Bug Alerts (Alpha-Gal)

In parks, in backyards, in woods that are lovely, dark, and deep, a many-legged menace now stalks the land. I speak of ticks, and I come bearing absolutely no good news. In recent decades, ticks have made the leap from nuisance to genuine public-health threat: Their numbers are rising. Their ranges are expanding. And the diseases they carry are multiplying. Lyme cases have more than doubled since 2000, in which time scientists have also discovered eight new tick-borne diseases—plus an unusual and potentially dangerous tick-induced meat allergy called alpha-gal syndrome.

“The ticks are winning,” a CDC scientist wrote in a recent paper. To put it even more bluntly, humans are losing and are on the retreat. Ilia Rochlin, a tick researcher at Stony Brook University, told me he stopped hiking in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey after he and his wife came across hundreds and hundreds of newly hatched lone star ticks on a trail several summers ago. And on Long Island, where he lives, “it is impossible to go hiking in most areas,” Rochlin said. “Just because of ticks.”

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