It’s a story Hollywood has told before: A terrifying predator with a taste for human blood is terrorizing an island off the coast of Massachusetts, threatening to ruin the summer tourist season as residents scramble to figure out how to deal with the problem. There’s even a shaggy-bearded guy from off-island, an academic expert, who has arrived to help find a solution.
Except this predator isn’t a 25-foot-long, three-ton great white shark. It’s a mark the size of a poppy seed. And while their bite probably won’t kill you, they could make you allergic to red meat and dairy products — symptoms can range from mild stomach distress to full-blown anaphylactic shock — which may seem worse than death to some vineyard foodies.
Life on Martha’s Vineyard, the area where celebrities own homes owned by Spike Lee, Larry David, Meg Ryan, Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, and Barack and Michelle Obama – which Steven Spielberg once photographed Jaws – is turned upside down by the arrival of the lone star tick and the Alpha Gal Syndrome that its bite can cause.
The pandemic has left residents wondering when it will be safe to return to their backyards, trading in shorts and flip-flops for pesticide-treated pants and socks, and reworking restaurant menus while inspiring an abundance of reckless schemes to deal with the problem like the Roomba outdoor tick device (no joke).
Previously largely confined to the Southeast, the lone star tick, recognizable by the white dot on its back, began migrating north and west in the 1980s, but its numbers began to explode around 2011, around the same time scientists identified alpha-gal syndrome as a condition. The Vineyard has proven a particularly hospitable place: despite its image as a busy beach resort, much of the island’s interior remains dense forests, wild fields and overgrown woods that are home to a large population of deer on which ticks like to feed.
The island has seen cases of high alpha gal in recent years. In 2020, Martha’s Vineyard Hospital performed only nine alpha-gal tests; Last year, more than 1,600 were run, with 44 percent coming back positive. These are tests that are only performed at MVH. Experts believe the real figure is much higher because the figure does not include summer residents being tested at home.
Further complicating matters are what tick epidemiologist Leah Hammer calls “consistently inconsistent” symptoms and reactions, which vary widely from person to person. The common denominator is an allergy to red meat, but some people experience a double whammy from meat and dairy products. Many who are bitten never develop an allergic reaction at all, while others become so sensitive that just smelling hamburger smoke can trigger a painful response. Sometimes, allergies do not appear until days or weeks after the initial tick bite, which is why alpha gal is often misdiagnosed as food poisoning. For some, symptoms do not appear until hours after eating meat; In other cases, the allergy can fade over time, returning people to normal, or it can last for years.
All this forced the island to reorient itself. Restaurants offer eco-friendly menus and recipes modified to accommodate allergies. Red Cat Kitchen in Oak Bluffs has replaced the buttermilk in its popular fried chicken with mustard, while Pawnee House nods to a range of alpha-friendly dishes — including salmon Wellington and falafel burgers — with the addition of “AG” on its menu. Chilmark General Store, already part of Vineyard tradition as the site of David’s 2021 showdown with Trump supporter Alan Dershowitz, introduced a cheese-free, safe version of its famous pizza. Even cafes – and the island seems to have an almost as large deer population – have gotten into the mix with dairy-free iterations of biscuits and pastries.
The syndrome has not had much impact on buyers or renters, at least according to Abe Rabinowitz, principal broker at Tea Lane Associates, which has a clear interest in continued desirability of the island. Rabinowitz says the threat of Alpha Gal has not discouraged buyers from purchasing homes, even in areas that are heavily forested and prone to ticks.
“People buy homes in one part of the island for many reasons, because it’s a place they’ve been visiting for years or friends live nearby or because they love the beaches there,” she says.
Rabinowitz, who has lived in the vineyard full-time for a quarter-century, admits that the Alpha Gal regularly pops up in conversations with her friends throughout the year, though she describes the talk as mostly practical. She compares the precautions to the preparations Angelenos make for an earthquake, arguing that everyone faces some risk wherever they live and that education and proper preparation can help avoid the worst outcomes.
“I am optimistic,” she says, and expects that the situation will improve a lot five years from now.
Unlike in Jawsthere’s no Quinn or Brody to come up with a simple solution – blowing up the enemy with a compressed air tank isn’t much of an option when they’re the size of Freckles. But, thankfully, there’s a Hooper: tick biologist Patrick Rhoden Reynolds, who takes over as director of the Martha’s Vineyard Tick Program in 2022. He even looks the part, dressed in khaki safari clothes and dragging a white flag through the undergrowth to pick up ticks for examination.
Rhoden Reynolds knows people get anxious. He’s crossed the island to host educational sessions and heard everything from frightened visitors reconsidering trips to wild proposals for tick eradication — including, yes, a fleet of outdoor Roombas.
“There are a lot of angry people, a lot of stressed people, and a lot of scared people” who “desperately need any solution,” he admits during his presentations.
His advice is clear and straightforward: Prevent tick bites, starting by wearing long pants and long sleeves treated with permethrin. The precautions appear to be effective; Despite wading through swarms of ticks every day for years, Rhoden Reynolds never developed alpha gal. As for the bigger problem, he believes that there is no quick solution to it, and he fears the side effects of increased spraying. He favors culling the deer on the island, depriving the ticks of their preferred hosts.
“Do you want my bold opinion?” He recently offered in an interview with Martha’s Vineyard Magazine. “I feel like we’re going to have to eat our way out of the tick problem.”
