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Jordan Powers: 0:15

Welcome to Cultivating Curiosity where we get down and dirty with the experts on all the ways science and agriculture touch our lives, from what we eat to how we live. I'm Jordan Powers.

Emily Cabrera: 0:27

And I'm Emily Cabrera. We're from the University of Georgia's College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

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Jordan Powers: 0:35

As temperatures are warming up and we're spending more time outdoors, one of the most prominent and persistent challenges of living in the South is the battle against blood sucking bugs.

Emily Cabrera: 0:44

Yes, we're talking about mosquitos and ticks. So we've invited entomologists Nancy Hinkle and Elmer Gray to talk through the most effective ways to prevent irritation from these nuisance pests and protect ourselves from the potential diseases they carry.

Jordan Powers: 1:00

Our first guest, Nancy Hinkle, is a professor in the CAES Department of Entomology, and comes to us with a wealth of information on tick prevention. In the second part of this episode, we'll hear from Elmer Gray, a public health Extension specialist in entomology, who gives us insight into one of the most notoriously annoying pests out there, the mosquito.

Emily Cabrera: 1:20

This episode will only scratch the surface of this itchy topic, but we'll provide additional resources in the show notes for digging into more comprehensive information on both pests.

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Jordan Powers: 1:32

Well, Nancy, thank you so much for joining us today. As temperatures are very quickly warming up and folks are probably starting to get outside more often, when do we need to start worrying about ticks in our environments?

Nancy Hinkle: 1:44

About two months ago.

Everyone: 1:45

[laughter]

Jordan Powers: 1:47

So always.

Nancy Hinkle: 1:48

Always [laughter], if you're in Georgia, Yes, always.

Jordan Powers: 1:51

So now that we're thinking about them all the time, if you've ever pulled a tick off yourself, you know you don't necessarily have to be an outdoor enthusiast to be targeted, but you can even pick up these blood loving bugs from your own backyard. How exactly do we pick up ticks?

Nancy Hinkle: 2:06

Ticks are always on the ground. They don't fall out of trees, despite every word you've ever heard from your granny about ticks falling out of trees, they're actually on the ground, and they latch on with their little claws, and then they crawl up our shoes and up our socks and up our legs and up our pants legs, and they settle wherever they want to settle.

Jordan Powers: 2:23

Okay, so they're not coming from above. They're crawling on the ground, whether that's a hiking trail or whether that's the grass in your backyard?

Nancy Hinkle: 2:31

Right.

Jordan Powers: 2:31

Yikes.

Emily Cabrera: 2:32

All right, so I've got kind of a two part question. We'll start with, what do I do to protect myself, my family, my kids, my pets?

Nancy Hinkle: 2:40

The most important thing is to do a daily tick check. Pretty much, if you live in Georgia, year round, you should be checking your body daily for ticks. And that's you, your kids, your dog, any other loved one.

Emily Cabrera: 2:51

So how do we maybe protect ourselves before there would be the possibility of having a tick, is there way to prevent them from getting on us in the first place?

Nancy Hinkle: 2:59

You can make a good effort, and there are a couple of things to do, and only an entomologist probably would do them. But if you're going to be out in an area that does have ticks, I would recommend wearing long pants, tucking the pants down into your socks, and walking around looking really nerdy. If you're particularly conscientious, you might purchase one of the products that has permethrin in it. Those are used for treating clothing, and you can treat your shoes, your socks, and your pants leg.

Emily Cabrera: 3:26

Our listeners can't see this, so I'll do my best to explain, but you've brought in props today. There is a spray in front of me that is actually labeled specifically for ticks. I think in my mind, I'm always looking at insect repellents and thinking of mosquitos, but there is something labeled specifically for ticks.

Nancy Hinkle: 3:43

The active ingredient is DEET, the same thing that's in the mosquito repellents, but it's got a very high percentage and it can be used on your skin, on your children's skin, and that will repel ticks as well as mosquitoes. The other product is for use only on clothing and hiking gear and tents and things like that, not on skin. Never to be used on skin. It has a different active ingredient. The active ingredient in this product is permethrin. Permethrin is an insecticide, not a repellent, but it does repel to some degree, but if the tick stays on the treated substance, it will kill the tick.

Emily Cabrera: 4:18

Interesting, and I see this permethrin bottle, it says it treats up to four outfits, and we're talking like all the parts of your clothing, but tents, gear, it actually maintains its effectiveness for six weeks or even six washings, which is really interesting.

