicz, BG Naturalist
Recently I have heard from a couple of people in town that, “the ticks are bad this year. I had one on me after I went to Wintergarden.” For whatever reason, we as nature enthusiasts seem to have a limit on what type of nature we’re willing to tolerate. As a nature educator, I often find myself researching and re-researching information on a variety of topics to make sure I am as up to date as I can be on knowledge I give out to the public. Thanks to the internet we can all be informed, but then again, for whatever reason, second hand stories from friends seem to carry an awful lot of weight. In court, it’s called “hearsay,” and it’s inadmissible as evidence. Proof is required and casual observations and anecdotal stories are not “proof.”
The question is, “are the ticks bad this year?” The answer is… “Maybe.” Unless someone collects empirical data, the only information we can rely on is information we have collected ourselves. Like above, “hearsay” is not “data.” Tick populations, like all populations of EVERYTHING in nature go through cycles. Some years seem to be better for animals, and some are worse. Asian Lady Bird Beetles… remember them?… massive numbers of them were everywhere a few years ago. Where are those massive numbers now? Stinkbugs… they’ve had good population years in 2015 and 2016. Where were those good populations before 2015? One year in the summer I came in to the nature center and the patio and sidewalks were literally moving there were so many millipedes. This went on for days and I had to use the leaf blower to blow them off the patio every day. When I looked in the grass there were millions more. I have seen relatively few since that year.
The point is that some years for animals are good years and some are not so good. During the years when habitat, climate, food availability, etc. are good, then populations are generally good as well. When one piece of the puzzle is missing, then the population can stay stable or may even drop to less than stable numbers.
Now, on to the ticks. I work at a nature preserve. I and my staff are in the field almost daily. No one on staff has seen a tick on them nor have they mentioned them. Certainly not empirical data, and absolutely an observation, but there it is… no tick sightings for 2016 so far by the staff. The only tick I have heard about and could be described as a verified sighting was found in my wife’s classroom at the high school walking across a desk. Not ideal habitat to be sure, but there it is. Does this mean that the ticks are “bad” this year? NO… it doesn’t mean anything. It’s an anecdotal story told third hand. I will grant that any creature out there that can attach itself to a host, insert a siphon like proboscis under the skin, and feed on the host’s blood is, well, icky. Then again, there are a lot of icky things in nature… slime molds and frogs that hatch their babies out of their back are just two examples, but I digress.
So here’s what you need to know about ticks… In Wood County, Ohio we have two species of tick. The first is the American Dog Tick or Wood Tick, Dermacentor variabilis. It is and has always been common to our area. Despite the names, “Dog”, and “Wood”, this tick really doesn’t have anything to do with either. They sometimes feed on dogs but they also feed on anything else that has warm blood. Pick an animal with warm blood and it’s a host. Dog Ticks could easily have been called Horse Ticks or Raccoon Ticks or Woodchuck Ticks. I have no idea where “Wood” Tick came from as it has been confirmed that trees are decidedly not hosts for these parasites as they lack the main ingredient ticks need to survive.
Another mystery is that the “Wood” tick, (according to www.tickencounter.org ) lives, not in the woods as the name might imply, but, “are found predominantly in areas with little or no tree cover, such as grassy fields and scrubland, as well as along walkways and trails.” Wood/Dog Ticks can carry diseases. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever can be carried by this tick. The good news is, according to the National Center for Disease Control, .2 to 1.5 cases of RMSF have been reported per one million Ohio residents annually since 2010. To put it another way, roughly eleven people state wide each year contract this disease. Of the 12 cases reported in Ohio in 2015, none of them were in Wood County. Something important to note is that if you have been diagnosed with the disease it doesn’t mean you got it in Ohio. You may have picked up the tick in another state while traveling. It attached itself to you for the ride back to Ohio. IF the tick was infected with the bacterium that causes RMSF, and IF you became ill from the infection, then your doctor should let the local health department know they are treating someone for the disease with the help of antibiotics. At that point, the statistic is logged as “one person from Wood County was treated for RMSF.” Just because you were treated for it in Ohio doesn’t mean you were infected here.
There is a second tick that has been found to be present in Wood County. This tick is called the Deer Tick or Black-legged Tick, Ixodes scapularis. Again, despite the name, these ticks are not exclusive parasites to deer. During this tick’s life cycle, the tick will feed preferably on a mouse as a nymph, again preferably on another mouse as a larvae, and then lastly preferably on a deer, before mating and then depositing its eggs after it falls off its host. This tick prefers these animals to other hosts but also feeds on whatever is available if mice and deer aren’t around when they get hungry. If they stuck only to mice and deer as hosts, I wouldn’t be writing this. Like all ticks, any creature with warm blood can be a host and that includes humans. An uptick (pun intended) in the Deer/Black-legged Tick population has no real correlation to the number of deer in any given area. “Deer” Tick is just a name. Eliminating the deer population won’t eliminate the tick. Imagine if it were called the “Bob” Tick or the “Mary” Tick; tough times for the Bobs and Marys of our community.
Deer/Black-legged Ticks can carry Lyme disease; another bacterium disease transmitted from the tick to its human host through its proboscis as it feeds on its host’s blood. Lyme disease was named after Old Lyme, Connecticut where it was first properly identified. Prior to 1981 it was often mis-diagnosed as Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. Lyme disease is found world-wide and even Otzi the Iceman, the 5,300 year old mummified hunter whose body was released from glacial ice in the Italian/Austrian Alps 20 years ago has been found to have been infected by the disease, according to www.livescience.com. Currently, the National Center for Disease Control states that residents of Northwest Ohio have minimal to no risk of contracting Lyme disease locally. The disease just doesn’t exist here in the very limited population f Deer/Black-legged Ticks found in the county. I have been working and living in Wood County for the past 26 years and I have never seen a member of the Ixodes species here… ever, and I’m out in the woods and field more than the average person. It may just be a matter of time, but currently, Lyme disease is really not something we should be spending a lot of time worrying about in Wood County.
The bottom line is this… is it possible to get a tick on you in Wood County or Bowling Green? The answer is yes. Is it possible to contract Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever or Lyme Disease in Wood County? Statistically, the answer is no. The reality is that it’s possible to have a tick on you and it’s possible that a tick may attach to you and begin to feed. It is highly improbable, however, that a tick in Wood County, Ohio can infect you with any disease. Learn what you can from the Wood County Health Department, the Ohio Department of Health, and the National Center for Disease Control. Be well read and vigilant. Take anecdotal stories like, “The ticks are bad out there this year!” as a story and not a scientific fact. Last but not least, don’t let the fear of getting a tick on you keep you from enjoying the upcoming warm weather season. Learn how to guard against them, learn how to remove them if they attach, and if you do end up getting a disease from one of our local population, seek medical attention and then immediately go to the nearest carry out and buy a lottery ticket. The odds of you winning are better than the odds of you succumbing to these (locally) very rare bacterial diseases.
