More on ticks, Lyme disease and deer

Hi all,

Some extra info re last weeks post on Lyme disease:

1. The plotholder concerned is up and about and doing ok with the help of antibiotics – our best wishes to her.
2. To transmit Lyme disease, ticks have to be on you for several hours. So a quick check on returning home and removal of any found is a good preventative. A newly attached tick looks like a little black pinhead – if they’ve been they for a while, more like a grey blister.
3. Ticks hang out in long grass – if you keep yours short and avoid walking through any on the way in, your risk is reduced.
4. We have been asked whether we can just get rid of the deer to remove the problem. Unfortunately there is no “just” about it and we don’t anticipate being able to do this. We have consulted with the City Council and been advised that permission for shooting would, not surprisingly, not be granted in a built up area, and that surrounding the entire site with deer proof fencing would be both extremely expensive and not necessarily successful. Members at one other city site did say that they had previously had a deer problem but none had been seen for a couple of years, so there is hope.

So, we hope for a full and fast recovery for the current victim, and advise everyone else to take care and keep an eye out for the little blighters (ticks, not deer).