Beside the woodpile, I sat down on a log for a little break. Yes, I was wearing pants and boots.

But when I undressed later, imagine my shock to discover a tick clinging to my thigh.

Sometimes the tiniest things deliver the biggest wallop.

When that blacklegged tick bites you or an animal you love, for example, it can transmit a bacteria named borrelia burgdorferi. That delivers Lyme disease, the most common among five different tick-borne diseases identified in Quebec. Read all about it at quebec.ca/health/health-issues or canada.ca/en/public-health.

Our Estrie region is one of the riskiest in Canada, no doubt because of our rural environment. And we’re smack-dab against the U.S., whence the tick hails, transmitting Lyme disease along its way. That disease was first identified in 1977 in Lyme, Connecticut, after an outbreak of arthritis in children.

Forget the YouTube conspiracies about ticks being deliberately implanted in our region (‘‘ an empty box was discovered…’’). It’s a simple fact that as our climate has been warming over the past decades, our environment has been inviting them northward.

Online platforms that track the presence of ticks (etick.ca or exterminatek.ca) tell us we have a massive spike in ticks this year. Early-season tick reports are up by almost 70%. (I am shocked to see three tick-sightings by people in my very own neighbourhood.)

Where to look for them? In wooded areas, but also in tall grass, brush, woodpiles, piles of leaves, and gardens.
If you have blood, they will be looking for you. But you may not notice their bite because they are so tiny, and their bite is usually painless. In early summer, in their nymph stage, they are the size of a poppy seed; in the fall, adults are the size of a sesame seed. After feeding, they balloon up with your blood.

What to do? Remove them as soon as possible, but do it the smart way: With clean fine-pointed tweezers, grasp the head as close to the skin as possible and pull straight out. Canada.ca/en/public-health/services offers blow-by-blow instructions. But first, keep those tweezers handy. The sooner you extract the tick, the better your chances to escape Lyme disease.

So check your skin for them. Speaking of small things, don’t forget to check your belly button and other sheltered spots on your body. That’s where a tick could be hanging out.

Rachel writes from Newport.