Ok I am posting to save anyone the trouble I went through. This ant is not to be taken lightly. You cane end up with tens of thousands or more of these ants. You cant eliminate them by killing what appears to be a mound. They have colonies of 40+ queens, they travel 1/2 mile from nest, they mingle with other colonies and there have been reports of colonies with millions of ants covering square miles. I recently moved to Florida from up North and didnt know what i was getting into. My family and I moved into a home in Venice accross from a nature preserve and on a canal. we thought this would be a little slice of paradise. well until we opened the doors and saw the ants. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of ants on my property. The home was vacant for months giving these ants time to multiply like wild fire. Like anyone else I thought well heck I'll go to Home Depot and spray. We bombed the house, sprayed all base boards and floor. Then we cleaned everything. I layed down ant barrier around the house, spread TIACICIDE granules n the yard, used liquid TRIACICIDE in a pump sprayer for trails and nests. After a month of this battle I have them a bit under control but as soon as it rains or I stop they come back. They are relentless. I bought every bait Home depot sells, they seem to ignore baits. A few use it but not typicaly as you normaly see ants react to baits. So I gave in and hired a professional exterminator to examine the property. He confirmed its the caribbean crazy ant and is a MAJOR problem here in Florida. He said he has examined homes with millions of these ants. If left untreated they will over run your property. I will be starting regualr monthly treatments starting tomorrow. He said right now there is little research and he has been speaking with the areas Entimologist about these ants. Until they are upgraded above a "pest" status not much funding or time will be spent to research an effective way to kill them. He said right now all I can do is treat my home, yard and drive them off the property. If I stop treatment they will just return quickly. This I can confirm. I had spent over 100 dollars on spray and granuals may last trip to depot. I spread and sprayed and dumped it everywhere. Then it rained and about 3 days later I have them coming back everywhere. Hence me giving into a paid service coming out tomorrow. Adding up what I spent at depot VS the exterminator, he is cheaper. Plus I dont have to handle the chemicals. Also note those of you looking for nests to treat. I found they love to make nests in trees, especially the fibrous ball atop the palm trees. They like landscape timbers or logs, boards, any kind of structure in the sand. I even had them crawling out of the electrical conduit running down to my dock. I trimmed back all my bushes, weeded, really cleaned up the yard. All this helped but doesnt solve the problem. These ants are like nothing I have ever seen in my life. I feel for those of you in the same battle as I am. Those of you who dont have these ants consider yourself lucky. If you have a small infestation, act quickly before its a major issue. If you doubt what am saying google caibbean crazy ant and read for yourself.

Susan, We try so hard to peacefully co-exist with the wildlife, but every now and then they make it impossible. That bobcat has been keeping a low profile since the day it enountered our son in the garden. Maybe it has moved on elsewhere. Unfortunately, the coyotes babies will soon be large enough to roam, and then it gets really crazy for a while around and after sunset! We have friends and neighbors having HUGE problems with racoons killing and eating their cats and kittens, so I am feeling lucky that so far the coons have only eaten the corn. Of course, I put up all the cats inside at night. There are a LOT of racoons most years, and at least twice as many as usual this year. I think racoons are 'cute', but I HATE having them on the property. They are very destructive. Our birds have apparently taken care of the mosquito problem as we have fewer and fewer of them every day. We're having more ticks around the area, but partly that is because it has been too wet to mow lately. My guineas are so happily tick hunting that they don't want to come inside their coop at night. For ticks on a body, I have had luck coating them with any sort of oil....veggie oil, baby oil, orange oil, etc. I found a tick on me yesterday, but I had been going through the tall grass with the dogs, so I wasn't surprised. I check carefully for them every night. I have only had them on me three times, which is pretty good considering I am outside most of the day, every day. Dawn

