Maine’s worst tick season ever is on its way. This writer knows what’s at stake.

SUN JOURNAL • August 31, 2025

For three days my temperature shot up to 102, so I’d feel burning hot one minute, Arctic cold the next. All I could eat was soup, and I did that with trembling hands. The result of my flesh being invaded by a tick so small it would be barely visible to the naked eye. Anaplasmosis, that’s what I had, an affliction I’d never heard of and still can’t pronounce half the time. It wrecked me for most of a week, subsided, and then came back a week later for a rerun. Then I started taking antibiotics and within hours of my second dose, I felt human again. But not everyone is so lucky. There’s Lyme disease out there in the world of poisonous ticks and Lyme is an infection that can impact, not just a week or two, but the entirety of a person’s life. In Maine, the rate of Lyme disease has increased more than tenfold in the past 20 years, and it continues to rise. This, experts said, will be another record-breaking year. I haven’t stopped hiking or rolling around in the grass like a dog for fear of ticks, even though I was so thoroughly humbled by one earlier in the summer. Give up doing what you love and the bloodsuckers win.