Nova Scotians watch their backs – and each other’s – during another tick-infested summer

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The outdoors beckoned on a recent Sunday in Nova Scotia’s Lunenburg County, where the weather was 25 degrees and sunny – a perfect spring day. So naturally, Stephanie Tanner’s six-year-old daughter wanted to go outside and play.

Emily spent just 30 minutes in the backyard, romping with the family’s chickens. When she came back inside, she was unknowingly harbouring a dozen parasitic hitchhikers; by the end of the day, her mother would pluck 12 ticks from Emily’s body, finding them everywhere from her groin to her hairline.