EDITOR:
May is not only when Islanders dust off their golf clubs, but it is also Lyme disease awareness month. If your golf game is sometimes off the fairway like mine, then golf and Lyme share something in common. Long grass and moist swampy areas are perfect habitat for black-legged ticks, which are now waking up from hibernation and looking for a blood meal. That could be a mouse, a bird, or a golfer -- ticks aren't fussy.
Ticks are becoming more prevalent on P.E.I., thanks to climate change and warmer winters which no longer kill them off. May and June are particularly dangerous times for tick bite, since juvenile nymphs that are responsible for most Lyme infections are most active in the spring. Their bites are serious but painless, and the nymphs are hard to spot among your freckles since they are no larger than the period at the end of this sentence.
Golfers and others who venture off the fairway would be well-advised to spray some Deep Woods Off onto pants and socks, since DEET is effective at repelling ticks. Remember that many ticks escape without being detected, and less than one-third of Lyme cases will show the typical bulls-eye rash. Maybe a few golf lessons to straighten out your drive wouldn't hurt either.
Chris Robinson,
Cavendish
