Nature’s Hitchhiker: by Tom Butzler

The weather was beautiful two weekends ago and so I took my two younger kids out hiking on a Sunday. I picked a hiking trail off of the Pine Creek Rails to Trail as it was an easy hike for my travelling partners and dog. About five minutes into the hike, I saw a tick on my daughters light colored sweatshirt and stopped to brush it off. While removing that tick, I noticed she was covered with them as was the dog. I looked at my own clothing and I too had ticks all over me. Needless to say, the hike stopped and we turned around and skedaddled back to the car.

I have read Penn State’s factsheet on ticks numerous times and one paragraph always stood out to me. ‘Hunters and hikers increase their risk of encountering a blacklegged tick by following deer trails.’ Later in the paragraph it also states that ‘adult ticks more often are collected from narrow forest trails than from general sites throughout the forest, and they are more prevalent in high, brushy vegetation.’

On our retreat out of the forest, we stopped numerous times to see why the literature emphasizes narrow trails and the vegetation that crowds those trails. My son and I checked many of the branches of small shrubs that were protruding into the trails walking space and we found them. Those tiny ticks were at the very tip of the branches, just waiting for a warm blooded animal (human or deer, they don’t seem to mind) to come by.

Adult blacklegged ticks become active
in fall – this ‘questing’ female has
raised her front legs to sense suitable
wildlife hosts as they pass by.
(Image provided by Graham
Hickling, University of
Tennessee.) Click on picture to
enlarge       

This ‘hanging out’ on the plant tip is called questing. A tick crawls to the tip of vegetation and waits for a host. Certain triggers such as heat, movement, and carbon dioxide from a passing host cause the front legs of the tick to extend and grasp on a creature as it passes by.

We did checks on our clothing, bodies, and dog throughout the rest of the day and we probably removed close to one hundred ticks. Even then, we missed one that had just started to embed itself into my daughters scalp.

Of course the concern in with ticks in our neck of the woods is Lyme Disease. The Center for Disease Control describes the typical symptoms of the disease to include fever, headache, fatigue, and a characteristic skin rash. If left untreated, infection can spread to joints, the heart, and the nervous system.

The hunting season is upon and people will be interacting with tick habitat over the next several weeks. Precautions can be taken by using an insecticide on exposed skin and clothing and checking the body every day. I suppose I could say wear light colored clothing as it makes the ticks stand out for identification purposes but I don’t know of to many hunters that will wear whites, yellows, and light blues into Pennsylvania’s woods.