Vermonters Are Being More Careful Outdoors to Avoid Tick Illnesses

After years of apartment living, Francis McGill and his wife, Charlotte, found their little slice of Vermont heaven in 2019: a home on 10 acres of land in South Starksboro with a greenhouse, woods and a brook. Their son could play safely there. Wild animals frequently traipse across the lawn.

“We saw a bobcat eating a woodchuck once,” McGill recalled in a recent interview.

“It’s like a haiku, living where we are,” he said. “All the seasons and the quiet, the peace of mind.” He paused. “And then you have these ticks.”

The tiny arachnids have changed his family’s sunny outlook about the place, McGill said. They’ve found ticks hiding in their hair, behind their 4-year-old son’s ear and, in one particularly horrifying instance, attached to McGill’s scrotum. More ticks seem to appear each year.

The family’s worries about tick-borne illnesses mean they think harder about where they walk and play and are extra vigilant when they go back inside.

“It kind of limits the little universe for us,” McGill said.

In the past two decades, tick populations and cases of the hard-to-pronounce diseases they cause have risen rapidly in Vermont, posing a dilemma for residents and tourists drawn to the outdoor beauty of the Green Mountains. In interviews, emails and social media posts, Vermonters told Seven Days how they have altered where or when they’ll walk in the woods, how they dress, and which chemicals they apply to their clothes, bodies and backyards. Some have stopped composting, sealed cracks in their walls and pulled down bird feeders to avoid attracting the rodents and deer that ticks cling to. Other people have even abandoned outdoor hobbies they love.

With no apparent solution to the soaring tick population — and no vaccines to prevent the illnesses ticks can transmit — experts in the field say such watchfulness is the best way to avoid bites in the first place. More lifestyle changes seem likely for the future.

“You can get a tick at any time of the year,” said Patti Casey, the environmental surveillance program director at the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets. “We have found them in January and February … We need to be vigilant 12 months of the year.”

That advice is a marked change from even 25 years ago, when tick-borne illnesses were rarely seen in Vermont. Several people who spoke with Seven Days, including Casey, recalled childhoods playing in meadows and rolling in grass without a second thought.

But as the climate warmed toward the end of the 20th century, researchers observed the steady northward march of tick species, including the Lyme disease-carrying black-legged, or deer, tick, which became firmly established in Vermont in the early 2000s.

While some 15 types of ticks are found in Vermont, the black-legged one is the source of nearly all related illnesses in humans. The ticks don’t jump, fall or fly off vegetation onto unsuspecting people or wildlife. Black-legged ticks are passive hunters that go “questing,” Casey said, which involves attaching to a potential meal when one walks by. For tiny, barely visible newborn larvae in the spring, that’s usually a mouse or chipmunk. As ticks grow bigger, they climb and lurk among knee-high grasses and shrubs, especially invasives such as Japanese barberry and honeysuckle, with which a passerby might make contact.

“If you walk down a path and you’re able to not brush up against the vegetation, you’re 99.9 percent not going to get a tick on you,” Casey said.

Ticks are typically not active below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, but even one day above freezing in the middle of January will allow them to seek a blood meal, she said. Temperatures need to be extremely low — below about minus 23 degrees — to kill ticks, and even heavy snowfall won’t do them in. Instead, the blanket of white creates a humid, more temperate zone for the critters, which wait out the winter amid dead leaves on the ground.

With more winter days above freezing each year and less extreme cold to supress them, tick populations have soared — as has the number of people afflicted with the diseases they spread.

“I’ve read about ticks being referred to as ‘nature’s dirty needles,’ and I believe it,” Karla Bushway said. The 50-year-old South Strafford woman contracted Lyme disease from a tick bite in spring 2021.

“I’ve never been that sick in my life,” Bushway said. “I had a headache that lasted for 12 days. I thought I was going insane.”

Bushway said she still has lingering effects she attributes to the infection, including occasional days when she wakes up feeling crummy. When she’s doing yard work now, she puts bug spray on her boots and pants and is diligent about checking herself for ticks. But one slipup can spell disaster.

