Since I got such a great response to my question about centipedes, I thought I'd ask about Lyme disease.

I just moved to Maryland -- I've never lived anywhere that had a Lyme disease problem before, and I'm worried. All I've read about it on the internet and elsewhere is that it is scary, and that I should tape my socks to the outside of my pants.

Since I don't want to look (or feel) like a total dork, I'm considering never going out into a wooded or wild area again. Unless someone can convince me that Lyme Disease really isn't something to worry about.

So?

-- Anonymous, July 23, 2001

Answers

I am a dork. Sorry about the open link!

-- Anonymous, July 23, 2001

I'd say you should be afraid of Lyme disease, but not so afraid that you should avoid the great outdoors.

Lyme disease can be serious, but there are lots of things you can do to decrease your risk of contracting it. There is a vaccine available, but it's fairly new, so its long-term efficacy is not known. However, the CDC recommends the vaccine for anyone aged 15-70 who "Resides, Works, or Recreates in Areas of High or Moderate Risk." I'm not sure if you would fit that description. For more info on the vaccine, see here.

Also, you can use insect repellent, wear long pants or high socks, and check your skin for ticks when you're in a wooded or other tick- infested area.

-- Anonymous, July 23, 2001

The vaccine is only 50 percent effective in the first year, and by the end of the series of vaccinations, it's still only 80 percent effective. It is not recommended unless your risk of exposure is high, and even then, the CDC only says that the vaccine should be "considered." There is still a question as to whether the vaccine interacts with certain pre-existing conditions (including Lyme disease, and also some genetic conditions) to cause degenerative arthritis. The link hasn't been proven or disproven, but the CDC's web page does mention the possibility. I think it's a theoretical concern, not one that's been established clinically.

I would be most concerned about the fact that you have to have a series of three shots over a couple of years, and the vaccine isn't very effective until the series is over, and then only 80 percent -- and they do not yet know how long the shot lasts. Even if you get the vaccine, you'll need to be just as careful about ticks as you would otherwise.

I don't know how expensive the shot is for humans, but for dogs it was fifty bucks per shot. If you know anything about dog vaccines, you know that's a lot. My insurance doesn't cover the vaccine.

Ticks are easy to spot, though, especially if you are blonde. Jeremy and I go to tick-infested woods all the time; you just have to check yourself carefully after you get home. They always seem to cling to socks and, um, the groin area.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

Oh, I forgot to add: the tick needs to have been attached to you for 24 hours in order for transmission to occur. We've found dozens of ticks after hikes, but we always check for them and I've yet to find one that had even bitten me at all. Jeremy was bitten once by a deer tick and we had a minor scare, but we found it within a few hours, so he was fine. You should always save the ticks in a ziplock bag in case something happens, though.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

They cling to the "groin area"?! Gee, thanks. Now I have visions of centipedes racing at me, and ticks in that special place. Any other bug nightmares you can pile on?

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

I made that sound worse by not being specific. I didn't mean they clung to your "wonderfulness" or anything. It's more your upper thigh, where they've managed to crawl up your shorts. And this might only happen to men, because they have hairy legs.

I won't tell you about the thing the dog caught, if you've had enough bug stories.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

I hadn't realized that Lyme disease had spread to MD already. I'm from very near to the namesake town in CT, and my mother actually got Lyme disease. Luckily, they (she) caught it early (at the rash-at-tick- bite-site stage), and it was completely cured with antibiotics. Now she checks more carefully for ticks after being outside for long periods of time. I would be conscientious about covering up as much as possible if you are going to be in known tick-infested areas, checking for ticks after being outside, and being observant of any bug-bite type things on your body. Given those precautions, I don't think you should be so worried as to avoid going out into the woods.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

Beth, we're hardened now. We can take the worst bug stories. Tell!

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

More bug stories please! I want to heat what the dog caught. Somthing nasty and scary I hope.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

um, that should be hear ... not heat. But you already knew that.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

Oh, I was totally bluffing. I didn't see what he caught, because it was dark and it made Jeremy say things like, Ooh, gross. Oh, man, don't eat that. Beth, you've got to come check this out. When a man says things like that, you should never get out of your chair.

