AB4D said:
... I thought about getting some Guinea fowl to patrol the area, but with multiple cats living on my property, I don't think they would get along. ...
Jim
Could be very entertaining, however.
Particularly when the guinea fowl get bigger than the cats!
We had a very late hard freeze here in MO -- about a week in the teens at night after 2 or 3 weeks of unseasonably warm weather. It killed a lot of delicate plants, and ruined the fruit crops of many commmercial growers, but the silver lining is that it appears to have stunted the tick crop. Still finding some, but not to the extent that we normally do.
The week we moved onto our place 32 months ago, I caught the tick borne disease "Ehrliciosis". It is a bacterial infection, like Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever -- only without the spots. I kept blowing it off as a flu bug and didn't go to the doctor -- we were new in town and didn't have a doctor yet, anyway. When my wife finally convinced me to to go to the emergency room, the doctor praised her for saving my life. He said if I had blown it off for another day, I wouldn't have had a chance. As it was, I was laid up for 6 or 7 weeks with no energy and incredibly painful joints and muscles.
Think tick disease first in the Spring and Summer if you don't feel well. A wasted trip to the doctor is not nearly as expensive or devastating as spending weeks recovering -- or worse. Chills, night sweats, high fever, and screaming headaches are common symptoms to both Ehrliciosis and RMSF. Unlike Lyme disease, these two do not linger with you the rest of your life. Once the antibiotics kick in, you can achieve a full recovery.
