What? How could a warm winter be anything but good? Well, besides making things tough on the ski industry, it also has an adverse effect on illness throughout the Northeast. While low oil prices and a mild winter can do a lot to lower your energy bills, it also has a positive effect on the tick population in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Maine. Here is how mild winters cause higher tick populations, and what you need to know to protect your family.
Ticks do not hibernate, as you may expect. They can be active all year long. All they need is a mild winter day to hitch a ride on a passing animal. That is why hunters often find patches of ticks feasting on deer and other wildlife, even in the dead of winter. It is also common for kids or pets to get ticks while playing in the woods on a day when temperatures get above 38 degrees.
A mild winter will not only create more days of tick activity, it will also elongate what is considered to be "tick season." That means more days or weeks to create baby ticks, called larvae. It is believed that ticks in larvae stage are responsible for the contraction of most disease, including Lyme disease. This is because tick larvae are considerably small. Larvae of the deer tick (black-legged tick) can be as small as the tip of a pen and are able to hitch a ride on tiny animals like mice and birds.
Higher populations of ticks mean a greater chance for tick related diseases, and that is very bad news. Tick-borne diseases such as: Lyme, human anaplasmosis, babesiosis, RMSF, ehrlichiosis, POW, STARI, and tularemia have widespread implications for humans and pets. Some of these diseases can cause medical complications that last the lifetime of the human or animal infected; and tick diseases are a widespread problem throughout our entire service area.
Protect your family and your pets by being proactive. Tick treatments for your yard will work to kill ticks at all stages of development and prevent your pets or your children from carrying these creatures into your home. When you couple this with pest protection for your home, you'll also keep tiny creatures like mice, rats, and squirrels from bringing ticks in through entry points you are unaware of.
At Big Blue Bug Solutions, our New England pest control team is educated in modern advancements in pest technologies and equipped with the resources to prevent and control a wide variety of invasive pests including ticks. Don't wait until ticks strikes; protect yourself, your family, and your pets with proactive tick control from the experts at Big Blue Bug Solutions. Life is better when you're not fighting sickness. Plain and simple.