Ticks & Deer

Twenty-five years ago, one of the major insect menaces in the U. S. was the cattle tick. The entire southern part of the U. S. was under tick quarantine. Damage every year throughout the U. S. amounted to about $45,000,000. But, working with its usual methodical efficiency, the Department of Agriculture practically wiped out the cattle tick by the only sure method: dipping in an arsenical solution. Only a few counties in Texas and six in southern Florida are still under quarantine. Trouble there is that ticks are carried not only by cattle, horses, mules and sheep, which can be dipped, but also by deer, which cannot be dipped and might reinfest clean animals. Last month Florida decided the deer would have to be killed.

The cattle tick, unengorged, is about 1/10 by 1/20 of an inch. It is light yellowish or light greyish brown. The hatching larvae crawl up grass or weed stems and attach themselves to a passing animal. There they grow to adulthood in about 30 days, living on the blood of the host. They mate on the host, the female drops to the ground, lays her eggs, and dies. Fever induced by the tick kills cattle, stunts them, lowers their milk flow, damages their skins and hides.

This summer the ticks got so bad in Florida's Orange, Osceola, Polk, Charlotte, Hendry and Collier counties that the

Florida State Livestock Sanitary Board scheduled for last week a gigantic deer hunt. Hired hunters were to kill some 1,000 deer in the quarantined area. At this point, the Florida Deer Protective Association promptly protested, pointed out that the State could not control the hunt because no provision had been made for fencing in the quarantined area. The huntsmen also pointed out that such wholesale hunting would be unsportsmanlike. The Association got a restraining order against the State, which last week decided to postpone the hunt indefinitely.

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