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Ticks only become infected with the agents causing Lyme disease when they take their blood meal from an infectious animal host. Contrary to popular belief, ticks don’t become infected by feeding on deer. Deer don’t transmit the disease to ticks, although they do play a important role in a tick’s life. Instead, it’s small rodents and some common species of birds, especially white-footed mice, that pass on the bacterial agent that causes Lyme disease.

Mice are active at night and live in the forest, brush, and in stone walls, and with more than 150,000 miles of stone walls in New England, that’s a lot of prime real estate. Stone walls are like rodent condominiums.

The poppy-seed size nymphs emerge in May and are active through July. They wait on shaded vegetation near the ground (yard perimeters), looking for a host, most likely a small mammal or bird to latch on to. However, a human or family dog is also suitable. Nearly 25 percent of nymphs are already infected with the disease, and they are much tougher to spot than infected adult ticks.

They crawl up from the ground, up our legs, and we don’t feel them. They’re hard to see.

After about four days and a steady diet of blood, the engorged nymph drops from its host into the leaf litter below. The tick then molts again, and when the fall comes, adult-stage ticks, now active, wait in tall grass or brushy stems usually a foot or two above the ground looking for its host to latch on to.

White-tailed deer are an adult tick’s best friend. They are the main reproductive host. If no deer are around, then most likely no deer ticks will be around.

The adult-stage ticks are active from October throughout the winter, as long as the ground isn’t frozen or covered with snow. However, there is some good news: In New England, where temperatures typically fall below freezing, the adult tick may be kept dormant by frigid air.

A blood-engorged female – after feeding for about seven days in the fall or spring – detaches from its host and falls off; if the host is a deer, ticks fall off where ever deer may be bedded down. It survives the winter in the forest litter, and around Memorial Day, each female tick begins laying more than 1,500 eggs. That’s when the new larvae start the whole two-year cycle of the deer tick again.

While more than half of adult stage ticks are infected with Lyme disease, they are not as dangerous as they are in the spring nymphal stage. That’s because the fall apple seed sized adults are easier to spot. The pathogen transmission from the embedded infected ticks to pets and humans begins to occur in about 24 to 36 hours.