June is the most active month for the blacklegged ticks in their smallest, yet able-to-transmit stage, associate professor of fisheries and wildlife Jean Tsao said.

June is also the sun-soaked month in which Lake Michigan attracts a host of visitors and ticks dry out and die on the beach, causing Tsao to recommend avoiding leaf litter and the brush along sand dunes and woods.

Tucking pant legs in, sticking to the trails, wearing DEET repellents and checking yourself and others for ticks are the best prevention techniques, she added.

There have been confirmed blacklegged tick populations in the Lower Peninsula from southwest Michigan to Leelanau County, Erik Foster, medical entomologist with the Michigan Department of Community Health, or MDCH, said.

“Michigan is considered an emerging state for Lyme disease,” Foster said.

Tsao said she confidently predicts the blacklegged ticks invading Ingham County within 10 years.

“The ticks are reaching out,” Tsao warned. “They’re creeping this way.”

According to an MDCH map that tracks Lyme disease, there is a one-county buffer remaining between Ingham County and endemic areas.

“People learn to live with (the tick problem) because they don’t want to be cooped up all the time,” Tsao said. “It’s just like poison ivy — you wouldn’t rub yourself against every plant.”

If you find a tick on you, remove it, but keep it, as the specie of tick determines the pathogens it may have, Tsao said.

“We want to smash them, burn them, flush them down the toilet, but we lose a lot of information,” Tsao said.

The symptoms of Lyme disease include a characteristic bulls-eye rash and a flu-like illness with headaches, fever, joint pains and muscle aches, Foster said.

Graduate student Tom Wechter is familiar with the disease, but was unaware of the tick problem that is heading toward East Lansing in the future.

“I’ve heard of (Lyme disease), but not about the spread of ticks,” Wechter said.