Old wood tick yarn

Starting 30 years ago, I began reporting wood tick info in this column to help protect and amuse my fellow wanderers. Go back with me to April, 1988:

What brownish little bug, about the size of a match head, hatches out by the billions every spring? Yes, it is wood tick time again and last Thursday the “Over the Hill Gang” collected them off arms, legs and bodies by the dozens. We were climbing Shields and Snowslip Mountains. From the minute we left our cars, one or another of my mature companions would be griping about finding ticks. When we sat down to rest, there were always three or four more discovered. We climbed 2,000 feet above Highway 2 and even found ticks up at the snowline.

When we got back down to our rigs and were changing clothes, the tick collecting began and everyone found several, with a single exception. I had not found any on me. I’d seen maybe thousands, but not one of them seemed to have set foot on my body. My inadvertent disclosure of this fact started a highly personal and very speculative discussion. This activity reached a low point when some of those present implied that a person the ticks shunned might have something wrong with him.

Spence Ryder said, “Well, I know ticks get on any living thing, even skunks.” Hank Good added, “That’s right, and they will also feed on ripe carrion.” Doc Gibson made an entirely unnecessary summation, “As a general rule, there is no animal tissue so repulsive as to cause wood ticks to avoid it.”

I couldn’t help feeling a bit inferior as we drove home. Well-adjusted people dislike being left out of their peer’s social activities, even if that activity is picking off bugs. Iris seemed uninterested in my dilemma, but gave me hope by saying I should shake my clothes out in the garage.

Eureka! During my shower, I discovered a small thing moving on the back of my head where I’d been wearing a sweatband. I dashed out into the living room, triumphantly holding it in my fingers and cried out, “Look honey! I am one of the boys.”

Iris looked up and said, “For heaven’s sake! You don’t have to run around naked to prove that. Now, go call your friends and tell them you are just as ticky as they are.”

Iris is not what you would call an outdoors person.

TICK FACTS

The next day, I talked by phone to Doctor Tom Swan, a tick expert at the Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Hamilton. He gave me the following information. A) There has never been a reported human case of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in Montana north of St. Ignatius. B) A llama on a ranch near Kila once died of tick-induced paralysis.

C) There was only one human case of tick fever reported in the state in 1987. D) The disease was much more prevalent around the turn of the century, which led to the creation of the Hamilton lab. E) Less than 5 percent of ticks are believed to be carriers, however, new tests are being conducted on 600 recently-collected specimens. F) Many states have worse problems with ticks than Montana, with Oklahoma being the hardest hit, but the disease was first isolated and identified in Montana. G) The best method for removing an attached tick is with tweezers, grasping the tick as close to the skin as possible and pulling steadily, but slowly. Dr. Swan disapproves of using turpentine, Vaseline, cigarettes or whatever else to remove ticks. H) Though very rare, body fluids from ticks have gotten on fingers and then transmitted the disease when rubbed against an eye or mouth, or cut. I) There is another serious disease carried by wood ticks called Colorado Fever.

(Postscript for 2018 – If there have been dramatic changes in the tick situation since this 1988 column, I am not aware of it.)

G.George Ostrom is an award-winning columnist from Kalispell.