EDITOR'S NOTE: Progressive Charlestown features a permanent link to the URI anti-tick program. Look in the righthand column and click on Tickencounter, just below the weather report.
Most people try to avoid ticks. But not Tom Mather.
Most people try to avoid ticks. But not Tom Mather.
The University of Rhode
Island researcher goes out of his way to find them.
These are the teeny-tiny carriers of Lyme disease, an illness that can lead to
symptoms ranging from nasty rashes to memory loss.
Mather's not having much
trouble finding deer ticks. In fact, he just might be the best deer tick
collector in the country. He caught 15,000 of them last year.
His success is a sign of
a growing problem. Adult-sized deer ticks are thriving throughout much of the
Northeast and parts of the Midwest.
Mather has a trim gray
beard and a runner's build. He moves through the undergrowth with precision. He
goes from one plant to another, sometimes plucking off ticks five at a time.
"You know. I can
hold eight to 10 in my fingers and do it that way," Mather says. "If
there is more than that, usually I will sort of touch the branch to my thigh
and let the ticks crawl up on my leg and then I have a couple seconds to pick
them before they start walking away."
Mather doesn't have to
go into the deep woods to find ticks. A lot of times, he's practically in
people's wooded backyards.
"People would be
incredulous if they only knew," he says.
Article continues
at NPR Topics:
Environment