With spring in full bloom, Canadian homeowners are beginning to spend more time outdoors, enjoying their properties. Unfortunately, ticks are also starting to enjoy these properties too, causing panic and discomfort as they work to claim their next blood meal.
Greetings, Tick Talkers. Did you know that May is Lyme Disease Awareness Month?
Howdy partners! Welcome to this week's Tick Talk blog.
For those unaware, Tick Talk is a weekly informational series on the life and times of our not-so favourite arachnid, the tick. From now until late-May, we will be churning out a new tick-related blog every week, with the goal of keeping our readers safe and informed for the upcoming spring/summer season. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?
Greetings, faithful readers! It's Thursday, and that means a new Tick Talk blog is signed, sealed, delivered, and ready to be consumed. What a time to be alive!
Speaking of consumption ... we're going to be talking about the tick blood meal this week, arguably the most important task of a ticks 2-year life.
Right now, ticks across the country are gearing up for their first blood meal, which is required for them to stay alive and advance to the next stage of their life cycle. In order to avoid becoming a ticks next blood meal, we need to study their habits and memorize tick prevention tips and tricks - starting today!
Don't become the next tick blood meal! Read on to learn more about this infamous task.
For many Canadians, the end of April means warmer weather and NHL playoffs. For us at Mosquito.buzz, however, April showers bring tick encounters - forget about those flowers!
While ticks can be active all year round, risk of human exposure is greatest in the late spring and during the summer. Once better weather hits, so do the ticks, and they will begin questing for their next blood meal as soon as they are ready. Unfortunately, this just happens to coincide with the start of our spring outdoor activities.
Right now, ticks across the country are gearing up for their first blood meal, which is required for them to stay alive and advance to the next stage of their life cycle. In order to combat tick encounters and the harmful diseases that they can potentially spread, we need to better understand their life cycles, from egg to adult stage.
Read on to learn more about the life cycle of the tick.
There are people out there who are scared of bears, sharks, alligators... my partner even has an irrational fear of horses. The bigger the beast, the scarier it is. That's usually how it goes.
But what about something you can't always see from a distance, that literally inflates with blood after puncturing a tiny hole in your skin? And what if, after piercing said hole, they can send a disease swimming through your bloodstream?
As John Donne famously quoted, 'No man is an island, entire of itself.'
Although you probably adore all the isolation on your island property, don't assume you're trapped out there when it comes to controlling mosquitoes and ticks.
We service a wide spectrum of properties across Canada, so as long as you're in our service area, don't worry; we've got you covered.
Camping - or glamping, if you're a fancy type - can be a tonne of fun for the whole family. But thanks to biting bugs that have the potential to transmit nasty diseases, camping can be a little risky, too.
But as this decade's most famous Canadian would say; YOLO!
You only live once, so why should you let mosquitoes or ticks ruin your fun? Good news is, you don't have to. But you do have to know how to protect yourself.
Here are our top tips to prevent tick bites and mosquito bites when camping.
With both tick and Lyme Disease numbers on the rise, tick control is a growing concern for many Canadians. However another serious tick-borne disease is gaining momentum across North America.
Powassan Virus is more rare than Lyme Disease, yet it can bring on more serious symptoms, including brain inflammation. First discovered in 1958, a boy from Powassan, Ontario (near North Bay) became infected with the then-unknown virus, and later died.
Only 25 cases have been identified in Canada since then, and 75 in the US. However since 2006, at least 8 people have died after becoming infected. With tick populations growing and Powassan cases recently identified in Connecticut and Maine, it's becoming more of a concern as we approach warmer weather.
While Lyme disease takes more than 24 hours to be transmitted to the bloodstream, it can take Powassan only about 15 minutes.
Ticks are an opportunistic pest, and will latch on to you or your pet if you brush past them. It can take a while for a tick to latch on to your dog or cat because of their fur, so it's important to be proactive when it comes to tick control and check your pets regularly.
The last thing you want is to allow one of your pets to bring a tick into your home, and run the risk of an infected tick latching on to you or your family.
