Latest / In Focus with Carolyn Hutcheson / Forestry Expert's Tick Prevention Tips - TPR's In Focus - August 20, 2026

Transcript

Forestry Expert's Tick Prevention Tips - TPR's In Focus - August 20, 2026 · In Focus with Carolyn Hutcheson

• 0:00
  Support comes from the Janice Hawkins Cultural Arts Park
• 0:04
  on the main campus of Troy University,
• 0:06
  featuring the International Arts Center, the Fred Noll
• 0:10
  Hollis Museum, and the Hua Bao Zhu Gallery.
• 0:14
  More information at troy.edu/artspark.
• 0:24
  From Troy Public Radio, this is In
• 0:27
  Focus, and I'm Carolyn Hutcheson. If you enjoy what
• 0:32
  the outdoors offers you, be on the lookout for what comes
• 0:36
  with it— ticks. Registered forester Greg
• 0:40
  Brewer shares his tips for navigating nature
• 0:44
  without ticks hitching a ride. He joins
• 0:48
  us from the Alabama Forestry Commission, where he serves as Safety and
• 0:52
  Training Director.
• 0:57
  Greg Brewer, welcome to Troy Public Radio. Well,
• 1:00
  thank you. Thanks for having me on today. Greg, you are
• 1:04
  in the woods a lot. How do you protect yourself
• 1:08
  from ticks? There's several different ways, but wearing bug spray,
• 1:11
  making sure that when you go outside, you wear bug spray and then checking
• 1:16
  yourself as soon as you get back home or when you can within
• 1:19
  24 hours. You definitely want to do a tick check on yourself.
• 1:23
  That's one of the best ways to kind of avoid any issues there.
• 1:27
  But wearing bug spray is probably the number one thing.
• 1:30
  And how do you remove a tick from your
• 1:34
  skin? I keep a tick key in my vehicle.
• 1:38
  That way, if I see a tick on me or even that evening, I have
• 1:41
  one at the house as well. That helps remove the tick without allowing
• 1:46
  all the stuff inside the tick to be squeezed back in the body
• 1:49
  like you would if you had a pair of tweezers. So I use a tick
• 1:52
  key and they're a little key that helps remove the tick without
• 1:57
  leaving the tick embedded. I try not to use tweezers or
• 2:01
  needle-nose pliers to squeeze the tick. I want to remove the
• 2:05
  entire tick including the head. So those tick keys are sure helpful.
• 2:09
  You'll find them. You can definitely Google them and find them. They're not very
• 2:13
  expensive at all. Greg, I want to call the listeners' attention
• 2:16
  to a terrific article that you wrote in Alabama's
• 2:21
  Treasured Forest magazine. This is issue number 3
• 2:25
  of this year. Your article is entitled Ticks: What to Know,
• 2:29
  and you introduced us to a number of ticks I was
• 2:33
  not aware of. So how vulnerable are we in this
• 2:37
  region? We're definitely vulnerable, and one of the main
• 2:41
  goals of the article was to just bring awareness to ticks in
• 2:45
  Alabama and some of the diseases that they can carry and that their population
• 2:49
  density is kind of increasing. But there's several different
• 2:53
  types. Lone Star tick, the brown dog tick, the deer
• 2:57
  tick, the American dog tick, very common in Alabama.
• 3:00
  And just want to make sure that people wear bug spray and stay safe
• 3:05
  as they're out moving in the woods. I noticed that according to
• 3:09
  the map that you had in this article, deer ticks— found out
• 3:13
  they carry Lyme disease. American dog ticks carry Rocky
• 3:17
  Mountain spotted fever. Some of these things carry diseases I can't
• 3:22
  even pronounce. Yes, they do. And their
• 3:25
  life cycle, some of them have a 3-host
• 3:30
  life cycle. So they'll actually embed themselves into 3
• 3:33
  different animals during their life, and one of them could be you. So you're kind
• 3:38
  of getting some of the diseases from other animals, and that's the biggest danger,
• 3:41
  get some of those diseases. So when you're in the outdoors,
• 3:46
  what kind of clothing helps? If I'm in the outdoors, I always
• 3:49
  wear long pants. So, if you walk through some tall grass or
• 3:54
  in the leaves or litter layer of the forest, maybe a tick
• 3:57
  gets on your pants and you can see them and get them off pretty quickly
• 4:01
  as compared to if you were wearing shorts, they would get on your leg and
• 4:04
  then you have a chance of it biting you. So, I love to
• 4:08
  make sure that folks know to wear long pants. Boots are
• 4:13
  also very helpful compared to, you know, flip-flops or something
• 4:16
  of the sort. And then long-sleeve shirts if you can,
• 4:19
  although it's pretty hot in Alabama, so I want to avoid getting overheated,
• 4:23
  but definitely long pants and long-sleeve shirts. Greg, in your
• 4:27
  research, did you find that ticks here in the South are
• 4:32
  confined to a certain season, or can we be vulnerable
• 4:36
  year-round? So ticks really thrive on
• 4:40
  warmer climates and higher humidity.
• 4:42
  Alabama has both. High humidity and warm climates,
• 4:46
  and our winters are fairly mild. They still can be active
• 4:50
  during our winter months because they're not that cold compared to the northern states,
• 4:55
  but they're definitely subdued, meaning they don't move around
• 4:59
  as much. So the spring, they're very active. They're looking for a
