BDN Interviews Cooperative Extension Tick Expert

University of Maine Cooperative Extension insect diagnostician Clay Kirby told the Bangor Daily News that the long, cold winter may not have made a dent in the local tick population.

“I hope I’m wrong,” he said. “But I can’t foresee much of a decrease [in the tick population] just because we’ve had so much snow cover, which acts as insulation. Some years, we’ve had ticks brought into the lab as early as the last two weeks of March.”

Kirby also saw one during a hike in December 2013 in the Orono area. “It was 43 degrees when I stepped out of the woods, and I did an instinctive tick check and I was wearing khakis and found a deer tick crawling up my leg.”

For more information on ticks, visit the UMaine Cooperative Extension Tick ID Lab’s website.