Jeremy stepped on an apparently pregnant June bug the other day, though, and it kind of exploded. Now that was exciting!

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

Now Beth, who are you trying to spare? Witness:
I have never seen junebugs as big as the ones in Beth's backyard. Worse, they are present in the daytime, when they crawl out of these little pits by the tree. The dogs won't even mess with them.
We live in midtown=spiders. The palpy jumping spiders with their twitchy moutparts and big eyes, a daddy longlegs for every crevice, the white/yellow tree spiders that get in the car somehow, and let's not forget the smashed carcass of a widow we found that one time on your stairs.
Not to mention the high-loud buzz and chatter of that tree insect that no one can name. It provides the background sound of summer, a sound that residents don't even notice until their Bay Area boyfriends ask what the hell that buzzing is.

And I'm sure you've found something horrifying in your basement at some point.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

Mostly just June bugs. There are tracks in the dirt in the basement that make it look like we have thousands of little snakes down there - - but they're from June bugs. I find dead June bugs on and in my washer and dryer all summer long. Doc used to catch and kill June bugs by the dozen, but he's so afraid of bees now that he just leaves all bugs alone. Crash will eat June bugs, though, if he can catch them out of the air.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

Joy! Where are you? I grew up in Old Lyme, which borders Lyme. You wrote as if it's proximity to Lyme that'll infect you, which is only somewhat true. I had it, but I picked up my tick in upstate New York (one of the great ironies of my life).

Kristie, I wouldn't be scared of Lyme Disease, just cautious. Check for ticks when you get home from tramps in the great outdoors. Naming your reaction to a possible disease "fear" sounds like panic-mongering to me, but then I'm sensitive about it because of where I'm from. You might feel more like a dork if you deprived yourself of being outside for the whole of the rest of your life than if you just followed simple precautions. :)

I say "I had it" but it might be more accurate to say "I have it," since it's one of the conditions that bars you from donating blood for life. For me, it has not been a debilitating disease at all. It can be: in elementary school was a boy who had Lyme Arthritis (which is what it was called before Lyme Disease) and often couldn't play in gym or recess. It doesn't have to be: I started a course of antibiotics something like three weeks after exposure--my mother only happened to notice the rash, which was on my upper thigh/lower butt "groin" area where I needed a mirror to see it (or a mother who wandered into my room when I was naked). The doctor didn't seem to fear that leaving it untreated for so long would do permanent, and for me it hasn't.

(It's the fault of the nuclear power stations in Haddam and Waterford, doncha know; radiation rendered ticks into disease-bearing mutants, which is an actual, published, professed theory, even though it's been recognized as a set of symptoms since the '40s.)

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

Bah. June Bugs are nothing. Not compared with those horrifying alien potato bugs. And there is nothing grosser than seeing a cat eat one of those things. Except maybe knowing what is now on your living room rug when you hear the cat gacking a few minutes later.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

Word on the potato bugs. Nasty. And for those of you who grew up thinking that "potato bugs" are those little black rolly-polly/pill bugs (wood lice), no, potato bugs are a horror from the deep, a mutant embryo cricket of some size, pale like dough and fat with enormous eyes. I am, however, forced to point out that potato bugs don't generally
*fly into your hair and twist themselves up into so thoroughly that your mom has to cut the buzzing chunk out
*fly into the dog's hair, where you will later pet the buzzing chunk of evil
*sit on the screen door at night, hissing when you try to flick them off
*even fly into Barbie doll hair, enabling you to have Punk Rock Barbie with a fringe cut
*explode dramatically when stepped on or dogbit.
Thank you, the June Bug. They are a scarab beetle, which is pretty cool, but it doesn't nearly make up for the nighttime hair attacks of my youth.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

I don't even know what those June bugs are. The things we have here are not actual junebugs, if there is such a thing. They are about two inches long with yellow and gold stripes. They hurl themselves at the windows and attach themselves to screens. (It's very satisfying to flick them off; they sail a long way.) They like to fly into your hair, too, when you're outside on a summer night. They're dying off now -- I'm seeing more dead ones than live ones.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

We posted at the same time. Yeah, those things.

