Maureen, "I wish I'd seen your doctor when I had my tick bite. I am always heartened to hear of prudent reluctance when it comes to the dispensing of antibiotics." I was very glad to get the 200mg dose of doxycycline in response to my tick bite, which was an engorged female deer tick that had obviously been attached for some time, based on the inflamed nature of the bite area. I was afraid the doxycycline might be too late. I hope to repeat that preventive treatment for any high-risk deer tick bite. Incidentally, apparently I "dodged the bullet" on that one, because the bite site remains clear of any secondary reddening. My tick was an exact match for an actual-sized picture of an engorged female deer tick on the Maine Tick Identification Card. We actually placed the tick on a printout of the picture, and the match was uncanny. Then I called my doctor. "I ended up in the Emergency room, after a botched attempt to remove the little bugger (tick removal + one mega dose of doxycycline runs about $180.00--if anyone cares to know)." You had an unusually bad and expensive experience. My 200mg dose of doxycycline cost me just $1.75 at Wal-Mart. My phone consult with my doctor cost me nothing and they faxed the prescription to Wal-Mart. So we drove straight to Wal-Mart. I took my dose right at Wal-Mart as soon as I got possession of it. We had removed the tick with tweezers ourselves and put it in a bottle for identification. It's OK to gently pull the tick for several minutes, if necessary, to give it time to voluntarily release its mouth parts. Just make sure the tweezers gently grip the head or thorax area of the tick in front of the abdomen. You don't want to hurt the tick. And you don't want to squeeze the tick's abdomen, because that would be just using the tick as a syringe to inject its body contents into you. If I get any more deer tick bites I plan to repeat the single doxycycline preventative dose. A study has shown it is effective in a high percentage of cases in preventing a Lyme infection. When it comes to Lyme, prevention is definitely better than cure. And you take a lot less doxycycline in the long run. MM

I am referred to as "the tick magnet" in my household. It is not uncommon for me to walk across the lawn, spend 10 minutes in the veggie garden, and come in with a tick. I've gotten so I can spot a wood tick sitting on the top of a plant, waving its little legs and waiting to grab hold. I'm going to repeat what I said in the post from last fall that Claire linked. I live on an old farm with a mix of field, brushy growing-up field, and woods. I use bug dope with DEET, though I put it only on my clothing and I don't always use it. I own several pairs of the pyrethrin impregnated socks and I tuck my pant legs into them. (Along with my bug net during black fly season I usually look pretty dorky when I am out in the garden.) I don't really worry about ticks because during the height of the season I might find 6 or 8 on me over the course of a day, but I do take them seriously. Instead of worrying, I do a complete visual and touch check whenever I come into the house in the spring and fall. Clothes get stripped off and examined along with my body. I again do a complete visual and fingertip check at bedtime every night (until it gets too cold for the ticks to be active) standing nekkid in front of a mirror so that I can see places like under my arms and the middle of my back, etc. in case I missed any the first time around. I also comb my hair with a comb having close-set teeth and do a careful touch examination of my entire scalp. Clothing I take off doesn't go into the bedroom. I view that nightly 15 minutes as the dues I pay for being able to get out beyond the lawn areas at my house. When we first moved here I used to freak out about getting a tick, but there are so many (mostly wood ticks, though there are some deer ticks) that I just don't have the energy to get worked up about them. I'd rather put the energy in to doing careful checks afterwards since it takes a day or more for a tick to get seated and spread disease. I do this check religiously, every single night, even if I have not worked in the garden. It's part of my bedtime routine, like brushing my teeth. It is my understanding (and fits in with my observations here) that rodents are a large part of the cause of the "deer" (more accurately referred to as "black-legged") tick problem, so the tick tubes, which target the application of permethrin specifically to rodents, make good sense. I haven't used them, however, and studies vary in their evaluation of effectiveness. Last season was the first we had appreciable numbers of black-legged ticks, so we are just starting serious consideration of management for them. I haven't previously seen reference to nematodes as good for controlling ticks, so I did some reading. It seems like around here they aren't too effective since nematodes live in the soil, and when are ticks are in or on the ground, it's too cold for the nematodes to be effective. They are also more effective on adults that the nymphs that often spread disease. However, I did come across a fungus that it supposed to be better in this part of the country, Metarhizium anisopliae, that has met with EPA approval for tick control. Unfortunately, it appears to still be in the product development stages. As others have mentioned, keeping areas with brush or long grass mowed will help reduce shelter areas for ticks, and reducing areas like stone walls where rodents hide will help as well.

