WVII interviews Dill about tick season
Griffin Dill, an integrated pest management professional with University of Maine Cooperative Extension, spoke to WVII (Channel 7) about the beginning of tick season. As temperatures rise, snow begins to melt, and ticks have begun to emerge for the season. Dill said UMaine Extension recently has received a half dozen calls from people who found ticks on themselves or their pets. “This past winter was kind of strange. We had a lot of freezing and then thawing events, which could be detrimental to the ticks,” said Dill, who added numbers would be difficult to predict, and that ticks do not actually die in winter. “They go down to the ground level, beneath the leaf litter. The snow that accumulates insulates them very well and they just kind of hang out there until spring,” Dill said. “If it’s hot and dry, we’re going to see relatively low tick activity. But if we’re getting rain and it’s relatively humid and things like that all summer long, then it’s going to be high.” The deer tick, commonly found in Maine, can carry Lyme disease — more than 1,800 confirmed cases were reported statewide in 2017, a 23 percent increase from 2016, according to the report. “Create that barrier to prevent the ticks from entering your skin. And then when you come indoors, conducting a tick check is vitally important,” Dill added. Anyone bitten by a tick can send it to UMaine Extension’s Tick ID Lab for analysis.