I think I saw my first potato bug this weekend -- Jeremy smushed it for me.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

"They cling to the "groin area"?! Gee, thanks. Now I have visions of centipedes racing at me, and ticks in that special place. Any other bug nightmares you can pile on?"

Gee, I hope Beth starts talking about the spiders in Australia again. Because that would really cap off the tick and centipede stories. :)

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

When June bugs fly do there little scarab back things split open to be the wings? Cause last night we had approximately 840 of these fat, round, flying black beetly things and they were attacking me at the computer. Actual conversation:

"Aaaaa, aaaaa, bug on the wall, bug on the wall, help!!!" "Kill it! Stop yelling and kill it." "It fell, it fell down the wall by my foot! I don't have anything to kill it with? Do you want me to click it to death with the mouse?" "Your hands!" "NO! Get it!"

If those things are June bugs I'm going to start some sort of secret June bug hating society.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

Lisa - Oh, I didn't mean that proximity to Lyme is a contributing cause or additional risk factor, I was just mentioning it. I live on sucky Long Island now, but I grew up in Waterford, with the lovely bug- mutating nuclear power plant (hadn't heard that theory!).

Thanks to all for icking me out repeatedly with tails of hair- ensnarling bugs. Japanese beetles are bad too - they cling like a muther. I remember watering the garden for my mom as a kid, getting one on me, not wanting to touch it to get it off, and just slapping and waving my hand or arm or leg around in the air, harder and harder, trying to fling the damn thing off. I'd have to get a stick or a leaf or something to pick it off with. (Cause, it's not like it was touching me, really, if it was just on my leg or something. But my hand? Noooo.).

h - aren't those cicadas that buzz so loudly?

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

I didn't think we had cicadas in Sacramento. Could be, I guess.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

I remember Rosie O'Donnell saying she bought a flock of pea(?) hens to run around her yard. Anyway, they're tick predators or something. Then, I guess you just have a lot of bird shit to deal with. Oh, I think they cackle fairly loudly. Always a trade-off.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

Guinea fowl love ticks. Friends of mine in rural NE CT with four kids on four wooded acres have guinea fowl mostly to combat ticks. Dunno if the people then eat the fowl or if the fowl lay edible eggs, or whether their function as tick-chompers spares them from the block.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

As others have recommended, definitely check out the CDC's website.They have a very good Q&A section.

We live in a very deer-dense forest. So we have no plants (landscaping attempts only result in plump, happy deer) and lots of ticks. In general, I think that Lyme disease and ticks are rumored to be scarier than they really are. Ticks really don't fall on you. Usually they climb up from the ground, but can also get on you from vegetation that brushes you. Just be aware of the symptoms and do tick-inspections on each other after traipsing around in a wild deery area. Actually, with a little imagination, tick inspections can be quite a pleasant activity to engage in with your spouse or significant other.

-- Anonymous, July 25, 2001

this is a cicada. they buzz around daylight and twilight -- they look fierce, but considering i got chased by my sister wielding a cicada many times in my youth, i can vouch that they're harmless. they sometimes come with these enormous wasps, though, that look so freakin scary. the wasps just want to eat the cicadas, though, and they'll leave you alone.

i can't find a pic of what we call a junebug. they don't have stripes -- maybe the californian ones do? i don't know. they're small (about dime sized) and gold in color. obnoxious as hell, but aren't harmful at all.

my aunt actually just had lyme disease -- if you go on a hike or something where you think that you've been exposed, and within a month you start feeling fluey, then go to a doctor! apparently, it's easily curable with antibiotics (i'm no doctor -- this is just the way i understand it.) but i think i'd be squicked out by being bitten by a tick, though.

-- Anonymous, July 28, 2001