“I sort of got a little lazy the other day and was squatting on the ground by the woodpile,” Bushway said. “When I came in, I took my sweatshirt off, and I had three dog ticks crawling up the outside of my T-shirt.”

For Meg Oceanna, 63, treading anywhere near tick territory in warm weather is just not worth the risk anymore. She routinely turns down invitations to do things she enjoys: hiking, bird-watching or picking wildflowers. On her rural Rockingham property, Oceanna has mowed most of the grass short rather than leaving it tall as cover for wildlife.

Her fears stem from the excruciating, daylong headaches brought on by a case of Lyme, her third, two years ago.

“I thought, I would actually rather be dead at this point than have to endure yet another day,” Oceanna recalled.

The risk of tick bites is a particular challenge for Vermonters who work in the woods or farm fields. Cheryl Frank Sullivan, a University of Vermont researcher who specializes in integrated pest management, recently conducted a survey of farmers, asking how ticks have altered their quality of life. Their biggest complaint was having to spend money on personal protection and treatment of tick-borne illnesses, while also avoiding certain areas of their property. The full results are expected to be published soon.

Vermont has among the highest rates of Lyme disease in the country by population, and Casey said slightly more than half of adult black-legged ticks tested in the state are carrying the bacteria that causes Lyme. Two other tick-borne diseases that are tracked in Vermont — anaplasmosis and babesiosis — are each found in fewer than one in 10 tested ticks, she said.

Vermont has among the highest rates of Lyme disease in the country by population.

While a bull’s-eye rash is a common sign of Lyme, it’s not always present, and there are no similar warning signs for anaplasmosis or babesiosis. The three illnesses have similar symptoms and can resemble the flu: fever, chills, headache and malaise, according to Natalie Kwit, the state’s public health veterinarian. Close to a third of people who report having contracted anaplasmosis or babesiosis end up hospitalized, she said. The diseases are mostly diagnosed in people 50 and older.

All three illnesses grow worse without prompt treatment, so some providers may recommend treating with antibiotics — even without a positive test — if someone who’s been in tick habitat falls ill with these symptoms during the warmer months. Babesiosis, though, requires treatment with other drugs, as it’s caused by a parasite rather than a bacteria.

One emerging, and extremely serious, tick-borne illness is not yet systematically tracked in Vermont. Alpha-gal syndrome can create an allergic reaction to red meat. Although it’s caused by the lone star tick, which is not considered established in Vermont, the syndrome “is something we’re watching,” Kwit said.

In the meantime, the Pfizer pharmaceutical company has completed human trials of a Lyme vaccine for which it is seeking U.S. Food & Drug Administration approval. The vaccine could be available as soon as next year, Kwit said.

“It’s just for Lyme disease,” she added, “but it would be nice to see another tool in our toolbox out there.”

Absent that, Underhill resident Chris Varney has tried to build as many defenses as possible into her daily routine. She and her husband have lived on their 45-acre wooded property for 50 years but only perceived a tick problem in the past decade or so.

Varney, a 77-year-old retired librarian, uses a spreadsheet to meticulously track every tick they find. She encases them in a piece of Scotch tape, then labels each with the place she found it and the date. The worst year so far was 2021, when she contracted anaplasmosis.

“High fever, chills, shaking, a terrible headache and just really feeling rotten,” Varney recalled. “Worse than flu, for sure.”

To avoid ticks, Varney walks the same wide three-mile trail through the woods behind her home. She wears the same hiking clothes, which she sprays with permethrin, an Environmental Protection Agency-approved insecticide for the arachnids. She soaks a headband in conventional bug spray and tucks her pants into her socks.

If it’s warm out, Varney takes a dip in her pond to wash off any hitchhikers. In the winter, she brushes her hair over the sink to shake loose any ticks. She runs a lint roller over her clothes to complete the check.

“It’s kind of a pain in the neck,” Varney said. “But it’s just part of my daily routine.”

Despite the precautions, Varney had a tick bite earlier this spring. The doctor who examined it prescribed antibiotics — just in case. ➆

The original print version of this article was headlined “Tick Tack | Vermonters are changing what they do outdoors to avoid the growing risk of tick-borne illnesses”