Warm weather bringing ticks to Manitoba earlier than usual
Following a mild winter with very little snow cover, experts say Winnipeg will see some critters coming out of hibernation earlier than usual, including ticks.
Kateryn Rochon, an associate professor in the University of Manitoba’s Department of Entomology, said researchers received a report of a blacklegged tick about a week earlier than usual in Manitoba.
“From year to year, it really all depends,” she said in an interview with CTV Morning Live on Friday.
“If it’s warm and there’s no more snow, you’re going to have ticks.”
In order to stay safe, Rochon recommends finding ways to keep ticks away from your skin. This includes wearing your socks pulled over your pants and tucking in your shirt.
If you do get bitten by a tick, Rochon suggests using tweezers to remove the tick.
“Go as close to the skin as possible. You grab onto the tick and then you pull up,” she said.
“That’s it, you just pull up. You don’t jerk, you don’t twist.”
Rochon noted that not all ticks are infected, so getting a tick bite does not necessarily mean you will get sick.
For those who do spot a tick, Rochon recommends reporting the sighting to etick.ca in order to help determine what type of tick it is. The website also helps researchers track what people find and where.
“You take pictures, you upload the pictures and we’ll tell you if it’s a blacklegged tick or not,” she said.
“If it is a blacklegged tick, we can give you information.”
Difference in ticks
Rochon explained that blacklegged ticks and wood ticks are different species.
She said if blacklegged ticks are infected with a pathogen, they can transmit it to humans. Wood ticks, however, which are common in Manitoba, do not transmit Lyme disease or anaplasmosis to humans.
She said they also look different, as wood ticks are reddish brown in colour with some patterning on the back, while blacklegged ticks are smaller and dark brown in colour.
Rochon added that blacklegged ticks have been in Manitoba for about 20 years, and can most commonly be found in the areas south of Dauphin.
- With files from CTV’s Rachel Lagace.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three Quebec men from same family father hundreds of children
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
B.C. mayor stripped of budget, barred from committees over Indigenous residential schools book
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
OPP's mandatory alcohol screening during traffic stops 'not acceptable': CCLA
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
Maple Leafs down Bruins 2-1 to force Game 7
William Nylander scored twice and Joseph Woll made 22 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs downed the Boston Bruins 2-1 on Thursday to force Game 7 in their first-round series.
Jurors in Trump hush money trial hear recording of pivotal call on plan to buy affair story
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Southern Alberta store broken into by burly black bear
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
Captain sentenced to 4 years for criminal negligence in fiery deaths of 34 aboard scuba boat
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
New scam targets Canada Carbon Rebate recipients
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.