I visited the Sarnoff Preserve  (2 miles south of Riverhead) last week.  I needed to re-paint the white rectangular blazes on a section of Paumanok Path.  It had been four years since I last painted this section and the blazes were fading rapidly.  The trail travels through woods of oak and pine with an understory predominantly of blueberry, huckleberry, and the bushy low-growing scrub oak.  The low bushy growth encroaches the trail this time of year and sets up a perfect scenario for hikers to pick up ticks.  In anticipation of this risk, I treated my sneakers, white socks, and white pants with permethrin (a strong insecticide).  I tucked my pants into my socks and started painting.  I figured that I would get some trail work done and write about this hike for my article, but when I looked down at my pants there was a puff of dots on my pants.  I have seen these tiny red mobilized dots before.  They will continue to travel until they find exposed skin.  Each one leaves a bite that creates a welt that will itch for a whole month.  Normally, these “larval lone star ticks” gather at the ends of leaves and twigs.  As you brush against the leaves that they’re piled on, they transfer, “en masse”, to your clothes.  At first they look like a drop of liquid, then they spread out and look like a light puff of paint.  Five or ten minutes after they’ve made contact, they are spread out so thinly that unless you look really carefully, you won’t see them at all.

I was petrified that some of these tiny terrors would get past my defenses.  I was picking up thousands of them; it looked as if my pants had been splashed with mud.  I was astonished to then see the “mud” dripping off my pants.  The dots were constricting instead of spreading out.  The larval ticks were crawling on top of each other to keep away from my permethrin-treated pants.  They were creating drops just like the ones that grabbed onto my pants, only this time they were dripping off; a residue of dead, almost microscopic tick larvae was left behind.  I was relieved by this turn of events and finished blazing the trail in the westbound direction. Even though I managed not to get a single bite because of the precautions I took, I decided that I would wait and describe this hike for you at a later date; either after a couple of frosts have slowed the ticks down or a maintenance crew clears the brush away from the path. 

I walked around Sweezy Pond in Cranberry Bog County Preserve in August.  The parking area for this hike is on County Road 63, one mile south of the Riverhead Circle.  It is on the west side of the road, opposite where Lakeside Drive intersects CR 63.  I walked this trail and later found myself covered with itchy welts. When I sent samples of the offending critters to Vector Control to be analyzed, I was told that the small mites I associated with the welts were larval Lone Star Ticks.

I have been carrying isopropyl alcohol and a rag to wipe these critters off me in case they find their eway to untreated clothing.  I have found it nearly impossible to pick these tiny, grabby, little mites, off of me or my clothes, but alcohol and a rag takes them right off.  I have found that if you wipe them off your clothes before they get to your skin you can save yourself from a very itchy experience.

I have found DEET and Picardin to be virtually useless against ticks, but Picardin is very effective against flying insects, and doesn’t have a bad odor or cause me any untoward reaction.