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A comment on Lyme Disease Is on the Rise Again. Parent comment

Re:Lyme Disease Is on the Rise Again by wilsonnb on Monday May 07, 2018 @01:18PM (#17014521)
Encouraging a local opossum population, if they live in your area, would help. They eat a lot of ticks. Allegedly they eat 90% of the ticks that they encounter, which can be up to 5000 per opossum in a season.
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Re:Lyme Disease Is on the Rise Again by nonbel on Monday May 07, 2018 @03:34PM (#17015747)
>"up to 5000 per opossum in a season"

It looks like a single tick may produce 500 - 15,000 ticks per "ovipostion" (egg-laying session).

LABORATORY STUDIES ON THE OVIPOSITION, EGG-SIZES AND SHAPES AND EMBRYONIC DEVELOPMENT OF DERMACENTOR VA RIA BILlS, RHIPICEPHALUS SANGUINEUS AND AMBLYOMMA MACULATUM http://www1.montpellier.inra.fr/cbgp/acarologia/export_pdf.p...

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Re:Lyme Disease Is on the Rise Again by wilsonnb on Monday May 07, 2018 @03:47PM (#17015875)
We're going to need a lot of opossums then!

I'd be curious to know how long the average life span of each tick is. I wonder exactly how many opossums I would need per square foot to ensure that my yard is 99.99% tick free.

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