10 April 2025
We haven’t thought about black-legged ticks (Ixodes scapularis) for months but their life cycle continues and the most dangerous time for Lyme disease is here. It’s time for Spray Your Clothes Day.
The next 6-8 weeks will witness an explosion of ticks on the landscape though they’ll be too tiny to see. Each engorged female that sipped on deer (and our) blood last fall spent the winter in the leaf litter and has or will soon lay an egg mass of 1,500-2,000 eggs. Then she’ll die.
What does it look like when those eggs hatch? They’re in the vial in the top photo, held by Anita Colyer Graham. These larvae are not yet infected with Lyme disease because they haven’t sucked blood yet, but they will if they get out!
Anita describes how they got there.
A couple of months ago, I pulled a huge, engorged tick off LGK [Little Gray Kitty] on our front porch. My husband took the fat tick and stuck it in a plastic vial, put the vial atop a shelf in the bathroom, and forgot about it. Yesterday, while looking for something, he picked the vial up, and he handed it to me. YUCK!
— Anita Colyer Graham’s blog, There Must Be Magic: Welcome to Tickville, U.S.A.!!!!
Here’s a closer look through Anita’s magnifying glass. They’re all alive despite the lack of water and the limited oxygen in the vial. Yikes!
And here’s their mother — or a mother just like theirs.
Lyme disease is a debilitating illness that has taken over the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern and Upper Midwest. Since you can only catch it from an infected black-legged tick, the blue color is basically a map of infected ticks. Watch out PA!
Read more about the ticks in the vial and Lyme disease in Anita Colyer Graham‘s article: Welcome to Tickville, U.S.A.!!!!
And don’t forget to Spray Your Clothes! Here’s what to do …
I think about ticks all year long just because my yard is in a deer path, and I am paranoid about getting a tick on me. My husband was like a tick magnet in the fall. I have been sending them out for the free testing just to see the ratio of infected versus non-infected.