yea, anywhere where you have to move through brush, there is an opportunity for the little suckers to latch onto you. Also, I tend to feel that they are common in areas where there are lots of animals (ungulates and livestock). Not sure if this is ture or not, but all the places I have seen lots of ticks have been cattle areas with a good deer population (like Canal Flats-Ravenshead areas). My understanding is that there are ticks in BC that can carry Lymes disease. However, you are more likely to get Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, or just good old plain tick paralysis. The latter is generally a result of mutliple tick bites, and you would have to have extremely poor hygiene to suffer from the effects. However, it does happen, and is fortunately not extremely serious if dealth with at an early stage.
WHen I worked in the Canal Flats-Inveremere area, we would all get into doing the tick-check in the truck at the end of the day, like a bunch of monkeys looing for lice. You also have to shake out your clothing, because they will hitchhike back to your tent or motel room, and lie in wait. One girl had one drop on her head alien-style while she was cooking dinner. It seems they really seem to "bloom" at an early stage in the spring, just as the weather turns warm and dry. THey're around all year, but the early risers seem the most voracious.
In regards to Lyme disease, I think it's good to know what to do if you get bitten, but not get overwhelmed by concern. A tick has to be a certain kind to carry it in the first place, then there is only a limited chance the tick will carry it, and then even if it does bite you, there is only a limited chance the disease will be passed on. When you factor these 3 probabilities together, you get the true chance of contracting Lymes from a tick bite. You`re bang on though R-B, there are many cases that take far too long to get properly diagnosed that may understate the statistics.
That being said, if you do get bitten, you should remove AND SAVE the tick so you can provide it to a doctor for analysis. Even with pretty little pictures of ticks blown up 100 times their size, it is very difficult to tell them apart in real life, especially if they are smaller specimens (not to mention some colour variations). When it comes to removal, nothing seems to work so dandy well as a pair of tick pliers from MEC. Moreover, they work like a charm on dogs too. I've successfully pulled ticks out from between dogs' toes with them.
http://www.mec.ca/Products/product_deta ... 0312657822
DO NOT try to smother a tick in toothpaste, or back it out with a hot match or heated pin. Even if you do have a friend of a friend who has used such methods, or have had fortuitous experience with it yourself, these methods are highly frowned upon by medical professionals. There is a lot of inaccurate folk knowledge out there about ticks. If in doubt, consult a doctor or a OHS manual.
Removal with a proper tool (easily available) should be the only method. If you don't have tick pliers, one method that is also generally acceptable is the straw&thread method. Basically you put a noose of thread around a drinking straw. Then place the opening of the straw over the tick, and press the straw down against the skin so the tick is inside it. THen slide the noose down off the straw to the skin, and tighten it around the tick's lowest exposed part. THen gently tighten the thread, and slowly pull the tick up and out of the flesh. Tweezers have a high chance of breaking the tick head off in the skin, increasing the chance of infection and reducing the ability of med-pros to analyze the insect.
