wolfgang

Sounds like an uphill battle. With the possible exceptions of lice
and bedbugs, it's hard to think of a less loved group of arthropods.


Anaplasmosis?

Wolfgang

tim lysyk

People's attitudes are funny. I find many people are absolutely
fascinated by ticks, and many are absolutely revolted by them. The
people I know that work on ticks are truly fascinated by the little
buggers. I fall into that camp.


Yep.

Tim Lysyk

wolfgang

Depends a lot on how and when one is exposed, I suppose. My first
introduction to a tick came in a motel room somewhere in Ohio in 1981.
As I was a city boy and unacquainted with the little scamps except via
hearsay, and as I discovered it dining greedily upon my corpus, it
should come as no surprise that I was more annoyed than fascinated.
Persons intimately familiar with them from early childhood, it seems
to me, would probably consider them nothing more than a mild
nuisance......at least until the rickettsia achieved fame. Anyone
immersed in the arcana of entomology could hardly be expected to find
them anything but fascinating. Dog owners tend to be less charitable.

I'm happy to say that my view of ticks has evolved somewhat over the
last couple of decades due to various bibliographic exposures. They
ARE fascinating......except when I am on the menu, in which case they
are still toast.

Wolfgang

rw

It's a pose, an unsuccessful attempt to cover his twee nature with a
patina of down-home good ol' boy.

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

larry l

Gad, another old memory pops out of my shriveled head .... this one
decidedly yucky.

Several of us we training dogs on Vandenburg Airforce Base, for a weekend.
The grounds were used twice each year for a field trial and we had gotten
special permission to train there.

Part way through the day someone, I don't remember who was first, noticed a
tick on his(her) arm, then another, then another. Soon we were split up
into male and female groups, or into couples, and were almost naked and
wiping/ pulling what seemed thousands of the damn things off ourselves.

I can remember wiping my hand down my leg, and pushing a dozen or more off
in one pass ....... yuck, I'm queasy now, 20+ years after the fact, just
thinking about it.

wolfgang

I've never encountered that sort of infestation myself, but I used to hear
about them frequently. I was at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point,
in the mid 80s to early 90s. UWSP has a College of Natural Resources. Most
of the people (perhaps all of them....I don't remember) enrolled in the
various programs in the college spent a summer at a camp, Treehaven, if
memory serves, owned by the university and run specifically as an adjunct
for the classroom courses.....sort of an extended laboratory. Everyone I
knew who spent time there.....and there were a lot of them.....came back
with horror stories about the hoards of ticks. A large percentage of them
were also either diagnosed with Lyme disease or at least thought they had
the symptoms. As I recall, such diagnoses got to be very common elsewhere
as well around that time, and many of them were later called into question.
Anyway, I have no idea why some areas have such high concentrations of
ticks, apparently perennially.

Tim?

Wolfgang

b j conner

Reminds me of why I gave up camping in National Forest Campgrounds. People
with dogs, boom boxes, ATVs,, drunks etc.


<g>

b j conner

It can be handy to have a half a pill-bottle full of ticks in the fridge.
Did you ever try to get them all out of a Surban??

larry l

I can understand that.

FWIW, I was at least 2 miles from any other campers and when I'm any where
that the dog's might bother others they all wear electronic bark collars (
or wore, I'm retired now ). I've had many many people refuse to believe
the truck contained a dozen dogs, or even one dog, because it was so quiet.
I firmly believe that responsible dog ownership requires that one assumes
that everyone else does NOT want to put up with your dog, in any way shape
or form.

Even now, when I almost never have a dog with me, usually when I camp in
National Forests I do not camp in "developed campgrounds" ... most NFs have
far more removed areas where quiet reigns and camping is legal.

mike connor

<SNIP>


Here, it is a temperature thing, and also the availability of suitable
victims (Here mainly deer, rabbits and hares). The incidence of borreliose,
and encephalitis, caused by such bites is also extremely regional, and
obviously correlates mainly to temperature differences. A tick in some parts
of the South is far more likely to be infected than here in the North,
although some still are. Below certain temperatures, the creatures are more
or less inert, and can remain so for very long periods of time. The regions
known for infected ticks are also steadily expanding Northwards, as the
average yearly temperatures increase, which they have been doing for sone
time now.

TL
MC