Jordan Powers: 4:33

That's incredible. So I think the takeaway that I'm gathering here is, if you're casually outside in Georgia any time of year, not just in the summer, we're learning the average everyday person in Georgia do your tick checks, but if you know you're gonna be out, if you're those of us who really like being on the hiking trails, if you like camping, keep an eye out for these products, because they are available to protect ourselves and our families.

Nancy Hinkle: 4:52

Right. And this one that has the long persistence you can treat your gardening clothes, for instance, and maybe you only wear them every afternoon when you go out to pick the tomatoes. But you can put on those garments, maybe just a pair of pants, but it's already been treated. It hasn't been washed. It'll last for a long time.

Emily Cabrera: 5:07

Well, that's really good to know, and it kind of leads me into this next question. I told you it was going to be a double barreled question, landscape and environment. We know you can pick up ticks out in the forest or if you're an outdoors person, but you can also just as easily pick them up in your home landscape. So can we talk through a few ways of protecting ourselves by management in our immediate surroundings?

Nancy Hinkle: 5:29

Everybody wants to know what to spray, and I would say the last thing you want to do is spray, because if you spray, you kill all the beneficials. You kill those ants and spiders and beetles, the good things that are out there that are eating the ticks. So we don't want to kill those. And unfortunately, you have to actually hit the tick with the spray to kill the tick, whereas the beetles, if they run across a treated surface, they'll die. So let's think about other things, other than using an insecticide. One of the best things to do to reduce tick numbers is to mow the grass low, cut back the bushes, get the air blowing through there, and that will dry out ticks. Takes a little more effort, but it lasts longer. And another strategy is to keep wildlife out of your yard. I know it's so cute to have the little possums and raccoons and deer coming through your backyard, but they always bring their friends with them, and they're leaving ticks in your backyard, and you don't want that, so keep them kind of away from the house [laughter]. You can watch them from a distance.

Jordan Powers: 6:26

Easier said than done for the deer that run through [laughter] my neighborhood.

Nancy Hinkle: 6:29

So true.

Jordan Powers: 6:30

So say we've done the best we can. We have used our spray on our body, if we are an active outdoors person, we have done our tick checks, and during one of those tick checks, we do find a tick crawling on us. Should we be worried?

Nancy Hinkle: 6:43

As long as it's crawling on you, no. You can catch that one and you can destroy it however you want to.

Jordan Powers: 6:48

Okay. And we did learn before the show started that there is one method that is a frequent method of destroying ticks that might not work so well. How do we appropriately[laughter] destroy a tick?

Nancy Hinkle: 7:00

Unfortunately, ticks are very hard to drown, so I don't recommend flushing them, because they can stay under water for over 24 hours without dying. If you're gonna kill a tick, put it in alcohol. I would actually recommend keeping the tick alive. Put it in a zip lock bag, write the date on it and put it in your refrigerator. Sounds weird, I know, but if that tick turns out to be carrying any pathogens, it can be tested later to determine what disease organisms it may have.

Jordan Powers: 7:27

So that leads to, what if the tick becomes embedded?

Nancy Hinkle: 7:30

Yes, if the tick is embedded, then we're really interested. Again, the tick should be removed. There are all sorts of recommendations for little devices to remove the tick. I say it's more important to get it off quickly than to waste time looking for something to pull it out with. Take your fingers, pull it out, put it in a zip lock bag, write the date on it, put it in the refrigerator, and then forget about it for six weeks. If you haven't gotten sick in six weeks, you don't have to worry about it.

Emily Cabrera: 7:55

What do we do if we've pulled the tick off and the head has become embedded and doesn't come out? 'Cause that's always been my greatest fear is, if I don't pull it off the right way, is that head going to get stuck and then I can't grab onto it and pull it out.

Nancy Hinkle: 8:08

Everybody worries about leaving the head in. I think granny told us to be concerned about that. There's nothing magical about the head. It's like a thorn in our skin. Yeah, you'd prefer to have it out, but you've probably had splinters under your skin and you left them and let them work their way out. Same thing with the tick head. Don't worry about it.

Emily Cabrera: 8:24

You mentioned wildlife coming through your yard, which are often carrying these diseases that the ticks are getting. So they're vectors. What diseases should we be worried about, and what are the chances of getting a disease from a tick bite?

