Ticks are on the rise in North Carolina. Here’s what to do if you get bitten
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- North Carolina’s warm, humid climate supports abundant ticks including lone star ticks.
- People should remove ticks with tweezers, grabbing close to the head and pulling gently.
- Save removed ticks in a labeled plastic bag and freeze them in case illness develops.
Ticks love North Carolina’s warm, humid weather, and as the climate changes we may see more of them.
North Carolina experienced two named winter storms this season, which may have killed off some of the tick population, according to Christopher Hayes, extension associate of structural pest management at NC State University. However, North Carolina did not have a long winter.
The most common tick in North Carolina is the lone star tick, Hayes said. Ticks can cause illnesses, including Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever.
Lone star ticks are associated with Alpha-gal syndrome, a rare allergic reaction to mammal meat. Other ticks commonly found in North Carolina include the black-legged tick and American dog tick.
Hayes said that people should be careful of ticks, but not let them ruin summer.
“North Carolina is beautiful. We have beautiful nature spaces across the state, many of them prevalent in ticks.” Hayes said. “But just because ticks are there is no reason you should not enjoy it, right?”
Tick prevention tips
Hayes said you should keep yourself safe from ticks by wearing long pants and socks. You should tuck your pants into your socks and shirt into your pants in areas where ticks are prevalent.
If you are especially worried about ticks, you can take a piece of duct tape and wrap it around your ankle, sticky side out. It may look a little silly, but if ticks try to crawl onto you from the ground, they are caught and can be removed easily later, Hayes said.
Hayes also recommended you wear repellent. He recommends against using an essential oil-based repellent, because ticks transmit disease.
“Essential oils have been shown to be repellent ticks and a whole host of other insects, but the amount of time they actually stay on your body, especially if you’re actively sweating and moving and hiking and you’re in really humid environments like we have here in North Carolina, is highly variable,” Hayes said.
The EPA has a repellent search engine that includes ingredients and other factors.
What to do after a tick bite
If you find a tick, you need to be careful to remove the tick in full. One form of ticks you may come across are seed ticks, or baby ticks. They are so small that they may be hard to notice. Hayes said that if you are concerned about seed ticks, you should take a credit card and scrape it up your leg, towards the knee. This will scrape off seed ticks that have bitten you.
A credit card is not an effective tool against a full sized tick, however.
Hayes said that in order to remove a larger tick, you should take tweezers and grab the tick carefully, as close to where the head is in your skin as possible. Pull the tick out gently, without jerking or ripping.
Hayes said that there are many old wives tales about how to remove a tick, including drowning them in vaseline, putting alcohol on them, burning them off with a lighter, painting them with nail polish and more. Don’t do any of that.
“When they get stressed out, they throw up, and they’re throwing up into your bloodstream. And what that does is it greatly increases the risk of infection if they are carrying something. So you never want to do any of that,” Hayes said.
Save the tick, just in case
Hayes also recommends saving any ticks you remove from your body. Place the tick in a plastic bag, labeled with the date you removed the tick from your body or your child’s body. Keep the tick in the freezer for a couple weeks, in case the tick’s victim begins to experience unexplained symptoms of an illness.
“That sounds gross, and you’re like, ‘why the heck would I do that?’” Hayes said. “Oftentimes, if you get sick after a tick bite, you may not remember you pulled that tick off. And doctors don’t immediately think about tick borne disease when you’re sick, they think about everything else.”
Inspired by a story from The Kansas City Star.
This story was originally published April 30, 2026 at 4:41 PM.
