Which Ticks Carry Lyme Disease in Massachusetts and Rhode Island?

A customer in Swansea handed me a sandwich bag last spring with a tick in it the size of a pinto bean and asked whether she needed to call her doctor. I told her the honest thing, which is that the tick in the bag was an American dog tick, fat from a few days on the family's golden retriever, and that it does not carry Lyme disease. Then I told her the less comfortable thing. The tick she should worry about is the one she probably would not have noticed. It is a fraction of that size, and in May and June it is sitting on the low plants along the edge of almost every yard we treat.

I have been pulling ticks off myself, my crews, and my own dog since we started Mosquito Mike in Fall River in 2017, and the questions come in a predictable order. Which ones carry Lyme? How long does it have to be on you? Do they fly? What does the bite look like? Here they are in that order, for Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and then what to do when you find one.

Only One Tick Here Carries Lyme Disease

Three ticks bite people in our two states often enough to matter. The blacklegged tick, which everyone around here calls the deer tick, is the one that carries Lyme disease. It also carries the germs behind anaplasmosis, babesiosis, Powassan virus disease, and Borrelia miyamotoi infection, and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health points out that it can pass more than one of them in a single bite. The American dog tick is the big brown one with the pale marbling on its back, the tick most of us grew up picking off the dog. It carries Rocky Mountain spotted fever and tularemia, and it does not transmit Lyme. The lone star tick, a southern species that has settled onto Cape Cod and the Islands and is turning up in Rhode Island, carries ehrlichiosis and is tied to the red-meat allergy called alpha-gal syndrome. It does not transmit Lyme either.

Size is the easiest tell between the first two. An unfed adult deer tick is about the size of a sesame seed, dark shield behind the head, reddish body on the female. A dog tick is noticeably bigger and wears that mottled, whitish pattern on its back. If you are not sure what you pulled off, URI's TickEncounter program keeps a photo gallery that will settle it in a minute.

Source: Massachusetts Department of Public Health — Lyme disease · URI TickEncounter — Blacklegged tick · URI TickEncounter — American dog tick · URI TickEncounter — Lone star tick

Nymph or Adult: Same Tick, Two Very Different Problems

The deer tick that bites you in June and the one that bites you in November are the same animal at two different ages, and that difference is the one that matters. A nymph is the stage after the larva. It is about the size of a poppy seed, and it is behind most of the Lyme infections in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Rhode Island's health department says it plainly: most people are infected through the bites of nymphs. Nymphs are out looking for hosts from April through July, with the heaviest pressure from mid-May into early summer, which is exactly when the kids are in the yard and the dog is in the brush.

The reason nymphs cause most of the trouble is not that they are more infectious. It is that they are small enough to miss. A poppy seed in the crease behind a knee or along a hairline can feed for days without anyone noticing. Adults carry the bacterium too. The CDC's own wording is that adult females can transmit it but are more likely to be noticed and removed before transmission because of their larger size. Adults are the fall and spring ticks. They come out in October, stay active on any winter day above freezing, and push again in early spring before the nymphs take over. That is the whole winter tick story, and the reason our winter program exists.

Source: CDC — How Lyme Disease Spreads · Rhode Island Department of Health — Lyme disease · Massachusetts Department of Public Health — Tick-borne disease prevention

How Long a Tick Has to Be Attached

This is the number people most want, and it is also the one most often printed wrong. The CDC's current wording is that in most cases a tick must be attached for more than 24 hours before the Lyme disease bacterium can be transmitted, and that removing a tick within 24 hours greatly reduces your chances of getting Lyme disease. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health says the tick usually must be attached for at least 24 hours before it can spread the germ. You will still see 36 to 48 hours quoted on plenty of websites. That figure comes from older material, and it is not what either agency prints today. We go by 24 hours because it is the careful number.

In practice: a tick found and removed the same day it got on you has very likely not had time to do anything. That is the entire argument for a same-day tick check, and it matters most for the poppy-seed nymph, the one that gets past a quick look.

Two honest notes. Not every deer tick is infected, so an attached tick is not a diagnosis. And 24 hours is the Lyme figure; the same tick carries other germs with their own timelines, so get the tick off fast rather than counting hours.

Source: CDC — How Lyme Disease Spreads · Massachusetts Department of Public Health — Lyme disease

Do Ticks Fly or Jump? No. They Wait.

Ticks have no wings and cannot jump. What they do is called questing, and once you have watched it you will never walk through tall grass the same way. A tick climbs to the tip of a grass blade, the edge of a leaf, or the end of a low branch, hangs on with its back legs, and holds its front legs out in the air. When a deer, a dog, or your pant leg brushes past, it grabs on and starts climbing. They do not drop out of trees either; they stay low, because that is where the animals they feed on walk by.

Deer are a big part of that traffic. Adults feed and mate on deer, which is where the nickname comes from, and wherever deer walk a wood line in November, ticks drop into the leaf litter along it. That explains almost everything about where you pick them up. The middle of a mowed lawn in the sun is poor tick ground. The edge where the lawn meets the woods, the stone wall, the brushy strip along the fence, the leaf litter under the shrubs by the back steps, that is where they are, and that is the ground our tick treatments go after first.

