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Donald E. Hoenig of Belfast is a former Maine state veterinarian.
Last Tuesday afternoon, I received an email with the following title: “Tick Test Complete at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension and Research Laboratory.” On Wednesday the previous week, I had removed an embedded tick from an area of my body that I would prefer not to name but suffice it to say that I needed my wife’s skill and vast experience to remove it. (This isn’t her first rodeo in helping me with tick removal.) The UMaine Lab submission form asks for the part of the body where the tick was attached and the only thing that fit was “groin.”
Having removed dozens of ticks from myself, my dogs and hundreds of animal patients over many decades (I’m a veterinarian), I knew that it was an Ixodes scapularis tick also known as a deer tick or black legged tick. I also was aware that this tick can carry Lyme disease and several other nasty diseases.
I am a tick magnet. I know it and everyone in my family knows it. When ticks are around, they have an uncanny way to find me and attach wherever they can on my body. October and May are tick months where we live in Belfast, and it almost makes me dread going outside even though that’s where I love to be any time of the year.
My wife, Lynn, and I live in the middle of 22 acres, and it has become prime tick habitat. When we moved here 42 years ago, we never saw a tick for years, and we never found a tick on our dogs, cats and livestock. I’d estimate that we started seeing ticks on our property around 25 years ago. Climate change is real on the East Waldo Road.
The ticks we find are always deer ticks or, especially in May, American dog ticks (Dermacentor variablis). Once you’ve seen a few, they’re fairly easy to identify. If you can’t, the University of Maine Lab also has a wealth of information.
Getting back to the email I received from UMaine. In what must be one of the best buys for your money anywhere, when you send a tick to the UMaine lab, they will identify it for free! For a nominal $20 fee, they will conduct DNA testing panels to detect pathogens that can cause tick-borne disease in Maine. Since I already knew that the tick we pulled off my body was a deer tick, I was especially interested to know if it carried any of those pathogens. I’ve submitted many ticks to the lab over the past few years and quite a few of them came back positive for some of these pathogens.
The email had good news and bad news. The tick was negative for Lyme, Anaplasmosis, Hard Tick Relapsing Fever, Powassan Virus and Heartland Virus, all good news. The bad news: it was positive for Babesiosis. Babesiosis is a disease caused by microscopic parasites that live in red blood cells. Many people with Babesiosis do not feel sick and have no symptoms. However, some people can get flu-like symptoms such as fever, chills, sweats, headache and body aches. There is an effective treatment, but treatment is usually not necessary for folks with no symptoms.
I’ll probably be putting in a call to my physician to ask a few more questions. What’s the incubation period for Babesiosis and how long do I need to worry? In the meantime, I’ll be more faithful about using EPA-approved tick repellants when I go outside.
