Even on the hottest summer days, Gabriel Wolfson shows up for work in a long-sleeved shirt, with his trousers tucked into his socks. He pulls on a backpack full of chemicals and marches out to the edge of his customer's backyard in Rochester, Mass.
Wolfson points his nozzle at the surrounding foliage and sprays up and down along the perimeter. Soon the whole area has a faint, sweet smell.
He uses a chemical called bifenthrin to create an invisible barrier along the property line. Bifenthrin stops ticks in their tracks, according to Wolfson. They tend not to cross the line, and when they do the consequences for them can be fatal.
Treatments such as this vary in price, depending on the size of the property. According to Wolfson, a backyard like this, less than one acre in size, costs about $100 per session. He comes back once a month from May to October during tick season.
"It's very effective," Wolfson said. "I do typically get about a tick or two on me when I spray properties that have never been treated. But once I’ve treated it, I don't think I've ever gotten a tick on me at all."
But Rhode Island's most prominent tick biologist has some doubts.
"It depends on what product and what method you use," said Thomas Mather, a URI entomologist sometimes referred to as "Dr. Tick." Mather has been studying ticks since the 1980s.
He said chemicals like bifenthrin tend to be most effective when they are dispersed by a truck-mounted sprayer at higher pressure than one man with a backpack can muster.
The good news, according to Mather, is that the worst part of tick season is over for now.
That has more to do with the life cycle than with human intervention. Adult blacklegged ticks spend the colder months feeding on deer and mating. By late spring, the fed females have laid their eggs and died off. What's left behind is the nymph stage. Tiny and easy to miss, they're the ones most likely to pass Lyme disease to a person.
Nymphs peak early in the summer, and by mid-July their numbers start to wane.
According to data from the state Department of Health, cases of Lyme disease peak in July and then taper off. Rhode Island logged 2,563 cases in 2024, the most recent year on record. That's a statewide rate of about 234 per 100,000 people.
But in Washington County, you can multiply that by three. Heavily wooded areas full of deer are ideal breeding grounds for Lyme-carrying ticks.
Blacklegged ticks don't disappear completely in late summer. But people stop encountering the nymphs that carry Lyme disease. Instead, what tends to show up are tiny tick larvae, about the size of a poppy seed. This spring's eggs, freshly hatched.
"Usually you don't encounter just one, because they tend to occur in what we call a 'tick bomb', and that makes them even scarier," Mather said.
"When people get those, they completely freak out," he said.
But according to Mather, those larvae are actually fairly harmless. They haven't fed on anything yet, which means they haven't had the chance to pick up Lyme disease. That makes them more of a nuisance than a threat to public health.
"It's just gross," Mather said.
According to Mather, the ticks people need to worry about most in late summer are the lone star ticks. They're not considered a vector for Lyme, but they do spread what can be a severe allergy to red meat and dairy called alpha-gal syndrome.
It's an allergy, not an infection, according to Mather.
Given the name and the connection to barbecue, you might think lone star ticks come from Texas. Think again. The lone star name comes from a single white dot on the back of the adult female.
It's true the species used to be far more prevalent in southern states than here in New England, but according to Mather, they have surged here in New England in recent years.
Tracking data published by URI's TickEncounter Resource Center shows reported lone star tick encounters in Rhode Island climbing roughly 300 percent since the late 1990s, spreading from a handful of coastal zip codes to nearly thirty.
Lone star ticks have started to overrun Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket and have recently turned up in Bristol County, Massachusetts. Connecticut's tick-surveillance program has tracked a similar surge farther east, in New London County.
Same tick, same allergy, same woods. Scientists believe it's only a matter of time before their numbers increase in Rhode Island as well.
Rhode Island health officials also announced last week the state’s second case of Powassan virus, a rare tick-borne illness that can cause fatal encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain.
A Newport County man in his 70s tested positive for the virus, which can be carried by blacklegged ticks.
What can people do to keep safe?
One big thing: keep the grass short. Tall grass gives ticks places to climb and wait for their next meal. Short grass also makes it harder for the ticks to fend off birds and other animals.
Also: don't get too comfortable.
"Adult stage blacklegged ticks reemerge in October and November," said Mather. "And they continue to be active as long as it's not freezing."
In other words, even though the worst part of tick season is over, we're not out of the woods yet.
