SAMPLE ONE:

Beware the Fourth of July Party Crasher, the Tick 

One of the biggest events of the summer is coming up, the spectacular visual displays on the night of July 4. You may be concerned about not overlooking any detail from the perfect arrangement and timing of the pyrotechnic show to the positioning of your guests for maximum viewing pleasure and safety. However, you might be overlooking a tiny risk to their enjoyment and health, and so will they. People attending your firework show will be spreading out blankets or parking themselves in lawn chairs on the property. Their eyes will be on the sky, not on the ground—which is exactly where they should be focused. However, while distracted, they may pick up unwanted passengers in the form of a tick to remove once they get home. Worse, they may become exposed to a tick-borne disease or illness like Lyme disease or even tick paralysis. You can help make this Fourth of July celebration a tick-free zone and a positive experience with the following tips.

First, check the yard for ticks. Since the unfed, adult deer tick, for example, ranges from 2 mm to 5 mm in size—not much larger than the torch’s flame on the back of a dime—they will be almost impossible to spot with the naked eye. However, ticks are always on the lookout for prey. Use that instinct against them by making a simple tool to detect tick infestations. Take a rod or stick and attach a white towel to it. Run the cloth over sections of the lawn that you suspect may hold ticks. Usually, the ticks will climb onto the cloth because the movement and texture indicate possible prey. According to the National Park Service, conduct this test when conditions are more favorable for collection—ambient temperatures above 50° F and when the vegetation is dry. This test will help you determine the likelihood of a tick infestation.

Next, tackle the areas where ticks live. Just as it is suggested to remove standing water to remove breeding grounds for mosquitoes, another July 4 insect nuisance, you can remove the materials that attract ticks or their hosts. Ticks prefer moisture and darkness over sunny spots, so remove any leaf litter or moist plant litter that can create a haven for ticks. Some ticks hang out around potential feeding grounds or come in on host animals like mice. To help reduce the number bought onto your property, remove potential food sources—poorly sealed trash cans or leftover seed under bird feeders—that attract the host animals.

Then, mow the lawn. You may have mowed not long ago, but give the grass some extra attention now. Ticks love tall vegetation. They will climb onto this and lay in wait for passing prey, and the Fourth of July celebration offers a smorgasbord of opportunity. By keeping the grass short, you reduce tick hunting grounds. This also has the added benefit of making it easier for your guests to spread their blankets or position their seating arrangements for the firework display.

Finally, have the lawn professionally treated. Chemically treating property is usually the best bet to reduce tick population. Pest-control experts will locate and treat the likeliest areas with sprays that kill ticks, effectively up to 85% to 95% of the population. For those living in Fairfield or the three Ws—Weston, Westport, and Wilton—the professional pest-control service Bugs & Blades can treat your lawn and outside property. Their bug-spray products are non-toxic and children friendly, so you don’t have to worry about the effects on the guests lounging on the lawn, only their effects on the ticks.

These small details will have a big impact on the impression your guests take home with them. You want them to keep their eyes on the sky and a smile on their lips, not have their experience soured by the need to remove a tick or their worry about tick-borne diseases. Carry out these tips, and whether you are hosting thousands or just one on your property, you can dramatically reduce the chance that your guests take home some unwanted memories in the form of an uninvited spectator, the tick.

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SAMPLE TWO:

Pest Control Applicators: Taking the Fight against the Tick to Your Lawn

Action-movie and Marvel fans may be going buggy over the new July release, Ant-Man and the Wasp, but as much as you like watching insects play sidekick to heroes on the big screen, you want to keep your neighborhood where you live, work, and play safe from insect pests. But with the right team and the right tools, you can strike terror into the hearts of one of the worst villains of the lawn, the tick.

The Team

One of the most dastardly foes to plague a pleasant outing is the tick. They cause minor damage by biting and irritating you and your pets or wreak major havoc through anemia, disease, paralysis, and even death of you and their four-legged victims. It can be hard to fight ticks on your own. That is when you turn to professional yard and lawn sprayers. To find someone to defend your property against ticks, you don’t need to shine a spotlight in the sky. You just need to look online or in the phonebook for people with education and experience.

