Back in the day — a blistering morning in Meigs County, actually — a guy from another county witnessed as a noodling gang of friendly locals measured distance to their turtle haunts by the number of ticks they expected to attract on the hike to their destinations.
A pond not far from the road might mean a “two-ticker” walk. A bit yonder might lie a “ three-ticker” stretch of stream. A “seven-ticker” site might have even been on the itinerary that Sunday in June, although the only certain memory under the late-afternoon influence of icy Colt 45 malt liquor involves a collection of surly turtles dispatched and dismembered for autumn soup-making.
Nobody thought of ticks as anything more than a necessary nuisance, like getting nipped by an ancient snapper. Nobody was missing a finger, and most people in Ohio had never heard of Lyme disease.
The effects of Lyme disease can include a permanent loss of motor skills and damage to the brain, nerves, eyes, joints and heart.
Back then, potentially lethal Rocky Mountain spotted fever, spread by common dog ticks, was known but not particularly feared. Between 1956, when it was first found in Ohio, and 2002, the state recognized 756 cases of Rocky Mountain fever, all but seven of them outside Meigs County. Incidents during that period were most numerous in counties Clermont (135), Lucas (130) and Franklin (73).
The incidents of Rocky Mountain spotted fever in Ohio, which were most frequent and widespread in southern counties, appeared to have peaked between 1979 and 1992.
Lyme disease was not identified until 1975, when a number of cases showed up around Lyme, Conn. The malady appears to be spreading as its primary vector, the black-legged or deer tick, expands its range.
Ohio has become deer-tick territory. Fewer than 50 black-legged ticks were identified in the state during two decades between 1989 and 2009. In the single year of 2010, the number climbed to more than 70. Last year, the total was more than 180, not including 10 times that number found on deer heads from 25 counties.
Lyme disease, which is caused by three species of bacteria belonging to the genus Borrelia, is considered the most common vector-borne illness in the United States with more than 20,000 cases in 2010, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
A map published by the Toledo Blade in January indicates that most of the deer ticks in Ohio have been found in eastern, southern and southeastern counties. In central Ohio, deer ticks have been identified in Franklin, Delaware and Licking counties but not in Fairfield, Pickaway, Madison and Union counties. The movement, though, clearly is from wooded east to west.
A recent report in Scientific American magazine pins at least part of the reason for the spread of the deer tick on climate change. Ticks respond to shifts in “moisture and temperature. As a result, changes in the geographic distribution and onset of human Lyme disease cases could occur,” Rebecca Eisen, a vector-borne disease researcher with the CDC, told the magazine.
The interaction among oak trees, white-footed mice and the Borelliabacteria also is a factor, the magazine reported. Richard Ostfeld, a disease ecologist with the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, told Scientific American that when oaks have abundant acorn production, mice populations tend to increase the next year.
So what’s good for wild turkeys and deer and benefits hunters is also good for white-footed mice, a common Ohio resident. It’s the mice that pick up the bacteria from the ground. If deer ticks that feed on rodents and humans are free to move in to pick up the bacteria from mice, well ….
The year before last was a particularly good one for acorn production in Ohio.
Incidentally, deer ticks remain active in all but the coldest weather. Throw in a warm winter and a premature spring, and it can be speculated that ticks and white-footed mice aren’t doing badly and, in fact, might be living the high life, such as it is for their kinds.
It follows that Ohioans should be taking extra care these days to make sure that their noodling and other outdoorsy expeditions end with no things attached.
outdoors@dispatch.com
