Cottage Q&A: Do possums eat ticks?; out-of-province insurance; airflow solution; dock storage tips; lake slime ID

Jackie Davis

Q: How effective are opossums at tick control?—Grace McNally, via email A: Not very effective at all. At least, there’s no strong evidence that they are. You’ve probably read the same stat that we have—Virginia opossums, a.k.a. Canada’s only marsupial, eat about 95 per cent of the ticks that feed on them. Hey, good job, opossums! That makes you “ecological traps.” You’re so irritated by the ticks feeding on you that you immediately try to get them off your bodies—by eating them—and the ticks can’t complete their life cycles. Other hosts, such as white-tailed deer, are much more permissive. But here’s the thing: that conclusion comes from one American 2009 lab study (Keesing et al.). The researchers trapped five opossums and exposed each caged animal to 100 ticks. After four…

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Cottage Life (Digital) - 1 Issue, September/October 2024

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