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Disease-carrying ticks are growing more abundant in Wisconsin as they spread from forested land to the backyards, parks and playgrounds of more densely populated areas, scientists say.

“Mice and deer and birds can bring them closer,” said state Department of Health Services epidemiologist Diep Hoang Johnson.

“But we’re kind of moving into tick territory, too, when we build suburban homes on the edges of woodlots and fields,” Johnson said. “Now we are living right next to them as opposed to when we would only be exposed when we went to the cabin.”

Awareness of Lyme disease, which is carried by deer ticks, has heightened. But there are other maladies that aren’t always detected by doctors in newly infested communities, Johnson said.

The hazards are particularly great now as people and pets emerge from their homes to do yard work and enjoy the outdoors after the long winter, she said.

Nationally, health officials expect an active tick season during the warm months. Ninety-five percent of federally reported Lyme disease cases reported in 2012 were in New England, the mid-Atlantic states, Minnesota and Wisconsin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.