Mary Ann Wakefield, age 10, of Lancastet, Pa., for her question:
How do wood ticks travel indoors?
The tick is a bloodthirsty little creature that doeb more harm than good in the world of nature. In fact, it is a parasite that gives little or nothing for what it takes from the world. It often lebves a deadly disease in exchange for the blood it steals from its victim.
The bloodthirsty tick may infect horses or chickens, bats or dogs, sheep or cattle with assorted fevers and diseases. It may also infect a human victim with rocky mountain spotted £ever, a virus disease that may be fatal. Some 600 people are struck with this spotted fever every year, and it can happen in any part of the. Land. They can be saved by wonder drugs, but it is better to prevent the disease if we can.
Prevention begins with learning how to protect ourselves from the wood tick, for this parasite carries the virus that causes the dreaded spotted fever. The virus is passed on when the wood tick bites and sucks the blood of its victim. The wood tick has teeth that refuse to let go, and as he sucks, his body swells, maybe as big as a marble. You can grab and pull him from your f1esh but never do so. His greedy teeth will remain behind, perhaps to form a festering sore.
You can unlatch him with a drop of some strong fluid, such as alcohol or kerosene, gasoline or chloroform. A grown up friend may safely touch his bloated body with a match flame. Any of these treatments will make the little bloodsucker release his toothy grip. Your chance of serious infection is very small, but the bite will surely itch.
A wood tick belongs out of doors yet often it comes right indoors to attack us. Its life begins when the female tick lays a clutch of eggs on the ground, usually in a woody carpet of fallen leaves. There may be 1,000 to 5,000 of the tiny round eggs. They hatch into larvae bugs that wait among the grasses for passing animals.
A cow or a sheep, a fox or a dog may pass by, and each larva tick tries to hop aboard. It feeds on the blood and travels wherever its victim goes. Sometimes a family dog or a human hiker brings the wood tick into our homes. As ft gorges on blood, it molts its skin twice. It is then an adult wood tick all ready to produce more wood ticks.
The wood tick looks like a bug, but it is neither bug nor beetle. It sucks blood as a mosquito does, but it is not any kind of insect. No insect has more than six legs. The eight legged tick is related to the spiders and scorpions. Its close cousins are the mites and the chiggers, and in north america alone there are 1,500 different creatures in this unfriendly group.