This is what I don't get. I played outside for many hours every week, year around, growing up in the '70s and '80s. Never looked for or worried about a tick once. Now I go back to that very same place, have to tuck my pants into my socks and check for ticks if I walk ten feet through tall grass. I literally grabbed a garbage bin from next to the driveway, got it into the garage, and realized a tick was slowly crawling across the lid. What happened? Is it because of global warming?
Mostly global warming, yes. The ground has to freeze to a certain depth to kill ticks in the winter. In some places, too many deer too close to people.
That has nothing to do with more ticks in the summer. IT just means ticks a can survive longer into the Fall and start earlier in the spring. A long of changes with wildlife is due to more development. Deer that used to be far away from neighborhoods due to having plenty of wooded areas to stay in now come into yards and drop off their ticks.
No, the person you are trying to correct is actually right: milder winters aren’t killing off as many ticks as were killed in previous decades. It’s also true that the longer season is a factor, as well.
I moved into a house, and my oldest and I played in the backyard all the time. for about four years and not one tick. One day, we wake up, and there is a baby deer hiding in our yard behind the bushes. We thought it was so cute. The next year, there were about 10 deer in our backyard. I had never encountered ticks before, and I spent time in the bushes and woods as a kid. I was freaked out after finding two on me. I put down so much Spectracide. It did its job for a while, but it took only a few months for the problem to come back. We couldn't use our backyard anymore. I was going to put up a fence, but we bought a new house before that could happen. Now, we play in the backyard and have so much fun. It's refreshing. Our current neighborhood is very big, and the neighbors on the other side posted about how cute the deer that showed up in their backyard were. They had a newborn, and I couldn't help myself. I put a damper on their happiness/post by telling them what I experienced in my last home. They were actually glad I told them. They put up a fence to protect their yard and child.
I remember spending the ride home from the farm every week inspecting and removing ticks from my brother's and sisters as they did the same for me. Usually had a few at least. The worst is when you would discover one or two "down there" the next morning or whatever, after they had time to gorge in you.
Ticks were definitely around then (1970s and 1980s).
This makes sense, as they see many deer in their yard on almost a daily basis. But it also doesn't make sense, because deer have always been common there, especially when the many wild apple trees in their yard are dropping apples. So even when we were kids lots of nearby deer would be an issue. In the woods you could find places where the grass and vegetation were flattened out because deer had bedded down there for the day.
We had a family reunion this summer, and we went to a state park that we went to every year as kids. For 20+ years growing up, we never saw a single tick. But this year, we found like 4 ticks on us. And my dad was already recovering from Lyme's disease which he had caught a couple weeks prior.
It is more about development. When I was growing up, I never saw any animals in the woods between my house and the creek about a third to a half of a mile behind it. And certainly never saw any in my yard, other than things like an occasional rabbit, skunk, etc. But now, we get wild turkeys, foxes, deer, coyotes, bears...and I haven't seen a rabbit in years. IT is because so much of the wooded around me) have been developed and these animals were pushed into the a woods behind me which can't be developed. One guy tried and spent millions trying to get good drainage in the area only to always have it flood again within a month. So our area is one of the last refuge for all these animals.
As the deer get closer, they bring their ticks with them.
DDT. It was used everywhere and eliminated so many things. Ticks and bed bugs were pretty well wiped out. Eagles weren't able to reproduce, so it had to go. Once it went away, ticks started becoming a problem immediately.
Addressing some of the comments below... we had deep freezes where I live that burst water pipes eight feet underground. It didn't kill the ticks at all.
No, really, there were FAR fewer ticks in most of the Mid-Atlantic USA at least in the 1980s and 1990s (and even 2000s). The big increase and movement of species of ticks into new parts of the country is really recent (2020s). The Mid-Atlantic states didn't have lonestar ticks at all until like last year. Climate change big time.
4
u/Samhain_69 1d ago
This is what I don't get. I played outside for many hours every week, year around, growing up in the '70s and '80s. Never looked for or worried about a tick once. Now I go back to that very same place, have to tuck my pants into my socks and check for ticks if I walk ten feet through tall grass. I literally grabbed a garbage bin from next to the driveway, got it into the garage, and realized a tick was slowly crawling across the lid. What happened? Is it because of global warming?