Source: UConn Home and Garden Education Center — Ticks

When They Are Active Here

There is no month in Massachusetts or Rhode Island when the deer tick is off. Nymphs run April through July. Adults take over in October, keep working on any winter day when the ground is thawed and the air is above freezing, and have a second push in early spring. TickEncounter, which collects tick photos from people all over the country, reports that about 85 percent of what comes in during October and November is adult blacklegged ticks. That is the tick on the dog after a Thanksgiving walk.

The first hard frost, usually late October inland and November near the coast, ends mosquito season. It does not end tick season. Our tick season guide has the whole year month by month, and if you live on the South Shore or the Cape, our winter tick article for those towns explains why the coast gets more tick days than inland.

Source: University of Rhode Island — Taking a hike? Remember, it’s deer tick season · Massachusetts Department of Public Health — 2025 Tick-Borne Disease Surveillance Report

What a Tick Bite Looks Like

Most tick bites look like nothing at all, which is the problem. A deer tick's bite is painless, and the first sign is usually the tick itself, still attached. A small red bump right at the bite, the kind that looks like a mosquito bite, is common after any tick is removed. The CDC says that irritation generally goes away in a day or two and is not a sign of Lyme disease.

The sign that is Lyme disease is the expanding rash, erythema migrans. It shows up in about 70 to 80 percent of infected people, starting at the bite site anywhere from 3 to 30 days after the bite, with about a week being typical. It grows over several days and can reach 12 inches or more across. It may feel warm, but it is rarely itchy or painful. Sometimes the center clears and you get the bull's-eye from the pictures, but plenty of these rashes are just a solid, growing red patch. Fever, chills, headache, fatigue, and aching muscles and joints can come with the rash or without it. Any of that in the weeks after a tick bite is a call to your doctor.

Source: CDC — Signs and Symptoms of Lyme Disease

What to Do When You Find One Attached

Do not reach for a match, nail polish, or petroleum jelly. The CDC does not recommend any of them; the goal is to get the tick off as quickly as possible, not to wait for it to let go. The right way takes thirty seconds. Take clean, fine-tipped tweezers and grasp the tick as close to the skin as you can get. Pull straight up with steady, even pressure. Do not twist or jerk, because that is how the mouthparts break off. If they break off and come out easily with the tweezers, take them; if not, leave them and let the skin heal. Clean the bite and your hands with rubbing alcohol or soap and water. Never crush a tick with your fingers. Drop it in alcohol, seal it in a bag or tape, or flush it. Then write the date on the calendar and watch the spot for a month.

Should you send the tick off for testing? You can, but the CDC does not recommend relying on a tick test to decide on treatment. That decision belongs to your doctor, who will ask what kind of tick it was and how long it was on.

Source: CDC — What to Do After a Tick Bite

Finally, the clothes. Ten minutes in the dryer on high heat kills ticks on dry clothing, which is why the dryer comes before the washer when you get in from the yard. Damp clothes need longer, and if they need washing first, hot water is what works; cold and warm water do not kill ticks. Shower soon after and do a full check, paying attention to the places a poppy seed hides: hairline, behind the ears, armpits, waistband, behind the knees, between the toes. Check the dog the same way. Our Lyme disease prevention guide covers the yard side, and the homeowner checklist is the short version for the fridge.

Source: CDC — Preventing Tick Bites · Rhode Island Department of Health — Lyme disease

A Word on Raleigh

Our Raleigh crews see a different lineup: the lone star tick and the American dog tick, and the disease people talk about there is Rocky Mountain spotted fever, which the CDC says is most commonly reported from North Carolina and a handful of nearby states. Lyme disease does occur in North Carolina, but the cases concentrate in the northwest corner of the state, not the Triangle. The removal steps and the dryer rule do not change. Our Raleigh page has the local tick calendar.

Source: CDC — Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever: Transmission · North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services — Tickborne Disease Annual Report 2024

Where the Yard Comes In

Everything above is about the tick. Here is the part we do. Because deer ticks quest from low vegetation at the edges and shelter in leaf litter, a treatment that reaches those zones at the right moments of the year brings the numbers down where your family actually walks. In Massachusetts and Rhode Island that means the nymph window from mid-May into June, the adult windows in fall and early spring, and the winter program for the thaw days from November into March. It is timed to the tick's calendar, not a fixed interval, and it works alongside your own cleanup: leaves off the edges, brush cut back, the woodpile up and away from the house. The goal is fewer ticks waiting at the edge of the lawn. It will not make the ticks in the woods behind your house disappear, and nothing honest will.

Know the tick, get it off the same day, and treat the edges. That is the whole program, and it is the one I run at my own house.

Related Reading

• Tick Season in Massachusetts: When Ticks Are Active and How to Protect Your Yard — the full year, month by month.
• How to Prevent Ticks: A Homeowner’s Guide to Lyme Disease Prevention — the yard plan, repellents, and pets.
• Are Ticks Still Out This Winter on the South Shore and Cape Cod? — why the coast gets more tick days.

One tick carries Lyme here, the poppy-seed nymph is the one that gets past you, and 24 hours is the line. Check the same day, pull it straight out, and run the dryer first.

Mosquito Mike provides tick control and Winter Tick Defense across Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and the Raleigh Triangle, with traditional and all-natural programs and complimentary resprays as part of the service guarantee. Get your instant quote.