Comment by nephihaha

In looking this up, I found that keds cannot transmit Lymes, and that many ticks catch Lymes from smaller hosts such as mice, before transmitting it to humans. This raises another issue... If an area is largely owl free (as most cities and open fields are) then that means more rodents and smaller vectors which can provide a reservoir for the infection to spread.

The deer thing is annoying. They have been mostly bred as game animals, and yet they aren't treated as game anymore for the most part so their numbers have exploded.