The right sprayers have no need to shrink down to Ant-Man’s size to know how and where to raid the tick’s dens of criminal activity. At Bugs & Blades, Tom and Chris together have over 20 years of experience waging battle in the backyards, park grounds, and facilities’ lawns. Bugs & Blades knows the predatory habits of the ticks, such as how they lurk in the insect kingdom’s equivalent of the dark alley—shady, moist areas under leaves and areas of tall grass. Bugs & Blades is also well acquainted with other common places ticks hang out to plot their next attack—such as ornamental plantings, wood piles, paths, woodsy areas, and perimeters.

Tom and Chris also know all about the Connecticut’s Fearsome Four, including these ticks’ aliases and the diseases these ticks spread. Rhipicephalus sanguineus is better known as Brown Dog Tick, who is responsible for infecting dogs with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Brown Dog Tick’s partner in crime? Dermacentor variabilis, also known as American Dog Tick. Then there is Amblyomma americanum, or Lone Star Tick when unmasked.  This aggressive biter likes to shake things up by giving humans Lyme disease and acute infections like Human Monocytic Ehrlichiosis (HME). But Lyme disease is the disease of choice for the Deer Tick to traffic in. Professionals know this lawn pest as Ixodes scapularis.

Finally, unlike in the movie Captain Amerca: Civil War where Marvel superheroes splintered into factions over governmental interference in their lives, the bug professionals at Bugs & Blades aren’t afraid of the registration process. The applicators are licensed by CT DEEP, and they are more than willing to show you their licenses to put your mind at ease. The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection’s commercial pesticide certificate is like the Super-human Registration Act for those in the field of pest management. DEEP enforces mandatory registration of professionals who actively spray your yard with pesticides. In this case, the government makes sure the Avengers of your lawn—the commercial pesticide applicators—have your back by going through an examination process first.

The Tools

Adult ticks come armed with eight legs to grip you, your pets, and wildlife tight, but their go-to weapon is the mouthpart, with which they seek to draw blood. This mouthpart is hard and beak-like on hard-bodied ticks like the famous femme fatale, the Lone Star Tick—she is the one who is hard to miss with the prominent white spot on her back. Others of the Fearsome Four are likewise equipped with a mouthpart like a serrated sword, making the tick difficult to remove once embedded and the blood plundering begins.

Beyond this tool, some hard-bodied ticks have the power to grow to incredible sizes, their weight increasing by 200 to 600 times after feeding. Some feel this elasticity is unprecedented in cell biology—outside of Marvel superheroes like Mr. Fantastic of The Fantastic Four, of course. But unlike Ant-Man who also grows to giant-sized proportions to take on villains like Ghost in the new Ant-Man and the Wasp movie, when a tick swells, it is not for the betterment of mankind.  Many ticks engorge themselves on blood in preparation to dropping off and starting the villainous cycle all over again with the next generation of ticks, the eggs.

The lawn and yard pest, the tick, has a formidable weapon, but Bugs & Blades can match it with their backpack misters. This pest-management equipment keeps the team agile and mobile, able to sneak in and hit the ticks hard where it hurts. The products are non-toxic and children friendly because Bugs & Blades care long-term about the people they serve. The tick pesticide sprays come in traditional, organic, and Kosher options, and the home or business owner has a choice of which product Bugs and Blades uses to defend their outside property. Fifteen to thirty minutes, and the fight will be over. If any ticks managed to scurry out in time or later rise up to try and take over the territory of a toppled rival, then Bugs & Blades can reapply every two to five weeks. This way newcomer ticks are kept in their place—or rather, out of yours.

So if ticks are terrorizing your backyard or business’s lawn in Fairfield or the three Ws—Weston, Westport, and Wilton—seek no further than your friendly neighborhood lawn Avengers, the pest-control team, Bugs & Blades. And otherwise, leave your time spent with bugs to the big screen where they belong.