With two brothers and a sister, the great outdoors is sometimes a sanctuary for 12-year-old Logan Ferguson.
"There's hiding spots out there that I can just hide and they won't be able to find me," he said.
His siblings may not be able to, but late last month something found him when he was playing outside at his family farm near Portage La Prairie: A wood tick.
"I felt something on my back, so I pulled it off and it was a tick," said Ferguson. "So I just killed it and threw it away."
Logan said it was a wood tick, so he didn't give it a second thought. But a couple of days later he started feeling sick with headaches and fatigue.
"He said it hurt to roll over, his spine was hurting, and his muscles were really sore," said Logan's mother Nicole Ferguson. "And that was really the third red flag."
Nicole Ferguson took her son to the hospital, where doctors put him on anti-biotics for possible exposure to Lyme disease. But he wasn't getting better.
Ferguson says further testing confirmed the presence of an infection. But doctors still aren't certain exactly what type it is. "With wood ticks there is a wide variety, which I did not know about,” said Ferguson.
Ferguson doesn't want anyone else to get sick, so she's encouraging people to check themselves for ticks after they've been outside.
So what should you do if you find a tick on yourself, your child or a pet? The province suggests you remove it with tweezers, grasping the tick as close to the skin as possible.
Clean the skin around the bite with soap and water or disinfectant. And if you develop a rash or other symptoms, you should see a doctor.