• 5:02
  new host as they've molted from one part of their life cycle to the next.
• 5:06
  And then during the summer months, they're also looking for that other host. In the
• 5:11
  winter, they tend to die down as far as their activity, but they still can
• 5:15
  be found on you. So wearing bug spray really every time you go into the
• 5:18
  woods is the best practice. Everyone knows that Alabama has a lot
• 5:23
  of white-tailed deer, and you pointed out in this article that they
• 5:26
  are one of the hosts. Yes. So typically, if you look at the life cycle
• 5:30
  of a tick, the first host usually is a small rodent,
• 5:34
  a squirrel or a mouse or something like that. And then,
• 5:37
  as they progress through their life cycle, which could be 3 years,
• 5:41
  one of their last hosts can be a deer. A larger mammal
• 5:45
  is what they're kind of looking for. Greg, the expansion of urban
• 5:49
  development into traditionally wooded area,
• 5:53
  is this a factor in this tick explosion?
• 5:58
  Sure, I definitely say it would be. As our urban sprawl,
• 6:01
  our homes are moving towards the forested area, we're going to
• 6:06
  come in contact with other things in the forest. From animals that
• 6:09
  live in the forest to insects, and ticks are one of those.
• 6:14
  So, we definitely, as the population in the state
• 6:17
  increases, homes increase, and we're pushing our cities out into the
• 6:21
  forested areas that traditionally didn't have any homes, then we're going to
• 6:24
  come into all the things that the forests have, from invasive
• 6:28
  species to animals to insects like these ticks. So,
• 6:32
  definitely would see an increase in that.
• 6:35
  Another thing he pointed out in the article is that pets
• 6:39
  can bring in ticks. Ticks carry serious
• 6:43
  diseases. So what about pets? Do you have a
• 6:47
  pet? Do you have to treat it? Yes, I've got several. We have a small
• 6:51
  farm at home, but we do have to treat our pets,
• 6:54
  especially if you live on the edge of the city and you
• 6:58
  have different animals coming in and out of your home or moving through
• 7:02
  your area. You definitely want to make sure that you protect your
• 7:07
  pets from ticks and fleas and other diseases or other insects. Having some
• 7:11
  sort of tick protection is a great thing. And also another thing that
• 7:15
  folks can do is just keep their grass mowed. Grass cut short also
• 7:19
  helps prevent some of the number of ticks in their area. A lot
• 7:24
  of our listeners are gardeners. What do you know about gardening
• 7:27
  and ticks? Are there certain things the ticks are attracted to?
• 7:31
  I'm not an entomologist, but I do think that Ticks can be in
• 7:35
  a garden just like they can be in shrubs. They can be in wood piles.
• 7:39
  They can be in leaf piles. They can be in our trees or grass.
• 7:42
  They can live in gardens just like they could in our forest or in tall
• 7:46
  grass. Anybody that goes out and spends some time outdoors
• 7:50
  needs to be mindful of ticks and other different insects that could be
• 7:54
  out there. So wearing some bug spray, even if you're gardening or taking a hike
• 7:58
  through the woods or moving a wood pile or raking leaves,
• 8:02
  I think that's important to do. Greg, a lot of our listeners
• 8:06
  are birders. They love to get out in nature and look at
• 8:09
  birds and so forth. Do birds carry ticks? There are several different
• 8:13
  types of ticks that do make birds one of their hosts.
• 8:17
  If you look at the life cycle of a tick, again, they need to have
• 8:20
  2 to 3 blood meals is what they call them over
• 8:23
  a course of 2 to 3 years. And one of those can be at
• 8:27
  the very earliest stage of a tick's life cycle can be a bird.
• 8:30
  And the bird can, as they migrate from one part of the state
• 8:34
  to the other, they can bring those ticks from one part to the other.
• 8:36
  Sure can. With all of your experience as a registered
• 8:39
  forester, often in the field among these things,
• 8:43
  is there any final advice you'd like to share with the
• 8:47
  listeners? Yeah, I just want to make sure that when folks go outside,
• 8:50
  they're first knowledgeable about ticks and that they wear
• 8:54
  bug spray, that they check themselves every time,
• 8:58
  not just once or twice or, oh, I'll get to that, but they check themselves
• 9:02
  when they get home that evening to make sure that they don't have a tick.
• 9:05
  They also treat their pets and make sure that they have the adequate bug
• 9:09
  protection as well. You've given us new information,
• 9:12
  Greg, and I want to thank you for your interview today. Thank you
• 9:16
  for having me. That was registered forester Greg Brewer,
• 9:20
  Safety and Training Director of the Alabama Forestry Commission.
• 9:25
  His article, Ticks: What to Know,
• 9:28
  appeared in issue number 3, 2026 of
• 9:33
  Alabama's Treasured Forest magazine.
• 9:36
  Thanks for joining us for In Focus, which is a podcast
• 9:41
  wherever you get your podcasts. And feel free to get in touch at
• 9:45
  infocus@troy.edu. I'm Carolyn
• 9:49
  Hutcheson, and this is listener-supported Troy Public
• 9:53
  Radio.