ISLESBORO Lyme disease rates have reached an epidemic level on a
Maine island, so a local tick disease committee is asking to bring
gun hunting to the island to reduce the deer herd. Islesboro voters
will decide the issue on Aug. 24.
It doesnt seem like a big deal to many people. You get [bitten]
by a tick and then a bulls-eye rash no big deal, Sue Bolduc said.
This disease can be devastating.
Bolduc, 58, of Islesboro contracted the disease this summer.
Before she was diagnosed she was so weak she began looking at chairs
differently would that one be too difficult to get out of?
One day in early July, Bolduc was in the shower. When she bent
down to pick up a bar of soap, there it was on her right thigh: the
telltale bulls-eye rash.
When she stepped through the door of the islands health center
glistening with sweat, her physician assistant, Allie Wood,
instantly knew: Lyme disease.
While that diagnosis might not have come as quickly to most
doctors, it was easy for Wood because in the past eight years, the
health center has seen at least 69 cases of Lyme disease. Because
the island has a year-round population of about 600 people, thats an
epidemic, according to Islesboros Tick-Borne Disease Prevention
Committee.
So far this summer, the island health clinic has diagnosed 20
cases officially and treated more than 20 suspected cases with
antibiotics. The problem is growing.
Bolduc is fine now. She recognized the telltale signs of Lyme
disease early in the infection and was given a dose of antibiotics,
so she recovered within weeks.
There were some warning signs Bolduc admits she should have seen.
The fatigue she felt after the school year ended was consuming. Her
15-year-old dog had Lyme disease. Deer use her yard as a path.
That last piece, the deer, have taken the brunt of the blame for
the island epidemic in a recently issued 59-page report by the
committee.
The deer
A healthy deer population density in Maine is about 10 per square
mile. Islesboro has closer to 50 per square mile. There are about
500 deer on the 11-mile-long island in Waldo County, which means the
deer population is almost as high as the human population.
Ticks on Islesboro need deer to live. They only breed on large
animals, such as deer, horses and humans. So if Islesboro reduces
its deer herd, it will reduce the opportunities for Lyme-infected
ticks to feed and breed.
The town is in a special situation: Because of their isolation,
islands have sufficient vegetation for browsing and no predators.
[Islands] are vulnerable to rapid deer population growth and
corresponding incidence of tick-borne disease, according to the
report by the Tick-Borne Disease Prevention Committee.
But because its an island, it also can have a lot of control over
its deer herd. Unlike towns on the mainland, deer cannot travel as
easily from other areas and take over. For instance, on Monhegan
Island in 1996, 13 percent of year-round residents contracted Lyme
disease. So the island relaxed hunting regulations and hired
sharpshooters. By 1999, every deer was dead. They havent seen a deer
since. Between 2001 and 2010, that island has seen one case of Lyme
Disease.
Islesboro allows bow hunting for about 12 weeks each fall, but no
gun hunting.
The ticks
Although deer enable the disease, ticks are the true enemy.
No one knows this as well as Mark West, 58, who summers on Spruce
Island, which is part of the town of Islesboro.
West, his wife, daughter and sister are the only ones who live on
Spruce Island.
West goes there each summer, taking a break from his job as an
assistant professor of architecture at the University of Manitoba.
He calls his 10-by-14-foot cabin my happy place.
But the woods have changed since West got Lyme disease.
Id never been so scared in my life. Id been to New York and been
mugged. This was an existential fear, West said.
He couldnt move. He laid on his couch on the first floor because
he couldnt make it up the stairs.
I felt like I was going to be a cripple. I could feel it, he
said. It was my great fear: My life was gone. Everything I wanted to
do I couldnt function. It was so scary. Everything I ever wanted
was in jeopardy.
Hed heard other people in Islesboro had contracted the disease
and he asked his doctor to treat him for it. Now he is fine. Mostly.
The woods is a different place for me. Its not a benign place
anymore. It used to be. There are no snakes or bears or anything,
West said. There is an invisible danger. Its changed things for me.
Its a psychological change for me about my relationship with the
woods.
Now West tucks his pants into his socks, wears boots and long
sleeves. No more shorts and T-shirts, like he used to wear. He does
tick checks every other day.
Its Russian roulette every time you go get wood for the fire,
West said.
But it isnt Russian roulette. In that lethal game, there is one
bullet in a revolver. The player spins the cylinder, points the gun
to his head and pulls the trigger. A one-in-six chance. On
Islesboro, if a tick sucks a persons blood for more than 24 hours,
that person has a one-in-two chance of contracting Lyme disease.
A few decades ago, there were no ticks on Islesboro. By 2006, a
quarter of the deer ticks on the island carried Lyme bacteria, but
the ticks have become more infectious with time. Now half of the
ticks on Islesboro carry Lyme bacteria.
Health
The Islesboro Health Center has a staff of three physician
assistants. One of them is Owen Howell, 46, who started working
there nine years ago. Back then, Lyme disease wasnt much of an
issue. The year he started, the center dealt with no cases of it.
Its getting worse, Howell said.
We diagnosed three people yesterday, added physician assistant
Allie Wood, 56.
Almost a grand slam, Howell joked. They just keep coming.
Although the health center staff tries to keep an open mind about
diagnoses, Howell said, [Lyme disease] is closer to the front of
your mind than it was in the past.
A lot closer.
If someone comes in to me with flu symptoms, the first thing I
think of is Lyme disease. Sometimes its not Lyme disease but often
it is, she said.
According to Wood and Howell, most of the 69 people who have been
diagnosed in the past eight years (A number that does not include
the number of suspected cases there have been 20 so far this
summer), are doing fine. They just needed a few weeks of antibiotics
to get the bacteria out of their bodies. A few people still suffer
from the effects of the disease.
I can think of a handful of people who are not OK, but most of
them are fine now, Wood said. When treated early, Lyme disease is
eradicated. The cases that bother me are the longer-lasting cases
that affect people permanently. I want to eliminate that from the
island.
The proposed solution
Islesboros Tick-Borne Disease Prevention Committee tussled for a
year over the Lyme disease problem and decided the deer are the
major issue. The committee is asking residents to vote on Aug. 24 to
reduce the deer herd from 48 deer to 10 deer per square mile by gun
hunting and expanding bow hunting.
There has never been gun hunting on the island before, and
although the limited season would be for islanders only, it has
become a contentious issue. Some of the hunters who bow hunt like it
that way and dont want any gun hunters to take away their animals.
Some residents dont want bullets flying on an 11-mile-long island
that has some densely populated neighborhoods.
Laura Houle, 39, is the chairwoman of the committee that wrote
the report. Houles logic follows the report, [ticks] need the deer
on Islesboro.
And in her opinion, the town has done what it could with bow
hunting. It expanded the season. It allows unlimited doe permits and
two buck permits per hunter. But still, the deer have overrun the
small town. So much so that every single gardener on the island must
build a 6-foot-tall fence if they want to reap any of their harvest.
They need guns, Houle and her committee argue.
The year-round residents of Islesboro will vote on whether to
accept the committees recommendations on Aug. 24.
Its now in the townspeoples hands, said Houle.
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