Tick Talk: Prevention, Protection, and Professional Treatment

As summer temperatures hit a sunny 72°F, outdoor enthusiasts are hitting the trails to hike and bike. However, this beautiful weather also brings the rise of a dangerous parasitic creature: the Asian longhorned tick. In this episode of the Peskies Pest Control Podcast, Michael Wienecke discusses how these self-sufficient pests can breed without a mate and explores the best ways to protect your yard and family from the pathogens they carry.

Podcast Transcript:

Michael Wienecke:

“Hey, so it is summertime and everyone is out there running these trails, biking, hiking, enjoying this great weather we’re having right now, 72 and sunny. I myself am enjoying it, especially in my backyard. But with this beautiful weather also comes a parasitic creature and today we’re going to be talking about ticks.

I don’t like ticks, I don’t think anybody likes ticks. They embed in your skin and they can cause all kinds of diseases. We’ve got this new tick that is just sweeping the nation throughout the United States and it’s the Asian longhorned tick. So I kind of wanted to just bring some attention to that. I personally have not seen any in the field or any of that, but I just wanted to talk about it and it is really just kind of predicted to be a wave over this entire country.

So they’re bad, they cause disease. Biggest thing, you know, we’ve got Lyme disease in this country, Rocky Mountain spotted fever. They are pathogens or they can transfer pathogens back and forth from each other. That’s how they get them. So when they bite an animal, they will bite that animal with a disease, they’ll absorb that disease and then they can transfer it from animal to animal to animal. And unfortunately there are quite a few ticks in the United States that can already transfer that disease from human to animal and back and forth. So ticks are just all around pretty bad.

Another thing about