3 comments

  • opwieurposiu 2 days ago
    If you are out in the woods and you come upon a roughly circular area of crushed down grass, that is a deer bed. Try and avoid walking through it, deer beds are full of ticks.

    The deer trails are a lot harder to avoid.

    • umpalumpaaa 1 hour ago
      I avoid grass all together- especially in the woods.
      • Insanity 37 minutes ago
        Or avoid the trails all-together. Given the 30th anniversary of Trainspotting this seems relevant: https://youtu.be/xtbS_PdA198?si=8ba8Fp8_uzdpIq6J.

        I’m pretty wary of ticks, when you go for hikes just do a body check after. Also, I tend to go with long pants (even in summer, I dislike bugs more than the sweat).

        Plus a lightweight windbreaker can help to cover upper body. Plus it limits sun exposure which is also harmful.

  • washbasin 17 minutes ago
    Through a combination of two of my hobbies, I learned that pyrethroids are toxic to aquatic animals. Glad to see that they used "locations [that] were situated away from waterbodies". Pyrethroids are very powerful tools for insect control (and non-toxic to humans) but any place where you have runoff or ground seepage is going to be a problem. Aren't those places the ones most likely for ticks to thrive -- areas near bodies of water where animals like deer come to drink?

    So hot take: this would only be useful in places where there are not a lot of ticks?

    (PS: Permethrin-sprayed clothing is very effective.)

    • pfdietz 14 minutes ago
      This reminds me I need to respray my tick pants. Thanks.
  • beautiful_apple 52 minutes ago
    > Twenty 50-m trail segments across two sites were randomly assigned to intervention groups: untreated woodchip borders, deltamethrin-treated woodchip borders, and ten assigned to untreated controls.

    > Treated woodchips reduced I. scapularis adult and nymph density by 99 % (incidence rate ratio (IRR) = 0.01, 95 % CI: 0.001–0.08) relative to controls, while untreated woodchips achieved a 48 % reduction (IRR = 0.52, 95 % CI: 0.34–0.78).