When I give a talk on how to prevent having a tick encounter, I touch on five basic points: skin, clothing, pets, homes and yard.

These are the many ways we come into contact with ticks and other insects and we want to make sure, as we enter into the seasons when ticks are most active, that we are taking the necessary precautions. Ignoring any one of these basic point, allows for an opening for a tick encounter, sometimes without us even realizing it until it’s too late.

In the four short weeks I’ve been sharing my column, I have been getting a lot of phone calls and emails from folks asking a lot of great questions and who have stumbled upon my website to gather further information. This is great! We need to be talking about prevention. We need to be aware of just how easy it is to come into contact with a tick and possibly contract a tick-borne disease. We need to be vigilant with our prevention practices.

The Maine CDC stated last summer that over 50 percent of all ticks are carrying some sort of tick-borne disease. And the University of Maine Cooperative Extension has identified 14 species of ticks living in Maine. So, 14 species of ticks with 50 percent of them potentially carrying a tick-borne disease raises our risk every day. By having conversations about things that we didn’t know about (statistics) or learning about new things such as treating our clothing with Permethrin, a product that kills ticks on contact, we are taking control of the environment that we exist in, that we work in and that we play in.

And by paying attention to the five basic points of prevention, we can continue to enjoy all the outdoor activities that we once did without fear of a tick encounter. Sometimes it’s as easy as having a conversation. We fear what we don’t know so it’s time to get educated about ticks.

Come to the conference

I want to personally invite you all to attend the third annual Midcoast Lyme Disease Support & Education (MLDSE) conference on Saturday, April 29 at the Wiscasset Community Center from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. This is a free community event with lots of educational information and resources to help push us past our fear of tick season and enable us to really enjoy life in Maine as it should be.

For more information, visit www.mldse.org or email me at paula@mldse.org

Paula Jackson Jones is the president of the MLDSE, the Maine-partner of the national Lyme Disease Association and a member of Maine’s CDC Vector-borne Workgroup.