More ticks with Lyme disease found in urban areas

WBNG ^ | April 18, 2014 12:01 GMT | Matt Porter

[Up Yours Marxists]

Vestal, NY (WBNG Binghamton) Standing just feet from a cement trail leading to Binghamton University's East Gym, biologist Ralph Garruto demonstrated how he has found ticks hiding in plain sight.

"If you have a picnic table out over there, under a tree like that or just off to the edge, ticks are in this kind of leaf litter," Garruto said.

Garruto has been studying tick behavior since the pests arrived in Broome County en masse six years ago.

Through his research, he's found more ticks living around building and in man-made environments than in the deep woods.

Recently, after testing thousands of ticks, he's found Lyme disease in about a third of his specimens.

[agrarianlady]

I think what slowly changed is the lack of needed deer hunting, but there’s not a popular will to address it.

We, unfortunately, live in a neighborhood with an HOA that refusus to let bow hunters in. Houses are all on one acre. There were five deer in front of my house today.

I never had one tick bite growing up and I lived outside all summer in bare feet and bare legs.

[fini]

I think you are right. Up until the 1980s, deer weren't that numerous. In the 1970s, your NC hunting license had two buck tags and one doe tag and the doe tag could only be used one day of the year. In the 1970s, I saw more bear in Camp Lejeune than deer, but when I returned in the late 1980s the base was saturated with deer.

The crazy thing is that we had a doctor tell us that our Marines did not have Lyme's disease, because "the tick that carries the disease is very rare in the south." Pretty stupid believing you can't have the disease because the carrier is rare- ignoring all of the people with bulls eye on their bodies. The school commander (a Marine colonel) told the doctor, "then you need to tell the F#$K$%# ticks, because they haven't gotten the word."

[freeangel]

And as someone with chronic Lyme disease—You’re a jerk and I hope you get it too! There, I’ve said it!

[Nickname]

Why do you say that?

[Forgotten Amendments]

Why do you say that?

Just that everybody had it in the '90s and now you never hear of it anymore. And, they made a ref like that on THE SIMPSONS. I don't doubt that there is such a thing. But there was a lot of hysteria about it.