Yes, wood piles and leaf litter create the moist, shaded habitat that ticks actively seek out. Cleaning up these areas is one of the most effective things you can do to reduce tick encounters on your property.
Firewood against the house seems convenient, but you may unknowingly be giving ticks the environment they need to thrive. It’s not so much that ticks like the wood or leaves themselves. Rather, they like that these piles stay cool and humid throughout the day, and that helps keep ticks from drying out.
Ticks can only draw moisture from their surroundings. A tick left sitting in direct sun on a mowed lawn will desiccate and die fairly quickly. But a tick tucked into the underside of a leaf pile where humidity stays high even on a dry day can survive for months at a time.
Wood piles have similar problems. They hold moisture underneath, but there is also the added wrinkle that these piles attract mice and chipmunks. These and other small rodents are some of the most important hosts for blacklegged ticks. Tick larvae and nymphs can easily feed this way, letting their population numbers swell. And that’s something you want to avoid because nymphal ticks are the ones most likely to transmit Lyme disease, thanks in large part to their very small size that often allows them to go unseen for days once attached.
If you are looking for simple ways to reduce the number of ticks on your property, there are a few. You can clean up leaf litter and mow the lawn. If you have vegetation that’s growing unruly, you can trim it back. These actions alone can go a long way toward reducing ticks in your yard, and likely other pests like mosquitoes too.
If you want to go further in reducing tick populations on your West Michigan Lakeshore property, Mosquito Squad of West Michigan Lakeshore can help. Mosquito Squad goes after the shaded edges, ground cover, and transition zones where ticks live and wait. This is highly effective and can reduce populations by up to 90% with treatments every 21 days throughout the season.
