In fact, you can have ticks around any time of the year. We want to help homeowners identify the factors that are attracting ticks to their property and what they can do about it.
What Even Is a Tick?
A tick is a parasite. That means it survives by biking and sucking the life out of its host. Until they find a host, they prefer to hide and lay in wait in cool, damp places like tall grass, woodpiles, garden beds, pine needles, and shrubs and trees.
When you get close enough to where it is hiding, it will hitch a ride on your clothes or skin without you even noticing. After it hangs out on you for a while, it will bury its head in your skin and feast.
If it is attached for 36 hours or more, the likelihood of it transmitting Lyme Disease or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever increases considerably.
If you find a tick on you or your pet, you need to remove it. For ticks that have latched, do not squeeze the tick's body.
Do not use any product on the tick in the hopes of bothering it to get it to detach.
Remove the tick from the skin with care, making sure you do not squeeze it. It needs to be intact. Sometimes, tweezers or inexpensive removal instruments can be employed to aid in removal.
How to Keep Ticks Out of Your Yard
What are the keys to keeping ticks off of you, your family, and your pets? You must take steps to keep them out of your yard:
- Cut Your Grass: Ticks wait for you in tall grass, latching on to your pants when you walk through the yard. Keep your grass cut short throughout the spring, summer, and Fall.
- Trim Your Shrubbery: Shrubbery is the perfect place for ticks to wait, ready to strike. Keep your hedges and bushes trimmed. Make sure you do not let their leaves get close to your deck, porch, or home.
- Make Room for Sunshine: Ticks like cool, shady areas. If your property is full of sunshine, ticks will be kept at bay.
- Develop a Line of Defense: Using gravel or wood chips, develop a natural barricade around your yard. These places will be hot and dry, making it harder for the tick to navigate.
- Build a Fence: Obviously, a fence won’t stop ticks from entering your yard. It might keep deer from entering your property, however, which will help reduce the tick population.
- Plant Smelly Plants: Lavender, lemon balm, and marigolds emit enough odor to deter ticks from hanging out around your home.
- Pile Firewood in the Sun: Wet firewood is difficult to use for your fireplace or campfire. Keep your woodpile in a sunny, dry place for the sake of your wood and to deter the presence of ticks.
All of these steps will help deter ticks from living on your property. However, sometimes you need to bring in the pros to really send them packing.
Take the Ultimate Step to Deter Ticks from Hiding in Your Yard
You do not have to fight ticks alone. A professional exterminator can help make your property inhospitable to these terrible tiny creatures.
Rid-A-Bug Exterminating has five decades of experience helping residents of the Carolinas and Virginia enjoy their yards with a dramatically reduced risk of encountering ticks. We will exterminate your existing tick population and help you make your yard less hospitable for them in the future.