If you're worried about ticks, put up an owl box.
The animal driving most Lyme disease in the eastern US is the white-footed mouse. Ticks that feed on them are far more likely to come away infected than ticks that feed on other animals. The bigger the local mouse population, the worse the next year's tick year.
A single barred owl pair raising chicks can take hundreds of rodents in a breeding season. Owls also don't carry Lyme. The bacterium can't survive their digestive tract, so an owl that eats an infected mouse is a dead end for the disease.
Researchers at the Cary Institute, the leading lab on Lyme ecology, have been explicit about this: "Landscapes that support predators have reduced Lyme disease risk."
One owl box on its own isn't going to fix a tick year. But a yard with owls, foxes, bobcats, and weasels in it has fewer mice, and a yard with fewer mice has fewer infected ticks.
If you have woods or fields nearby, a properly sized barn owl or screech owl box (different species, different boxes) is one of the most useful single things you can do for tick exposure at the landscape scale. Match the box to the owl that lives near you.
The mouse is the problem, owls are the solution.
Brian Schottenheimer on TE Michael Trigg:
“We’ve all seen the highlight reel catches and things that he did at Baylor—it’s impressive. You talk about a guy that can stretch the field vertically, and make game-changing ‘wow’ type plays attacking the middle of the field.”
NEWS: 5⭐️ Dylan Mingo has committed to Baylor, his agency @LIFTSPORTSMNGMT told @Rivals.
The 6-5 point guard and former North Carolina commit is a top-10 recruit in the 2026 class. Will join forces with his older brother Kayden Mingo, a Penn State transfer.
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