Some Ohio tick species carry potentially fatal diseases. What to know

• Tick season has arrived in Ohio.
• That means outdoors enthusiasts should take precautions.
• That might be truer now more than ever.
• Although many discuss global warming as the cause, researchers are suggesting that’s not the main driver.

Although they’re silent and among nature’s stealthiest stalkers, ticks now seem to be creating considerable public buzz.

Certain ticks can operate year-round. Nonetheless, interest heightens during spring when intersections increase between reactivated ticks, people and people’s pets.

What happens post-encounter depends on how long a person takes to find and disengage from a tick that has found them. Infection can occur after two-hour attachments. In short, hunters, anglers, hikers, noodlers, birders and anyone else wandering woods and fields, especially during May and June, demand speedy self-inspection and precautionary repellent use.

Lyme disease, a malady that can leave sufferers with chronic malfunctions, draws much attention because of its inexorable and fairly rapid spread from New England into seemingly virgin territory, including Ohio.

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Specific tick species carry different maladies, though some deal out more than one.

Blacklegged ticks, aka deer ticks, are the primary spreaders of Lyme disease. The bite from a lone star tick, another relative newcomer to Ohio, can trigger several illnesses, the most trumpeted being a potential killer known as alpha-gal syndrome that makes the bitten allergic to red meat and dairy.

A few years ago, former Columbus Dispatch nature columnist Jim Fry lay on a hospital bed while paralysis crept up his legs to his arms and neck. Spreading immobility made him unable to lift his head.

“I was terrified,” said Fry, then 79.

Fortunately, a healthcare attendant noticed an engorged tick on Fry’s upper left arm. Removal of the tick veered Fry away from a proximate path to eternity, though full recovery took time.

The would-be assassin turned out to be a dog tick, historically common in Ohio. Also known as a wood tick, the relative of spiders and scorpions can carry in its saliva a neurotoxin that triggers what is known as tick paralysis in susceptible people, dogs and cats. Tick paralysis – rare enough not to ratchet up public awareness, let alone mania – can kill.

Climate change has been popularly depicted as the reason deer ticks and lone star ticks have spread from the South into New England and the Midwest. Climate probably has an influence, but it’s not the primary cause, concluded the Entomological Society of America with findings shared in the publication Entomology Today.

Researchers found it highly probable that tick species currently viewed as newcomers were here spreading their diabolical wares before a wave of settlers mowed down trees for agriculture and virtually wiped out the deer through hunting and habitat destruction.

Deer are not themselves vulnerable to Lyme disease, but they are spreaders of ticks.

It was especially extreme in Ohio around 1900. By that time, the landscape had been transformed from 95% forested to about 5%. Deer went absent. When much marginal farmland reverted to native trees during the next 100-plus years, it stimulated the growth of a teeming deer population.

More deer have allowed more tag-along ticks to reoccupy lost territory, the study hypothesized.

Parting shots

Pro bass fisherman Charlie Hartley, who led the 2008 Bassmaster Classic for a day and who earned a paycheck in 78 of 296 Bassmaster tournaments in which he competed, has been named to the Ohio Bass Fishing Hall of Fame. Hartley resides in Grove City. … Turkey season ends May 24 at sunset in central Ohio and May 31 at sunset in five northeastern counties. Through May 17, the turkey take exceeded the three-year average at a comparable date by about 550.