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[h=1]How to get rid of ticks on your property[/h]
Melissa Breyer (@MelissaBreyer)
Living / Lawn & Garden
August 19, 2015
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CC BY 2.0 Scott Bauer/Agricultural Research Service/USDA
Or, a lesson in learning to love opossums.
Biting bugs suck, so to speak – they are a nuisance and carry diseases. Deer ticks, in particular, are vexing. They put the ick in tick. They bring us Lyme disease, the bacterial infection anaplasmosis, the parasitic infection babesiosis and the Powassan virus, all of which can be serious (and even fatal) at times. And in general, tick populations are expanding their turf.
Most of us know to take precautions when we’re out and about and to check for ticks that have hitched on for a dinner cruise.. But if only there were less ticks out in the wild. Like, if only there were an animal that really really liked to eat ticks. Oh wait, there is!
Natural pest control is a beautiful thing. Even if the controller is an animal that many consider less than beautiful. Case in point, the animal that makes more people skittish than most, the tick’s biggest enemy, the opossum.
Dr. Rick Ostfeld, author of a book on Lyme disease and a senior scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, sees opossums as walking tick vacuums.
Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0"Many ticks try to feed on opossums and few of them survive the experience," Ostfeld writes for the Cary Institute. "Opossums are extraordinarily good groomers it turns out – we never would have thought that ahead of time – but they kill the vast majority, more than 95 percent, of the ticks that try to feed on them. So these opossums are walking around the forest floor, hoovering up ticks right and left, killing over 90 percent of these things, and so they are really protecting our health."
Melissa Breyer (@MelissaBreyer)
Living / Lawn & Garden
August 19, 2015
Share on Facebook
CC BY 2.0 Scott Bauer/Agricultural Research Service/USDA
Or, a lesson in learning to love opossums.
Biting bugs suck, so to speak – they are a nuisance and carry diseases. Deer ticks, in particular, are vexing. They put the ick in tick. They bring us Lyme disease, the bacterial infection anaplasmosis, the parasitic infection babesiosis and the Powassan virus, all of which can be serious (and even fatal) at times. And in general, tick populations are expanding their turf.
Most of us know to take precautions when we’re out and about and to check for ticks that have hitched on for a dinner cruise.. But if only there were less ticks out in the wild. Like, if only there were an animal that really really liked to eat ticks. Oh wait, there is!
Natural pest control is a beautiful thing. Even if the controller is an animal that many consider less than beautiful. Case in point, the animal that makes more people skittish than most, the tick’s biggest enemy, the opossum.
Dr. Rick Ostfeld, author of a book on Lyme disease and a senior scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, sees opossums as walking tick vacuums.
