There are many good reasons to go outdoors when the weather starts to warm up: sunshine and fresh air and not wearing parkas and all that. But one thing I've noticed over the years is that the farther I go into nature, the more likely I am to be bit or stung by something.
I don't know about you, but I can handle less of that in my life. Unfortunately, there's a good chunk of nature that sees humans as tasty food sources, and it's getting worse.
Ticks aren't just a nuisance, like houseflies, however. They can spread some nasty diseases, like Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and the dreaded Lyme disease.
And as if that's not bad enough, there's a new tick in town that has some pretty alarming characteristics.
Heck, it's not even supposed to be in the Western Hemisphere. But it is indeed here, having first been spotted on a farm in New Jersey in 2017.
Nobody is sure how it got there, but because of a quirk in its biology, the Asian longhorned tick probably isn't going away anytime soon.
They can reproduce sexually, but they don't have to, making them basically self-cloning.
Oh, and they can lay up to 2,000 eggs at a time, so creating large populations doesn't take a ton of effort on their part. No surprise, they haven't stayed in New Jersey.
Researchers from Columbia University saw the tick population on Staten Island explode from a single tick to thousands between 2017 and 2018.
According to Science Daily, in one park, the number of ticks found in a 1,000 square meter area rose from 85 to 1,529 in one year.
As the Lyme Disease Association reported, Asian longhorned ticks have now been confirmed in 10 states: New Jersey, Virginia, West Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Kentucky.
In Australia, China, and Japan, it's known to transmit a few diseases, including spotted fever rickettsiosis, but according to the CDC, so far no harmful germs have been found in ticks collected stateside.
For one thing, it's not that difficult to take precautions against these ticks — basically, the same precautions you'd take for any tick: long sleeves, long pants, tick repellent and the like.
And if you get a tick on you, don't panic — just tweeze it off gently and, if you're concerned about disease, put it in a jar or a sealed bag and have your local health department take a look.
As Guy Massey, a Virginia-based horticultural agent, told The Free Lance-Star, "It's just one of those nasty things that you live with and look out for, but you're not gonna change your lifestyle. If I see them on me, I pull them off, and I get on with my life."
h/t: Science Daily
