After picking two ticks off myself after weekend birding (ick and double YUCK), I thought I'd share this bit of medical news.  Hope it helps.  I didn't sit on any logs, but I leaned against a few trees and ducked under some partially fallen trees.  Looks like if you need to sit down, the leaves are the way to go.


Denise Ryan
Washington, DC
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Reuters Health


Avoid logs to avoid ticks, experts say

April 08, 2004


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Want to avoid ticks? Avoid sitting on logs, experts advised on Thursday. 

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, used themselves as bait to see where the greatest risk of picking up a tick was, and found logs were the worst places to sit. 

"We sat on logs for only five minutes at a time, and in 30 percent of the cases, it resulted in exposure to ticks," said Robert Lane, a professor of insect biology who led the study. 

"It didn't matter if we sat on moss or the bare surface; the ticks were all over the log surface. The next riskiest behavior was gathering wood, followed by sitting against trees, which resulted in tick exposure 23 percent and 17 percent of the time, respectively," Lane said in a statement. 

Writing in the Journal of Medical Entomology, Lane and colleagues said they were looking for ticks carrying Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that cause Lyme disease. 

"If we're going to develop effective strategies and educational programs for the prevention of Lyme disease, it is critical that we understand how people are exposed to the ticks that transmit the bacteria in the first place," Lane said in a statement. 

"We intentionally looked at behaviors that people would typically engage in while spending time in the woods." 

Sitting in leaves was not especially risky, they found.

SOURCE: Journal of Medical Entomology, 2004.

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