Fevers, bloody noses, stomach aches and headaches — there is a wide range of ailments and injuries, real and imagined, that school nurses tend to on a daily basis. And in recent years in Maine, a new and serious problem has been added to that list.
Ticks.
“It’s probably one of the number one issues I deal with this time of year. The students come in with ticks, and I have to remove them,” said Nikki Jaffray, a school nurse who rotates between schools in Castine, Brooksville, Surry and Penobscot.
So far this month, Jaffray has removed at least 10 ticks from students in grades pre-K through eight. After removing a tick, she calls the student’s parents and sends home pamphlets about tick-borne diseases. She also sends home the actual tick, sandwiched between two pieces of tape and sealed in a ziplock bag, just in case the parents decide to send it to the University of Maine Tick Identification Lab in Orono.
“We certainly get a lot of ticks sent to us from parents,” said Griffin Dill, coordinator of the University of Maine Tick ID Program. “We’ve also had calls from schools that have had issues with ticks around their playgrounds and are asking for management options.”
Just 15 years ago, ticks were more scarce in Maine. But in recent years, more of these blood-sucking members of the arachnid family have migrated into the state, spreading up from the south. Today, there are 14 different species of ticks found in Maine, and some of these species are capable of carrying and transmitting different diseases.
Of high concern in Maine is the black-legged tick, also known as the deer tick, which carries and transmits Lyme disease. A bacterial infection, Lyme disease attacks different organs and body systems, including the brain and nervous system, muscles, joints and the heart, according to lymedisease.org, a nonprofit organization that provides information and research about the disease.
Last year, a total of 1,200 probable and confirmed cases of Lyme disease were reported to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention by residents from all 16 counties in Maine. What’s more, school-aged children, ages 5-15, had the highest rate of cases.
Jaffray said that some students she sees are upset to find a tick embedded in their skin, while others are fairly calm about the situation.
“It’s almost like they’re getting used to them,” Jaffray said, “But usually the first thing they ask is, ‘Do I have Lyme?’ So they are aware that the tick might carry a disease.”
Unfortunately, Jaffray can’t give students an answer. She instructs students and their parents to watch for common symptoms of Lyme disease, such as a bulls-eye-shaped rash and flu-like symptoms. She also advises that they visit a doctor who can test for Lyme disease, which, if diagnosed early, can be treated with antibiotics.
In addition, there are a number of other tick-borne diseases that have been diagnosed in Maine residents in recent years, including anaplasmosis, babesiosis, ehrlichiosis and Powassan encephalitis. Information about each of these diseases is available through the University of Maine Tick ID Lab at https://extension.umaine.edu/ipm/tickid/.
Currently, the University of Maine Tick ID Lab only identifies the species of a tick. However, the university is in the process of building a new facility where researchers will also be able to test whether or not a tick is carrying a certain disease. This new lab is scheduled to open sometime next year, Dill said.
“We don’t want people to be afraid,” Dill said. “We aren’t trying to scare people from going outside and playing in the woods, hiking and fishing. This is a general awareness issue. There are relatively simple precautions you can take to minimize your exposure to ticks.”
These precautions include dressing appropriately, avoiding tick habitat, using tick repellents on your clothing and skin and performing regular, full-body tick checks after spending time outdoors.
“The big thing that people need to do is just getting in the habit of performing tick checks after being outside,” Dill said. “In the northeast, none of us grew up with ticks. It was never an issue. So people just aren’t conditioned to do tick checks like they are in other places where ticks are more common.”
In Maine, ticks are more common along the coast and in southern Maine, where the climate is more temperate, than they are inland and in the northern half of the state, as are the reported cases of tick-borne diseases. People most often pick up ticks when they wade through tall grass or brush, which is tick habitat. Ticks actually cling to the end of grass blades and branches as they search for hosts with outstretched legs, a behavior called “questing.”
“They’re really bad this year,” Jaffray said. “Yesterday, I was out taking pictures in a field [in Brooksville] and I got home and had four ticks crawling on me.”
The Blue Hill Heritage Trust, which owns and maintains trails on several properties throughout the Blue Hill Peninsula, posts warning signs about ticks near the parking area for all its properties.
“This is all kind of new to us, this epidemic of ticks,” said Chrissy Beardsley Allen, Blue Hill Heritage Trust outreach and development coordinator. “We need to make sure we’re on the same page about how to be safe out there.”
In addition, the Blue Hill Heritage Trust is planning educational programs about ticks to offer the public starting next spring.
“I know on the Blue Hill Peninsula that there are parents who don’t want their kids outside right now,” Allen said. “And I sympathize. I’m a parent, and last summer, my daughter woke up with three deer ticks on her, and I freaked out.”
“From the standpoint from someone who’s organizing all these outdoor programs, I want people to understand the risk-to-benefit ratio — the benefit of being outside and being in the woods to the risk of getting a tick on you and contracting Lyme disease,” she said.
Allen is concerned that people don’t always have accurate information about ticks and tick-borne diseases because of inaccurate information available on the internet. The land trust plans to collaborate with local pest experts, such as the entomologists at the University of Maine Tick ID Lab, to provide accurate material to the members of their community about the issue.
“A lot of our programming is about trying to get kids outside and in the woods,” Allen said. “So we need to be educated on this and make sure we’re safe in the woods and help people really understand what’s happening here.”
In honor of May being Lyme Disease Awareness Month, Lyme disease specialist Dr. Bea Szantyr will be giving a “Tick Talk” at 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 24, at Belfast Free Library at 106 High Street. The free event is sponsored by the library and the community-owned Belfast Co-op.