Welcome to high tick season!  Ticks are nasty little buggers that can be really harmful to you and your pets.  They live in wooded areas and brushy fields, often catching rides on rodents, deer, and other animals.  If you or one of your pets gets bitten by a tick, you risk getting any one of a host of unpleasant — to say the least — diseases.  Lyme disease is chief among them, and that’s not a risk you want to take.  Tick prevention is the best way to protect yourself.  And there are a lot of things that you can do to make your property an uninviting place for ticks.  As you work on “tick-proofing” your property, your wood chipper is going to be an invaluable tool.  Here’s why:

Ticks Love Brush Piles

Brush piles attract rodents and rodents are often riddled with ticks.  And once ticks ride into the brush pile on a mouse or a mole, they might just stay there.  After all, they like dark, moist hiding places (and that sure sounds like my brush piles!).  Unless you’re really attached to your brush piles, chip ’em away!  Getting rid of them — or at least moving them far away from your house and yard — will keep the rodents and the ticks that they carry away from your family and pets.

Ticks Don’t Love Wood Chips

Once you’ve gotten rid of those critter-infested brush piles, the resulting wood chips can be used to create a buffer zone around your yard to protect the areas that you and your family regularly use.  Ticks don’t like to cross paths of wood chips, gravel, or stones, so surrounding an area with any of these materials will keep ticks out.  A three-foot wide strip of wood chips between your yard and the woods or any brushy fields will keep your yard tick-free.  Ticks won’t want to cross that three-foot wide space for fear of drying out — remember, they like cool, dark, moist places.

Looking for even more ways to use your wood chips?