It’s tick weather and their numbers are rising in Conn.
Because you can now go outside and mix it up in the greenery — vaccinated, unmasked and hugging — do not forget what lurks in the dry leaves and unmown grass nearby.
It is already tick season, as anyone with a romping dog or an unkempt field can attest.
“The weather is warm,” said Neeta Connally, as associate professor of biology at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury and director of its Tickborne Disease Prevention Laboratory. “People are out.”
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, people are escaping to the great outdoors, just to get out of the house.
Eric Hammerling, executive director of the Connecticut Forest and Park Association said the association’s surveys and those conducted by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection show a 40 to 50 percent increase in the number of people walking trails in 2020.
“We loved it,” Hammerling said.
But people tromping around outside can walk where ticks abound.
What we’re seeing now are adult ticks — big enough to see crawling across our sleeve or pants leg. In another two weeks, tiny nymphal black-legged ticks will emerge from the ground looking for a blood meal.
They’re easily missed. But their bites can deliver a package of bacteria that can cause Lyme disease. You do not want this to happen.
It will, unless you are careful.
According to the state Department of Public Health statistics, about 2,000 Connecticut residents have gotten Lyme disease each year from 2014 to 2018 — the most up-to-date records the state has published.
This varies from year to year. In 2015, there were 2,553 recorded cases; in 2016, there were 1,752. But by most accounts, these figures are low by a factor of 10. So figure there are about 20,000 cases a year, with the southern tier of the state getting more cases than the northern half.
Tick populations can rise and fall each year, depending on a variety of factors. Connally said her team is seeing “average to low” tick numbers so far this spring. People are noticing them more, she said, because they’re outside more.
But Kirby Stafford, state entomologist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven said his monitoring program is showing a significant increase — about 40 percent — over the tick numbers it saw in the spring of 2020.
Part of this may be due to the relatively mild winter we had, with warmer temperatures in January, and thick snow cover to insulate them in February.
“Now, it’s perfect tick weather,” said Karen Gaudian, chairwoman of the Ridgefield-based Tick Connection.
Planet Earth has about 900 tick species. You can’t escape these eight-legged, parasitic little arachnids. Although they favor humid climates, they can be found in deserts and high mountains. On the Antarctic shores, they feast on penguin blood.
In Connecticut, the tick that’s been the bane to humans is the black-legged tick.
It carries and spreads Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that causes Lyme disease and all the woes that come with it — high fever, headaches, swollen knees and a host of other severe symptoms that linger in a small number of patients not cured by an initial round of antibiotics.
But it also spreads babesiosis, a parasitic disease, and anaplasmosis, another bacterial disease.
In recent years, another tick — the lone star tick — has been spreading slowly northward from the coast of the Long Island Sound.
It can cause yet another bacterial disease, ehrlichiosis as well as red-meat allergy. Unlike the blacklegged tick, the lone star tick is aggressive, tracking its prey rather than waiting for a passing ride.
Stafford, of the Agricultural Experiment Station, said two other ticks are emerging in the state — the Asian long-horned tick and the Gulf Coast tick. Luckily, these two seem to be livestock, rather than human, pests.
As those with COVID-19 shots can testify, vaccines are wonderful. But a vaccine to protect humans against Lyme disease may be years away.
Which is why people have to be on the tick lookout.
Gaudian, of Ridgfield, said Lyme Connection’s BLAST message — to shower after outdoor activities; to vigilantly look for ticks; to use insect repellents; to spray busy portions of your yard; and to make sure pets get treated for ticks with veterinarian-approved methods — still pertains.
But with people worried about COVID-19, they may forget or dismiss misery caused by ticks.
“People don’t understand the depth of the problem,” Gaudian said.