Nancy Hinkle: 8:37

Fortunately, there's not a high probability of getting a disease, but I would just argue there's no reason to let a tick bite you anyway. There's nothing good that comes from a tick bite. They transmit ehrlichiosis, anaplasmosis, rickettsiosis, babesiosis. All these weird sounding names that can be deadly. Many of them are devastating to dog health, and they are not good for human health, so avoiding ticks is a high priority for both the animals and for us. So I wouldn't worry so much about which disease you might get, because unfortunately, most of them have pretty much the same symptoms, flu, like symptoms, achiness, fever, general malaise. If it's a viral disease, it can't be treated with an antibiotic. It has to be diagnosed correctly and treated in time, because once it sets in, then you can have permanent damage from some of these infections.

Emily Cabrera: 9:28

And so I guess that goes back to why we bag and tag, why we keep the tick and label it. We know we've been bit we hang on to that little sucker, and then if something happens, we have a little bit more information to go off.

Nancy Hinkle: 9:40

Right. It can be tested if necessary.

Jordan Powers: 9:42

I know we could talk about this for eons, but is there anything crucial for listeners to know as we're scratching the surface of ticks and tick prevention?

Nancy Hinkle: 9:50

It's challenging, but avoid ticks. Do a daily tick check. If you find them, remove them. Other than that, just go along your way and enjoy yourself being out in the open. I don't want fear of ticks to discourage people from being out in the woods.

Jordan Powers: 10:03

Nancy, thank you so much for joining us today. We always appreciate your insight, especially on a topic that we've learned impacts us year round, but certainly as more people are out and about, as the weather is getting nice. So thanks for your time.

Nancy Hinkle: 10:14

Thank you, appreciate it.

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Jordan Powers: 10:17

And now we'll transition from ticks to mosquitos in our conversation with Elmer Gray.

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Emily Cabrera: 10:24

Elmer, thank you for joining us today. We just heard from Nancy about how to protect ourselves from ticks, now that the weather is nice and we're spending more time outdoors. When should we anticipate mosquitos to start interrupting our patio dinners and outdoor activities?

Elmer Gray: 10:39

Mosquitos will be coming out very soon. Temperatures are warming as the overnight temperatures get warmer, the larvae develop faster in the standing water, and emergence will occur. So they're coming soon.

Jordan Powers: 10:50

"Dun dun dunn..."

Everyone: 10:50

[laughter]

Jordan Powers: 10:52

They're coming. I'm picturing like the old school movie posters now[laughter]. So now that we know that they're coming and they're coming soon, what can I do to protect myself and my family, both my kids and my pets?

Elmer Gray: 11:02

The best thing to do is just be really diligent about eliminating standing water around the homes and your neighbors and your neighborhood. The larvae develop in standing water, so any place that there's containers, trays, tarps, anything that holds water will develop mosquito larvae. Oftentimes, the trays on our plants are our most common problem, and it's right on our porches, decks around our homes. So anything you can do to eliminate standing water will help minimize the problems in your yard. Making sure the screens on your house are good. You know, we're in a period now in spring where it's comfortable to have the windows open some make sure your screens that's good for all insects that we want to keep outside.

Jordan Powers: 11:39

So we've talked about emptying water out of the trays, out of clearing standing water from our property. What else can I do to protect our physical selfs, our bodies and our pets?

Elmer Gray: 11:50

Light-colored, loose fitting clothing is really important to help prevent the mosquitoes from detecting you in the environment and being drawn to your attention that the contrast of black and white, dark colors, they can pick you up in the distance. They're attracted to the carbon dioxide in our breath, but certainly light colored, loose fitting clothing. It's a little bit easier today with the breathable clothing and stuff that's available. And then I highly recommend EPA approved insect repellents. DEET is still the gold standard, but there are several other materials if you want to use a plant based material, oil of lemon eucalyptus has shown some good effectiveness. You want to read the labels carefully. Some of them are approved for children as young as two months, DEET is; oil lemon eucalyptus requires children to be three years of age.

Jordan Powers: 12:36

Okay, so make sure we're paying attention to those labels before using products.

Elmer Gray: 12:40

As always with any pesticide.

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Emily Cabrera: 12:44

In addition to using EPA approved insect repellents on yourself and your loved ones, Nancy and Elmer both recommend talking with your veterinarian for the best tick, flea, and heartworm preventatives for your pets.

