I don’t know about you, but I enjoy long walks and hikes in different parts of the Bay Area. However, there are three things that detract from my enjoyment: poison oak, snakes and ticks. I’ve learned to spot poison oak and can usually avoid it. Snakes have predictable patterns and I’ve only seen a couple of harmless ones in the past few years. Ticks scare me the most because they’re so small and difficult to detect (the bites are painless), and they also may carry Lyme and other diseases. Read more