Photo: \u00a0supplied by etick.ca<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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By: Danielle Dufour<\/p>\n
For most of us ticks are creeping, crawly nuisances. They crawl on animals and humans and occasionally latch on and burry their heads to feast on our blood.<\/p>\n
Emily Jenkins, a professor of veterinary microbiology at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan said that we are in the peak season for ticks.<\/p>\n
Ticks are not just in grassy rural areas but also in urban areas.<\/p>\n
In Saskatchewan, we have three different kinds of ticks.<\/p>\n
Dr. Jenkins said the ticks we are seeing are typically our homegrown ticks called the American Dog tick, which make up for 96 per cent of the ticks that we hear about on people or pets.<\/p>\n
There is also the Rocky Mountain wood tick which is active just a bit earlier in the season.<\/p>\n
The third one is the winter tick that we see on moose or livestock usually in January or February.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really worry about the ones that are potentially invading, and that is the big one, the black legged tick or the Lyme carrying tick,\u201d said Dr. Jenkins. \u201cIt\u2019s increasingly showing up on people and pets in Saskatachewan over the last decade.\u201d<\/p>\n
These ticks are also carriers of other bacteria that aren\u2019t good for people or animals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have lots of birds that fly up here every year in migratory routes, and they probably bring the stick with them from the south,\u201d said Dr. Jenkins. \u201cManitoba has established populations of the black legged tick and they\u2019re moving west and north.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr. Jenkins said it\u2019s only a matter of time before we are host to our own populations of the Lyme carrying tick.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are monitoring that very carefully,\u201d said Dr. Jenkins.<\/p>\n
Adult ticks are big enough to see with the naked eye so you can identify certain characteristics to tell ticks apart.<\/p>\n