To all who have wished me a speedy recovery: Thank You! I am feeling steadily better (1 month out), and expect to be back to full strength shortly. @Alisande, If you think you may have babeseosis at the moment, then insist on being tested. Same with anaplasmosis, both are less-difficult than Lyme to diagnose from blood smears, I believe. (The issue with the blood supply, aside from the traditional head-in-the-sand attitude of the blood industry, and of course the cost, is that there is no rapid-enough test for babeseosis -or possibly the other tick-borne diseases -to work with the need for fresh blood.) But as I mentioned, anaplasmosis has distinct, characteristic, changes in routine blood work that are almost diagnostic. I can check next time I am in the medical library if there are specific changes in the case of babeseosis. I may have that info for erlichiosis, if you'd like to know it. Anaplasmosis has distinctive mullberry shaped artifacts (morullae) in the disease-specific blood smears (as does erlichiosis, I believe). Babeseosis is different but unless you, like I, have had malaria it's pretty distinctive in the blood test for it. The tests aren't inexpensive (the unadjusted street price for them is $500-$1,000 -each- but my insurance company whacked both of them down considerably. Since you're on Medicare, you'd only pay a percentage of the CMS-negotiated cost which is likely to be as aggressively moderated as that of my own insurance company's contractual rate. Since all three are bacterial, not spirochete, -caused it doesn't require the complex analysis of PCR bands that Lyme does. But frankly if I was on my second continuous month of Lyme I would have pretty awful constitutional symptoms from that lengthy treatment alone. I can barely make it out the 30 days of a single course before I have disturbed sleep, night sweats, muscle aches and pains, etc. Part of my fierceness about discovering ticks early is to avoid the need for the lengthy course of anti-Lyme doxy. Since doxy won't really do anything for babeseosis - and other drugs will - why keep taking what may be the wrong cure? I don't think you would experience symptoms from babeseosis or anaplasmosis (or even Lyme) infection before locating the tick. The incubation time needed to get sick from a still-attached tick would have resulted in a deer tick as big as a green pea, a nasty pearly-grey tight blob. It's hard to imagine you wouldn't have noticed it well before getting sick if it was still attached. Don't you itch like mad when you have a tick attached for more than a few hours, not to mention days? I'd be wild! BTW, the tick-hours-of-bite measurement has a built in problem: the aging relies on analysis of stomach digestive contents. But that assumes, and it is not always true, that the bite the tick was discovered making is the only bite, not a second one. Also you mentioned you squashed the critter in removing it. You might want to consider beginning more intensive searches for ticks on your body twice a day in order to not miss one. I have hair so long I can sit on it so I do realize it can be hard to check your scalp and hair. I have also found attached ticks under my breasts, in my belly button, on various unmentionable parts of my bottom, and even larval ones between my toes and fingers. I usually keep my long hair tied up in pigtail outdoors. I tuck the pigtail down the back of my shirt to minimize the likelihood of ticks getting caught in my hair. Of course I always have a hat on outside for sun protection, so my head and scalp are less-common tick areas. I do tick-checks at least twice every day of the year, unless I am away from home overnight in the city. It's just like brushing your teeth. I'm not convinced that Lyme "lurks in your body" but given that it is caused by spirochete I suppose it's possible. (Another spirochete-caused illness, syphillis, has a proven habit of lingering on and re-occurring, often despite treatment.) I know, for certain, that I have had Lyme (from clearly positive blood tests), been treated successfuly and subsequently had lengthy periods of profound physiological, and mental stress, without Lyme popping back up and adding to the problems. And I still have one band for Lyme on the latest PCR, which indicates an old, resolved infection, so there's no question it's still visible in my blood, but not thankfully making a pest of itself. I also still have serological evidence of malaria in my blood and I haven't had any illness from it in more than fifty years! But the bacterial diseases (anaplasmosis, babeseosis and erlichiosis) seem extremely unlikely lurkers and later-pouncers, especially if treated. What I definitely think they can do, however, is damage other organs and systems resulting in consequential, long-term problems (like the poor fellow described above who lost his spleen as a result of a babeseosis infection.) Your description of high fevers, muscle aches and pains, etc., sound much more like anaplasmosis than Lyme. Did you have any "regular" blood tests done at the time? The average time from bite to onset of symptoms with anaplasmosis is 8 days. I could look that time up for erlichiosis and babseosis, if needed. I don't know enough about Fibro, but aren't night sweats and aches and pains part of that, too? You may not need to go to any doctor more specialized than your primary care doc to check for the bacterial tick-borne illnesses. And then you'll be able to know, and treat, any that are there. I didn't get any hint that the tests for them lead to confusing, or contradictory results, as I know the Lyme test can, because it is a different, and more complicated test.. If you test negative for them, including having normal routine blood results, you can cross them off your list of worries and look elsewhere. (And get off the wretched doxy!) HTH, L.

Beautiful pup dogs, Oak. We live in a clearing in the woods. Way back, no deer ticks, but for the past 20 years or so, lots. What helps is tucking pantlegs into socks. We use Sawyer’s spray (permethrin) on shoes, socks, pantlegs. We also check fo ticks. Dogs used to bring them indoors. NOTE: ticks have an affinity for warmth, CO2, motion, and the compound like urea and ammonia from the breakdown of urine. If you tend to have your dog do its potty in a certain area, that area may have many more ticks. True. So you can water down and perhaps treat that area. Ticks like to hang out on tall grass, siding, stems, brush and ”seek” — always at the standby, legs ready to quickly grasp and cling to a passerby — animal or human. A lot of people get their yards sprayed, but permethrin is often used. This chemical is very toxic to bees (and bees are already being challenged environmentally and with various insecticides. I’ve observed a lawn care company that markets itself as ”green” habitate friendly, broadcast spraying permethrin on a neighbors yard and perimeter during a sunny day when bees are active. So, please don’t count on thses sorts of companies to help us safeguard bees. If you have had a deer tick attached to you/embedded in your skin for a number of hours, go to your doctor within a few days. There is a narrow window when the antibiotic doxycycline can be effective for preventing Lyme Disease. The dose is Two (2) 100 mg capsules, taken together. Note: Doxycycline Hyclate is a medication that breaks down into nasty compounds over time. So, check with your doctor or pharmacist, but, last I read, you do not want to take old, or leftover old doxycycline. There are some good tools for removing embedded deer ticks. But, whatever you do, don’t apply any pressure to the ticks abdomend or thorax. Grab it just behind the head with very thin point tweezers, and gently, slowly, steadily pull the tick straight out. (If you go slowly, the tick might have enough time to release it’s legs.) It is not nice to have a tick bite or a bit of a deer tick left in your tissue. It can readdy itch like crazy and scratching only makes things worse. I find that oral or topical Benadryl helps tremendously to stop the intense itching. Note: a ”bullseye” ring of inflamed tissue is not a requisite diagnostic indicator of Lyme infection. And, one can have Lyme Disease antibodies and not have frank Lyme Disease (as I have been told by my doctor. It may just indicate that your body’s immune system has met up with Lyme pathogens.