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Emily Cabrera: 12:57

So what if we have done everything possible to protect ourselves in our own yards, but we're still seeing and feeling mosquitos. Is there more that we can do? Is there any help that city or county level officials can help with?

Elmer Gray: 13:12

If you're having problems with adult mosquitoes and you've done everything you feel like you can do you want to check either your local public health department, the county government of some versions. Many small towns will have mosquito control districts or mosquito control programs. As far as at your home, there are adulticide products available through home improvement stores, whether it's a adulticide applicator or you can use a residual product that you would spray on, maybe the English ivy and the privet around your deck, where the mosquitoes may be harboring during the heat of the day. Always, when you go to the barrier type sprays, you want to be real careful about not applying to any flowering vegetation. You want to avoid any kind of pollinator habitats. But English ivy is a notorious site. Doesn't bloom, doesn't have any real pollinator attraction.

Jordan Powers: 13:57

I just learned a new thing today, and I have so much English ivy on my property, I'm going, okay, well, I've gotten rid of all the standing water, but now I'm like, Oh, dang, I've got a whole another thing that I have to look at.

Elmer Gray: 14:09

You think about that English ivy. It's a dense vegetation down low at the ground, so it's going to provide shade increased humidity down at that level. So that's where during the heat of the summer, and it gets hot, those mosquitoes have to go somewhere, so they don't dry out. So they get in the shade, they get into dense vegetation, stay there during the heat of the day, you get home from work at six o'clock and you're around your patio, the shadows get longer. They come out to bite.

Jordan Powers: 14:30

Dang it. All right. Well, I have items on my to do list, and I know we do have a lot more reference information through Extension, so we'll be sure to link to some of that in the show notes on what homeowners can do on their own properties. So we've talked about EPA approved repellents, we've talked about light, loose fitting clothing and emptying water on our own properties. But how can we look broader than ourselves? Maybe look at our neighbors and our neighborhood and our households, and how we can improve the effectiveness of getting rid of those pests for our neighbors?

Elmer Gray: 14:56

Talk to your neighbors. Try to be neighborly. Work with senior citizens to see if we can do anything to help them. You know, eliminate containers around their yard. One of the things we talked about the other day was it's been windy. We're coming out of winter, so look around the distant parts of your property to see what's at the fence line, what's got blown over that's maybe holding water that you may not be as cognizant of or as aware of that catches your attention. Just a few things like that. Trying to clean up, you cannot get too clean. As far as eliminating, you know, tires, there's tire recycling days. That's a really important thing too, is getting tires out of our community.

Emily Cabrera: 15:28

For most people, a mosquito bite is little more than an itchy inconvenience. But we also know that they can carry diseases. What diseases are we worried about, and what are the chances of getting a disease from a mosquito bite?

Elmer Gray: 15:40

That's a great question. West Nile virus is still our most common mosquito borne disease in Georgia. We had 54 cases, five deaths in 2024 so we need to really be diligent about this. Preventing mosquito bites are important. There's a couple other diseases. Eastern equine encephalitis can be a problem in the lower part of the state. La Crosse encephalitis. These are viruses that are transmitted. Just like coming through the COVID, there's different levels of susceptibility, so only like 20% of the people who are exposed to West Nile virus develop the fever, less than 1% develop meningitis or encephalitis, thankfully. So West Nile virus is still our most common thing that's transmitted by mosquitos that grow across the entire state of Georgia and southeast. They like foul water with a lot of nutrients in it. Storm drains are an important part of that story, and that's where the town can be involved with larviciding storm drains. That's a great practice for communities to conduct that does not involve adulticiding, it's not controversial, and it should be done around schools and retirement centers, for sure.

Jordan Powers: 16:40

So the takeaway here is we need to protect ourselves and our immediate family, but we also need to be on the lookout for our neighbors and our broader community.

Elmer Gray: 16:46

Absolutely anything we can do. Certainly elderly neighbors, I would really focus on them, trying to help them out, keep things clean, being neighborly can go a long ways to help in your community.

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Emily Cabrera: 16:56

Well, friends, we hope you feel a little more prepared as you get outdoors this spring and summer, in preventing ticks and mosquitos from disrupting your outdoor fun.

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Jordan Powers: 17:05

Thanks for listening to Cultivating Curiosity, a podcast produced by the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. A special thanks to Mason McClintock for our music and sound effects. Find more episodes wherever you get your podcasts.