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Hi, this is my first post so please excuse me if it ends up in the wrong place. We live in upstate NY and are ready to move. We really like New Hampshire, have visited the Lakes Region several times and love Sandwich best of all. The school looks great, the people I've met have all been very friendly, and the seasons are about the same as here. My question and only concern is about the ticks and the prevalence of Lyme disease. I've spent many hours perusing the state health department's web site and the CDC's as well and realize that ticks are there and so is Lyme, but I would desperately love to hear from real residents as to how common of a problem it is. Do you pick ticks off of you every time you come inside from March through October? Do the ticks stay in the woods for the most part? Do people find ticks on their bodies after something basic like weeding, or is it something you think about only after hiking??? I've picked ticks off my head and legs after weeding in my yard here, but only a couple. My husband and I have a 5 year old boy who will be starting kindergarten in the fall. Will he be able to roll around the yard with reckless abandon, or will he be doomed to a life of Lyme if we relocate???? Please help! The more opinions I hear the better. One woman I met in Sandwich told me she picked 8 ticks off of her after hiking, another told me they weren't a problem, another said she finds them mainly in the spring, and to top it all off, we found one crawling across our town map in the car after a 30-minute visit to the town beach last September! The CDC map suggests there aren't any ticks in the northern latitudes, if there are any readers from there I would like to hear from them too. Thank you.
Last edited by Scribbilyr; 12-27-2008 at 05:09 PM..
Reason: grammar
There are ticks here and you may or may not find them. The prevalence is not so dense that you are guaranteed to find them, but it is not so weak that they are a huge surprise.
My kids would roll around in the grass and woods in front of our rental and never had one, but our next door neighbor found a bunch on her at different periods (and she didn't go far from where we were).
Recently, my kids were hiking with a group of kids and one child had 3 ticks in her hair. The rest of us were tick-free. She must have brushed against a pile of them and somehow the rest escaped the ticks.
We check, thoroughly, every evening and often spot check after being in a high risk area. We keep tick twisters everywhere, but only had to use them once. It helps to have boys with really short hair too..
I've come to the conclusion that ticks are *everywhere*. You are safest in a city, but not even 100% there.
I hate ticks, take as many precautions as possible that don't make us crazy, and then go out an enjoy nature.
Yes, there are ticks here but I think they're all over the northeast, not just NH. I worry in the woods/brush but not enough that it stops me from taking my kids hiking or berry-picking. They wear long pants and socks and when we come back I give them a bath and look them over. CW is that the tick needs to be on you for a certain # of hours to transmit Lyme so as long as you find them right away you should be OK. That said, my dad picked a tick off that he found right away this fall but he did get Lyme - the doctor said it could have been living elsewhere on his body for a while before it crawled out where he could find it. (ick!) He took the course of antibiotics and he's fine now. You hear horror stories, but I think in the vast majority of cases Lyme is curable. I definitely wouldn't let its existence decide where you live!
I think there is a longer thread on this forum that I actually started a couple of years ago on this very subject. If you do a search within this forum, it will probably come up. there were some very good stories, and people shared helpful info. I, too, worry about ticks in the northeast. I have known people who have been infected with Lyme, and their stories are not pretty ones. I'm hoping there will be better/easier detection methods soon, or a cure, or better yet, a preventive vaccine. BTW, why do you want to leave upstate NY for NH, Scribbilyr?
Hi, this is my first post so please excuse me if it ends up in the wrong place. We live in upstate NY and are ready to move. We really like New Hampshire, have visited the Lakes Region several times and love Sandwich best of all.....
Hi Scribbilyr - We relocated from NYS - the Mid-Hudson region that some people consider "upstate NY" - which part of NY are in you when you say 'upstate'? Our area had a LOT of deer ticks and with my husband being a hunter and in the woods a lot, we were very careful about "inspecting" for ticks - he had a few, but none that caused a problem - they were found on his clothes, never made it under them. We do have friends who contracted Lyme, though. They got treatment and have been fine, as it was caught early. The docs in our area were very good at testing and treating quickly.
We relocated in 2006 to Littleton, which is north of where you are looking and have not seen one since our move. We still take the usual precautions with wearing the right clothing and inspecting, though. Since you are familiar with Lyme and hopefully know the correct clothing and inspection methods, you should be okay, IMO, with a move to NH.
I live in the White Mountains and we do have a lot of ticks here. In the 23 years that I've lived here, I've found countless ticks on me either attached or just crawling around. However, most of those were not the deer tick that carry Lyme disease. Almost all of them have been the bigger ones. And, if it helps, I (personally) don't know anyone up here that has contracted Lyme disease.
I work outside a lot and hike often on my days off. On some of our job sites (former landfills...scrub/brush habitat) I've pulled as many as 20 off my legs from walking 10 yards through some grass. That said, I worked on that site all last summer and only found one actually attached, and they were all dog ticks (non lyme...larger ones).
I've never seen one from working outside or hiking and I have yet to find an actual deer tick on me in NH (CT is a different story....I hate CT ). I find lots of them because of where I work. Most people wouldn't go in those areas and won't have much issue with them.
Like said above, just get used to doing a quick check for them but don't let it dictate your life or activities.
I think there is a longer thread on this forum that I actually started a couple of years ago on this very subject. If you do a search within this forum, it will probably come up. there were some very good stories, and people shared helpful info. I, too, worry about ticks in the northeast. I have known people who have been infected with Lyme, and their stories are not pretty ones. I'm hoping there will be better/easier detection methods soon, or a cure, or better yet, a preventive vaccine. BTW, why do you want to leave upstate NY for NH, Scribbilyr?
We moved here four years ago from the Pacific Northwest so our little boy could grow up near his grandmother, my husband's mom, who lives here. (We live in the Adirondacks.) The taxes in NY, however, defy comprehension. And they keep going up! Washington state, where I was raised, does not have an income tax and functions just fine without it. The state's Running Start program, in fact, allows academically motivated high school juniors and seniors to attend junior college in high school and graduate with both a high school diploma and two-year associate's degree, all funded by the state. All that, and no income tax! Our property taxes here are also double what they were in Washington, leading me to conclude that NY must have the most dysfunctional government in the union. My husband's job fortunately allows us to live wherever we choose because he travels for work, and living in a state that essentially penalizes him for earning a decent living in order to fund a state full of people on welfare is just too much. We moved across the country to live near my mother-in-law and I hate the idea of moving back, but the money thing is really out of control here.
Thank you, by the way, to all the people who have replied to my request. I did a search before I posted my question and the only Lyme Disease thread I found dealt with NY. I feel extremely fortunate that we discovered New Hampshire; it's close enough to NY that we can be here in under five hours and affordable enough that we will still be able to save for retirement. And college. And all those other things ...
Last edited by Scribbilyr; 12-29-2008 at 02:39 PM..
Reason: update
Hi Scribbilyr-
Welcome to the Forum (or at least our corner of it)! For previous threads with bunches of info, check out Lyme disease doctor recommendation which talks a bit about how to find a dr for lyme disease should you need one, Ticks/ Lyme in NH? has some great info - and some names you might recognize
There's also some threads in the CT and VT forums. I just did a search on 'lyme new hampshire' and it pulled up quite a few - not necessarily in NH
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Our area had a LOT of deer ticks and with my husband being a hunter and in the woods a lot, we were very careful about "inspecting" for ticks - he had a few, but none that caused a problem - they were found on his clothes, never made it under them. We do have friends who contracted Lyme, though. They got treatment and have been fine, as it was caught early. The docs in our area were very good at testing and treating quickly.
). I find lots of them because of where I work. Most people wouldn't go in those areas and won't have much issue with them. 