I'm sorry that the link I provided doesn't take credit cards - I suggest Googling for the item and finding another vendor that does if you don't have a Paypal account. May I offer another perspective on the Lyme Disease crisis? I know that many people really feel that a diagnosis of Lyme is a devastating, life-altering, health issue. I don't know them so I can't dispute their beliefs or health status, but I can state that I have had Lyme and been treated for it (twice) with a course of oral doxycycline, both times successfully and I do not have any long-term issues. My poor DH had neurological Lyme (positive spinal tap and Bell's palsy) and he was also successfully treated without long-term consequences, though in his case it required a PIC line and 30 days of very expensive IV antibiotics. In my rural, farming neighborhood, nearly everybody has had Lyme, at least once. We live in the upper Hudson Valley in a Lyme "hotspot". I find feeding ticks on me at least dozen or more times each year, despite fairly rigorous anti-tick behavioral precautions. (I use no sprays or insecticides on either myself or clothing.) I do keep doxy on hand to take prophylactically (single 200 mg dose) if I find a tick I don't know, for certain, has only been on me for a few hours. (That strategy has always worked well until the advent of Anaplasmosis which can be transmitted much earlier on. It is unknown how much time is needed for Anaplasmosis, unlike Lyme which needs a bite of 18-24 hours duration. In the case of the bite where I got Anaplasmosis, the tick could only have been on me less than 6 hours, and probably only biting me a good deal fewer hours.) If you live in a tick area you might consider discussing post-bite prevention antibiotics with your MD. (And as a side note unlike some drugs which can lose potency over time, doxy both loses potency and becomes toxic. So, please, don't use old doxycycline, ever.) Since I expect to encounter ticks, daily, I only rarely discover a tick that could possibly have been on me more than a few hours. (Example 21 bites last year, but only a single instance when I didn't know for sure that there was no way it could have been on more than 6 hours. And even though I took the preventive doxy for it, it was not a matter of having missed one after being out, just a failure to do a tick check prior to going out for the day.) Which brings me to my most important strategy suggestion: If you live in a tick area, or plan to go to one: do a thorough tick check BEFORE (or daily in the am in my case where I live in tick-hell) you go out. This gives you a tick-free starting point to age any subsequent bite. I also change out of my outdoor clothes after being in the woods or gardening as soon as I come inside. I never sit on the couch, or a bed, or on a rug in tick-exposed clothes - in fact I won't even sit down, except in the bathroom, in tick-exposed clothes. I wear tall boots (Wellies) for much of the year. I have separate outdoor coats for going out into tick areas and going to the grocery store. I routinely tuck all my layers in carefully: undervest into panties, turtleneck (with cuffs!) into pants, shirt into trousers, etc. I find only very thick socks will stop tiny nymph ticks, so I don't bother much tucking pant legs into socks. Working in my woodlot, I wear Carhardt bib overalls with slightly over-long legs that slop over my shoes. I never, ever, wear shorts, or sandals, or a skirt in a tick area unless I am prepared to be there for only a few minutes and then go in and strip down for a full tick check. My late Mother who was an ornithologist (wildlife biologist who specializes in birds), made for herself one-piece, zip-front overalls because she worked in very tick-infested areas of the world (with a whole different set of virulent tick-borne diseases.) I've been thinking of digging out her patterns and seeing if I can make myself some lightweight ones for summer this year as I anticipate being even more exposed than usual. I had to give up one of my most-cherished daily activities: walking out in the early morning with my cup of OJ to see what had come up overnight in my garden because I usually did this in my long nightgown. Ticks just adore hopping on to flannel and then hiding in the seams only to come crawling out the next night in my bed! Notwithstanding my fairly elaborate anti-tick strategies, I want to point out that a tick bite, even a diagnosis of Lyme disease, is not necessarily an enormous health crisis. True, some people seem to find themselves engaged in protracted issues, but most people do not. There is a substantial, and thriving, cottage industry promoting long-term Lyme disease problems. Ordinary, straight forward, evidence-based, medical care in most cases