Ticks live in shady, humid areas with leaf litter, tall grass, overgrown edges, and low-growing vegetation where they can wait for a host to brush past.
There’s nothing unnerving in quite the same way as finding a tick on your leg. You expect this at a campsite or on a hiking trail. You don’t expect it where you mow the grass every week.
But ticks don’t need wilderness to thrive. All they really need is moisture and cover.
Much like vampires, ticks don’t like the sun. And that’s because direct sunlight dries them out fast. So they stick to spots where shade holds humidity close to the ground. That’s why you can find them in leaf piles next to the fence line, or in a strip of pachysandra bordering your walkway.
If your property runs right up to the woods, you probably have a foliage barrier. We call those transition zones, and they can be the source of a lot of tick trouble. For that, you can blame the deer, mice, and chipmunks that travel those edges constantly, regularly shaking off ticks by the dozen as they pass. So if you happen to have ornamental shrubs, ground cover, or garden beds along that border, you may have unintentionally created the ideal tick habitat.
You can also find ticks hanging out around damp wood and retaining walls. Under decks and play structures are pretty common hot spots as well. Basically, any place that stays damp and shaded for most of the day is worth paying attention to. A deer can pass by, shed some ticks, and a whole tick city can get established in places like that faster than you’d think.
If you’d like to look into DIY tick control some more, the 6 C's of tick control is a strong starting point for reducing habitat on your own. Clearing leaf litter, keeping grass short, and creating a buffer between lawn and wooded edges all help lower the risk.
But if you’re a Franklin or Framingham homeowner and you want a little more protection than you can provide on your own, Mosquito Squad of Franklin & Framingham's tick control services can help. With Mosquito Squad, you can have barrier treatments applied to the areas where ticks live on your property and wait for hosts. A trained technician walks your yard and figures out where the ticks live. Then they treat where it matters most, coming back every 21 days to make sure your protection stays steady all season long.
