Ticked off on the treacherous trail
Public Enemy No. 1: the Western black-legged tick. Photo by Unsplash.
I peeled off my sweaty hiking shirt and shorts, hopped into the stall and indulged in a scalding shower. The air swirling around Sunol’s Maquire Peaks that morning had been chilly; the trail sloppy; the trail shoulder wet and grassy. It’d take a half hour of painstaking scraping to make the mud-caked cleat pattern of my boots reappear.
As I stepped from the stall, a dark speck on my right thigh caught the corner of my eye. I bent over to check it out. There, like a hand caught in a cookie jar, protruded the hind quarters of a tick surrounded by a pale red ring – a perfect bullseye tattooed onto my flesh.
I’d gotten lucky. I’d discovered the little monster in the early stages of its burrowing and I’d discovered it in my bathroom; my medicine cabinet hung three strides away. I snatched a tweezer from the shelf and plucked the tick like a gardener pulls a weed.
Another reason I’d gotten lucky: I’d been targeted by a common tick – not Public Enemy No. 1.
The Western black-legged tick – aka deer tick, bear tick and sheep tick – is a creature that prompts a predictable chain of responses. As Monte Python said of the mosquito, “First you hate him, then you respect him … then you kill him.” Of the nearly 50 varieties of tick that populate California, the black-legged is the only one known to transmit Lyme disease.
In its early stages, Lyme produces flu-like symptoms. If left untreated, the disease can cause arthritis, abnormalities of the nervous system (including Bell’s palsy and meningitis) and irregularities of heart rhythm months or even years after transmission.
To call your tick incident a “bite” dignifies it with an air of elegance. What the tick does is break your skin, burrow into your flesh and drink your blood. And it drinks with the aid of a high-tech chemical weapon. Following a long sip, the tick injects a brand of saliva that prevents your blood from clotting, keeps your capillaries flowing and tricks your immune system’s itch response from detecting the tick’s bloody business.
Hikers in Mt. Diablo’s Donner Canyon are given fair warning.
The tick’s mouthparts are equipped with harpoonlike barbs. Contrary to legend, ticks don’t screw themselves into you. To remove a tick, first beg, borrow or steal a tweezer. If you pull out the tick with your fingers and its mouthparts break off stuck in your skin, you’ll need to see a doctor.
Grab the tick’s mouth as close to your skin as possible and tweeze it straight out. Don’t crush the tick with the tweezer until it’s clear of your skin. Your goal is to prevent the tick’s body fluids from coming in contact with yours.
You say tweezers aren’t a staple of your hiking paraphernalia? No problem. You can wait till you get back home to evict the varmint. A Western black-legged tick must be attached for 24 to 72 hours before the Lyme spirochete gets transmitted.
How do you know that the tick pitching its tent on your epidermis is the Western black-legged? The adult female is teardrop shaped and about ⅛ inch long. Its body is reddish-brown and its legs black. The male is brownish-black all over and slightly smaller than the female.
East Contra Costa County trails aren’t exactly Tick Central; ticks prefer moister climes. To our west, however, in the hiking havens of coastal California, the marine layer soaks the foliage. To our east, the Sierra Nevada range retains moisture from its snow cap. In those bastions of natural beauty, ticks in fearsome numbers wait to ambush unsuspecting passers-by. From Point Reyes to Big Sur, from Shasta to Whitney – and closer to home, from Briones to Sunol – hikers should heed the familiar traffic warning: stay off the shoulder.
Sounds easy enough, but in spring that shoulder can look mighty attractive. Why slog down a sludgy trail when you can glide along the tall grass? Why? Because in that grass, someone’s waiting for you.
The tick doesn’t hop, fly or drop from trees. It lies in wait at the tip of grass and other vegetation along trails, hoping its host will brush against its bus stop. Tick terminologists call this charming behavior “questing” – and the tick’s Holy Grail is your blood.
The trail’s fringe isn’t the only danger zone in Tickville. Ticks also thumb rides off logs. After cooling your heels on one of those inviting objects, submit yourself and your hiking companions to a thorough inspection.
“I’ve Got You Under My Skin” is supposed to be a romantic tune, not a hiker’s gripe. There’s nothing warm and intimate about the act of tweezing a tick from your hide. But don’t let the threat of the tick scrap an adventure in the wonders of the natural world. Remember: hate him, respect him, then … well, you know.