is more than sufficient. Don't assume that just because you've heard of Lyme horror stories that long-term problems will inevitably happen to you. And in the case of Anaplasmosis, what I am recovering from just now, there is NO known case of long-term, or chronic, infections. In researching it after I got out of the hospital, I found many of the so-called "Lyme-Aware" websites lumping all tick-borne diseases into the chronic-crisis viewpoint. But deep research into the medical literature at a medical library refutes this. One person who I encountered recently in my effort to get the word out about the presence of Anaplasmosis (someone really promoting the whole chronic-Lyme thing) told me that my high post-disease Anaplasmosis antibody level was "proof" of the disease remained lurking, insufficiently treated, in my body. Um, no, the antibodies show my own system's response to the infection and its state of being able, now, to better defend against it in the future. This is how vaccines work! I suggest taking a good deal of the chronic Lyme online information with a healthy dose of skepticism. Your own primary care doc can take care of you quite well in the case of Lyme. You don't necessarily need to be treated by a so-called Lyme-Literate physician. Do daily tick checks (at least 2X day); decide on some family strategies for minimizing the risk of bringing ticks in on clothing to drop off in the house; consider getting a script for prophylactic doxycycline for tick bites of unknown length; put Frontline on your pets if they go out; get any tick off completely and promptly and without squashing it while doing so; clean the bite with hydrogen peroxide or Betadine; lay in a supply of Benadryl topical cream if you, like me, get very itchy on the third day after a bite; take the 14 or more likely, 30-day, course of treatment if you develop any a tick-borne illness and don't make yourself too crazy over the highly-promoted, but remote, potential of long-term illness. It's not inevitable, nor even, likely. Please note: I am not saying that some people don't develop long-term illness from tick-bites, just pointing out that there is considerable hype, and a lot of misinformation, out there related to Lyme and other tick-borne illnesses. I urge you to keep in mind that most people do not have any serious problems. And I really don't want to dispute Alisande, someone who I respect a great deal. But I don't agree that the treatment protocols are confused. In the case of Lyme and Anaplasmosis, (the only two I have personal experience with)they are pretty straight forward. When my husband was diagnosed with neurological Lyme (a stage worse than "simple" Lyme), I checked out various so-called Lyme-Literate medical practices. Some were so obviously doing "wallet-biopsies" on prospective patients that my alarm bells went off. As Alisande says most won't take conventional insurance or Medicare, require significant up-front cash payments and there's substantial uncertainty whether their treatments are any more effective than standard care. We opted for standard care and even at that advanced stage, it was a complete cure for him. What is very effective against the risk of of all tick-borne diseases is: personal vigilance (daily, careful tick checks); prophylaxis of some bites; and recognition and prompt treatment of any illness. In the case of three of the four possible tick-borne diseases in the NE (Lyme, Anaplasmosis, Erlichiosis and Babeseosis) doxycyline treatments of varying lengths are the cure for the early-stage disease. Only Babesiosis requires different antibiotic regimen. HTH, L.

When we see one we bring the feeders in, usually there is nothing there at night, which is when we usually see them...dusk and dawn. This fella decided to come for a treat during the day! He didn't frighten me but he startled my yard worker! I was in my office but heard the door open and "Lynn???? BEAR IN YARD!" This part of PA has drilling going on, in search of natural gas, there are two sites within a couple of miles of us, closer to the reservoir that sits below us. The bears and critters usually live near the reservoir or on the mountain on the other side of the valley. I think the drilling (and all the heavy equipment moving around) is what has made them move to our side. We had one out by the pool heater on Sunday, he was tagged and was wearing a monitor collar. The huge one that was here in spring also had a monitor collar on but I understand he was relocated. Our neighbor said he saw a small one run thru our top field a few weeks ago but we've not seen him. Combining the unused fields and woods on our property and two neighbors there are probably 100 acres of posted land so wildlife has the right of way around here.